New world wine made in a very old way

What we mean – and what we don’t

“Natural wine” has become a broad and often vague term. It can mean many different things, depending on who is using it.

We prefer to be specific.

At Aristotelis Ke Anthoula, we make wine with:

no additives
no fining or filtration
no added sulphites

Fermentations are spontaneous, driven by native yeasts. Extraction comes from time and careful handling, not heavy manipulation. Wines are pressed gently, then aged in clay amphorae and old neutral barrels before bottling without adjustment.

This is not about minimal effort. It is about making deliberate decisions early — in the vineyard and at harvest — so that less needs to be done later.

An industrial shift in wine

Over the past century, winemaking has steadily shifted from an agricultural craft into an industrial process.

This didn’t happen all at once, and it wasn’t driven by a single event. It came through the gradual adoption of technologies designed to make wine more stable, more predictable, and easier to produce at scale.

Temperature-controlled fermentations. Cultured yeasts. Enzymes. Tannin powders. Acid adjustments. Filtration systems. Stabilisation protocols. Additive regimes designed to correct, shape and standardise.

None of these tools are inherently wrong. In many contexts, they make sense. But taken together, they change the nature of wine.

When every stage of the process is engineered for control and repeatability, the result is often consistency at the expense of character. Wines become cleaner, safer, more technically precise – but also more uniform. The edges are softened. The variation between sites and seasons is reduced. The wine begins to reflect process more than place.

This isn’t accidental.

As Jancis Robinson notes, the way wine is evaluated has shaped the way it is made:

“As more and more wine today is sold on the basis of its performance in large comparative tastings, there is a natural pressure to make wines that will stand out in these rather artificial circumstances. It is just so easy for a taster to fall for the most concentrated, most powerful wines – especially as these tend to overwhelm any more subtle wine tasted alongside.”

Over time, this creates a feedback loop, and the result is a global shift toward wines that are bigger, more polished, and more uniform.

Here in Australia, this mindset has become deeply embedded. Wines are manufactured in the pursuit of medals more than drinkability. Even at the premium end of the market, there is often an assumption that quality is something to be constructed – corrected into shape – rather than something that emerges from the vineyard when handled carefully.

We don’t share that view.

A different approach

We see wine as something that should be grown and guided, not designed.

Our approach is closer to what might be called pre-industrial – not in a nostalgic sense, but in a practical one. It draws on methods that existed before the modern toolbox became standard: hand picking, wild fermentations, long élevage, neutral vessels, and an acceptance that variation is part of what makes wine meaningful.

Tony’s parents, Aristotelis and Anthoula, were making wine in suburban Sydney in the early 1980s using these kinds of methods – pressing fruit by hand, working with old barrels, and relying on instinct, tradition and know-how rather than additives. That way of thinking still underpins what we do now, even as the work itself has become more precise.

Today, we source fruit from long-term vineyard sites that give us fruit with natural structure, acidity and detail. That matters.

Precision without intervention

There is a misconception that low-intervention winemaking is casual or hands-off. In reality, it demands more attention, not less.

Without the ability to adjust acidity, stabilise chemically or rely on sulphur additions, every decision becomes critical:

picking dates
fruit condition
hygiene
oxygen management
time on skins
timing of pressing and bottling

We work with these variables constantly, aiming to carry the wine through fermentation and élevage in a way that preserves its energy and structure.

The goal is not to make “natural wine” as a style. It is to make complete wines – wines that hold together, that age, and that express where they come from without being overworked.

Our position

We are not rejecting modern knowledge.

We are choosing how to use it.

For us, the role of the winemaker is not to impose a result, but to guide the wine toward its natural balance — and to step back where intervention would obscure more than it improves.

That is what we mean when we say:

New world wine made in a very old way.

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