Most wineries add yeast to start fermentation. You pick a strain bred for a clean, predictable conversion of sugar to alcohol, pitch it into the tank, and the population takes over within a day. It works, it is consistent, and it lets you sleep at night during harvest.
We do not do that. We let the yeasts that already live on the grape skins and in the cellar do the work. It is slower, it is less linear, and some years it tests our nerve.
What the trade buys us
A native fermentation is a relay, not a sprint. Dozens of wild yeast species start the race, each one tolerating a little more alcohol than the last, until the hardy strains finish it off. Each handoff leaves a trace in the wine: a wider band of aromatics, a softer middle, a texture that feels less manufactured.
The risk is real. A native ferment can stall halfway through, leaving sugar in the wine and the door open to spoilage. So we do not romanticize it. We keep the cellar clean, we keep the tanks cool, and we taste constantly. If a ferment looks like it is going to stick, we have a plan. In fifteen vintages we have only had to step in twice.
We are not purists about it for its own sake. We ferment this way because the wines are simply better when we do, more layered, more clearly from here. If a vintage ever told us otherwise, we would listen. So far it never has.
The short version: commercial yeast gives you control, native yeast gives you character. On a vineyard this small, character is the only thing we have to sell.