What is natural wine?

There is growing interest in natural ingredients without additives, yet natural wine remains an exclusive type of artisanal product on a small scale – just as we at Skåbu Fjellhotell serve meals with ingredients from our own farms and game and fish from Skåbu – prepared and processed in our own processing plant.

One way to describe natural wine is through the difference between natural yoghurt and yoghurt with added berries, muesli, and flavours. Unpasteurized brie is another reference. Good cheese can smell just as bad as it tastes good. There is no shortcut to good natural wine. It's all about good ingredients and good craftsmanship.

Perhaps natural wine is the wine world's answer to sour cream and cottage cheese. The best milk the animals provide when they are grazing. It is thick, flavourful, and nutritious. The idea behind mountain farming is that it does not utilise areas and resources that could otherwise be used to grow grain or vegetables. The mountain pastures are self-herded, and the cows are milked by hand. It's not an efficient type of agriculture, but it's thorough, and it's holistic, small-scale, and local. And it also produces products that are both distinctive and flavourful.

It is perhaps not so strange that this comparison appeals to us in Skåbu, where farming, small-scale, unique, high quality and with good animal welfare, is largely practiced in local agriculture today, as it has been for generations.

At Skåbu Fjellhotell, this is the very pillar of our genuine food philosophy – from farm to fork – and the entire way between the two.