I’m usually quite swift off the mark when it comes to reviewing new wine books relevant to my readership, but as you may know, with house moving etc I’ve slipped behind with the writing. It’s a shame in this case because I’ve been dying to tell you about this book since it arrived. By now, I’m guessing that a lot of you will have read it and enjoyed it just as much as I have, as much now, reminding myself of its contents as when I read it cover to cover many weeks ago.

I don’t know Honey personally, and in fact I only met her for the first time at the Real Wine Fair at the end of April, but we do have a number of acquaintances in common, all people I admire for their passion for natural wines, regenerative agriculture and vineyard biodiversity. Honey sits easily within that group.

Honey studied languages in London, with a stint at Paris Dauphine before starting a career as a sommelier. A year and a half working in marketing for Jamie Oliver’s company was a minor diversion before returning to wine service proper. She has worked at Den Vedrette (Copenhagen), 10 William Street (Sydney) and three months at Noma in Mexico, as well as General Manager at Sager + Wilde in London.

People often forget that Honey founded Bastarda in 2018, and she also works with another passionate wine consultant, Ania Smelskaya, via Spencer and Smelskaya Consulting. Always considering herself first and foremost a sommelier, Honey continues as Wine Director for the Palomar Group (Paskin & Associates), alongside perhaps her most adventurous project to date. Along with her husband and partner Charlie Sims, whose CV includes managing Noma in Copenhagen, she opened Restaurant Sune (pronounced “sooner”) in Hackney, close to Broadway Market, in autumn 2023.

It’s hard to think of a more highly praised restaurant in the whole of London right now. I could have filled this review with glowing praise for Sune, but this is about Honey’s book so I will simply quote James Manning in Time Out:

“The level of depth, detail, thought and skill in some of these dishes is honestly staggering, and they’re picture-pretty”.

I think a fair question must be to ask how on earth Honey manages to juggle all of these commitments, and a young family, with writing a book, but she has and we are grateful for her energy. The book is called Natural Wine No Drama, and is subtitled “an unpretentious guide”. Both statements are true. I imagine Honey manages to achieve so much because she doesn’t make a drama out of everything. Likewise, you could not read a more unpretentious guide to natural wine, and the key is that this book has no hint of “me, me, me” from its author. This is remarkable because Honey Spencer was there at the start, so to speak. I recognise her journey in my own in many respects, but she has been a sensationally successful advocate for natural wine over the past decade plus.

First, I should say that the book itself is very attractively, and sensitively, produced by her publisher, Pavilion (a Harper Collins imprint). Great work from Laura Russell, Alice Kennedy-Owen and their teams. A nice selection of photos is supplemented by illustrations created by Max Ososki. They help tell Honey’s story, which began much like mine when it comes to natural wine. As her opening words describe, “I can still remember the first time I tried a natural wine; I recall it with a shudder”.

Actually, my shudder was from an unsulphured red wine bought from one of Paris’ pioneering natural wine stores, but I had unknowingly drunk several natural wines previous to this 1990s experience. I just didn’t know it. Back then, natural wine could be unstable and volatile, and no-one was more volatile when it came to the sharp tongues of its sternest critics. Back then, if you appreciated natural wine and were prepared to say so, one did feel somewhat under attack from certain wine critics, and indeed the more conservative users of a popular wine forum I used to frequent.

But as tiny minorities usually find each other, so did I find likeminded individuals. Wines shared at lunches, especially those I organised with a friend at Rochelle Canteen, slowly saw more natural wines among them. Those lunches were usually preceded, in my case, by a visit to Austrian natural wine pioneers Newcomer Wines, then occupying a shipping container in Shoreditch Box Park, and increasingly ended with a visit to Sager + Wilde. Natural wine has so many outlets now, so it is hard to imagine how important S+W was back in its early days. I had previously worshipped at The Ledbury. S+W was fundamental in shaping my tastes and wine philosophy over the past twelve years.

Honey begins by relating, briefly, her own story, before a very plain-speaking introduction and explanation of different winemaking styles and methods, all leading to natural wine. It sets the scene for the first core part of the book, illustrating the natural wine philosophy through the people who have helped shape it.

We begin with natural wine’s supreme philosopher, Doug Wregg. As a director of UK natural wine pioneer Les Caves de Pyrene, Doug was selling these wines to UK restaurants and consumers (including myself) long before such wines had a hint of fashionabilty about them. They were a hard sell. If Jancis Robinson is sometimes known as “HRH”, “Sir Doug” as almost everyone calls him, could not be held in higher esteem, nor greater affection, among that part of the UK wine scene that appreciates wine’s boundary pushers and innovators.

Honey goes on to profile a rich array of other movers and shakers on the natural wine scene, most of whom I either know or have met a number of times. Meli Ligas is one face of Ktima Ligas, one of two fabulous Greek natural wine pioneers. Christina Rasmussen, I have already profiled on my site (3 August 2022). She is yet to be fully recognised for her contribution to natural wine. Monique Millton and Tim Webber (Manon Farm) are profiled, as are fellow winemakers Fleur Godart and Sophie Evans, along with several more.

They are all astute choices, chosen both for what they have achieved, and for the passion which they have brought to their own spheres. None more so, perhaps, than Stephanie and Eduard Tscheppe of Gut Oggau, whose wines I now rate more highly than those which the critics would tell me are the world’s finest. This is because natural wine has redefined my view of what great wine is, and what it can be.

The key to these people portraits is that Honey allows their words to speak for natural wine, rather than pontificating herself. We have had rather too much pontification from those bearing an astonishing, at times, degree of antipathy towards natural wine. I used to think that wine people are nice people. Now I prefer to say that “natural wine” people are nice people, though although broadly true, sadly that would itself be a gross exaggeration. What you can be sure of is that the folks profiled by Honey here are certainly among the good guys.

The final chapters of the book include a section called “how to enjoy natural wine”. We have here, inter alia, a clutch of recipes and wine pairings. The author knows rather a lot about food, yet she gives over twenty of her pages to some very interesting chefs, who provide exciting recipes which are “natural wine-friendly”. Each recipe has wine to match it, wine that is on the whole accessible and affordable.

At the end of the book do not miss the small piece called “Convincing a Critic”. The critic in question is Jay Rayner. I’m quite a fan of Jay’s writing, but I must say that he has…well let me use Honey’s own thoughts as she saw him enter the restaurant:

”With this critic, there was another pretty gargantuan problem. Jay Rayner hated natural wine. In fact, his loathing of it was so deeply entrenched that should a restaurant he visited feature natural wine, the entire subsequent column would be dedicated to ensuring the poor sommelier in question would rue the day they ever so much as looked at a grape.”

Honey lived to pour again, but more importantly what Jay said in his review points very much to why Honey Spencer has been so successful as a sommelier, wine consultant, and now a restaurateur.

We finish, well almost, with “What Happens Now?”. It’s the question we, that is the natural wine community, all ask. Natural wine’s success has been based on many factors. Lighter, and perhaps purer, flavours, ethics etc, but undoubtedly because Doug Wregg, and those who followed his example, understood that people didn’t necessarily want a tasting note full of fruits and further pretentions. Natural wine always has a story to tell, and that story is first and foremost about a landscape, and the people and culture which inhabit that landscape. People are hungry for the story. They can almost live vicariously, until they are able to visit the vines themselves and walk in nature among the bucolic green of vine-clad hills. Wine is culture and culture runs deep, for all those who seek what is not superficial.

The book actually ends with a kind of directory, of natural wine fairs and events around the world, of online resources and courses, and of key books on the subject. All very useful, most being essential. I would just like to add to the events list “Autentikfest Moravia”, which takes place in August and showcases (though not exclusively) the wines of Europe’s most exciting but hardly known emerging natural wine culture.

Natural wine is, perhaps more than anything, about open minds and a willingness to experiment. This is something Honey talks about elsewhere in the book. The Covid pandemic ironically seemed to foster a sense of greater adventure among a population stuck in their houses and locales for months on end. Equally, as Honey says (in a paragraph I’d love to quote in full, but it is too long), “…there is something deeply romantic about natural wine. In a world of identikit international varieties, it is a revolt.” Natural wine has both these aspects.

Who exactly is it who is drawn to natural wine? Who will be drawn to this book? It is so often the passionate, deeply thoughtful, individuals who question the given, who rebel against the doctrine of the mass-market, who are drawn to the artisan, who believe humankind is crazy to destroy our planet. Honey Spencer, through her work in food and wine, and through this book, continues to be at the vanguard of those waking us up. Wine is, as Honey says, not the greatest of life’s priorities, compared to the big issues facing humanity. But that doesn’t make it irrelevant.

Well then, end of my sermon. It’s a fabulous book, not so much as a reference work of factual material, more as something which will make you feel warm inside when you’ve read it. What comes through above all is not just passion, but compassion. Honey is undoubtedly a compassionate individual, whose friends are compassionate individuals, and who has written here about compassion – compassionate individuals in wine, compassionate farming and a compassionate philosophy. If, like me, you are one of those romantics Honey Spencer mentions above, you will love this book.

Natural Wine, No Drama by Honey Spencer is published by Pavilion/Harper Collins (hard cover, 2024). The RRP is £25. Some sites sell it at a small discount, but as always beware those which do not properly remunerate the author.