Are you an adventurous wine drinker? You’re in luck: Tickets for Third Coast Soif, Chicago’s first natural wine fair, are now available.The event will be held Sunday, March 19, at Bad Hunter in the West Loop. For just $20, sample wines from 25 winemakers and nine importers, who together will bring 150-plus bottles of natural wines to show off. But let's back up. What’s natural wine, and why dedicate a day to it?"Natural" is a loaded term in the wine industry — "isn't all wine natural?" some say — and, to be clear, there isn't a precise definition; unlike with, say, DOC certification for pizza, the natural wine world isn't overseen by a governing body creating boxes you have to check to be part of the club. Many in the biz define it as wine made sans additives and with minimal tinkering — “nothing added, nothing removed,” proponents like to say. Natural winemakers typically do not fine or filter wines (that is, they don't add clarifying agents or remove sediment), add sulfites or use commercially produced yeast strains, instead allowing their wines to ferment naturally.

The whole point of the movement is that winemakers do what they feel is best for their wines. The end goal is always sustainability — for the farmer, the winemaker and the vineyard. Natural wine comes from all over the world, from California to Italy to France to New Zealand, and is made with all sorts of locally native grape varieties.“In France, there are vins de garde — wines you collect — or vins de soif — wines you drink,” says Nadim Audi, a Chicago representative for importer Seleccion Massale and one of the organizers of Third Coast Soif. For him, natural wines are the latter. Many boast high acidity and low alcohol levels, with a lighter body that's food-friendly, a contrast to fuller-bodied, juicier and boozier wines like, say, Napa Valley cabernet. For some wine lovers, natural wines spark the imagination as much as, say, heirloom vegetable varieties for chefs or craft beers for brewheads.Meanwhile, critics of the form have called natural wines "flawed" and "unstable."

Famed wine critic Robert Parker has deemed natural wines a “fraud” and “one of the major scams being foisted on wine consumers,” but Audi and fellow Third Coast Soif organizer Mark Lindzy disagree.“dry red wine suggestionsThere’s always been a stigma of natural wine made by hippies, that it’s dirty and made with wet socks,” says Lindzy, a regional sales manager for wine importer Jose Pastor Selections, “but this is traditional winemaking, passed down from generation to generation.”wine in a box kit “If in your critique, you’re going to describe natural wines as ‘hipster’ and ‘from Brooklyn,’ you’re just being reactionary,” says Audi. perfect gift for wine lovers

“In the past, there have been flawed wines, sure, but these young winemakers are using each vintage to improve." best type of wine to go with turkeyThird Coast Soif is a way “to learn that these people work as much as they can by hand, that they are not from Downton Abbey or some big chateau — they’re farmers," he adds. rental western springs"(This) is an opportunity to meet the people behind their wine. best dessert wine 2015To see wine culture from a different angle.”“best wine gift packagesThe time was right,” says Lindzy, citing wine fairs like Big Glou, RAW and more popping up in New York City. best wine for chicken

Natural wines aren't new, but “they're more available these days.” dry red wine españolTrue: In Chicago, the genre has been quietly championed by the likes of Webster’s Wine Bar, Red and White, and Rootstock, to name some early pioneers.At Third Coast Soif, which is already almost sold-out, expect more of a party than a formal tasting. Countries represented include Italy, Spain, Mexico, the U.S. and France. Coffee and beer, from Four Letter Word and Whiner Beer, respectively, will be available, as will some snacks from Bad Hunter's kitchen.“We’re totally against snobbism,” says Audi. “Just come to drink — there aren’t tasting notes.”Third Coast Soif will be held Sunday, March 19, from 1-5 p.m. at The Herbarium at Bad Hunter, 150 N. Halsted St. Tickets ($20) available here.Because of the limited ingredients and growing conditions for the grapes, wine is one of the toughest draughts to make well and, and the most highly touted of vintages have sold for gargantuan amounts of money over the decades.

Adding to the delicate and intricate process and the weather conditions playing magic (or wreaking havoc) with the grape vines is the condition that time plays in the process. Great wine can be accentuated to a state of near euphoria for the proverbial palate by shelving it in a cool place and letting father time stir the ingredients and extend the fermentation adding to the robust flavors. Because of this collectors and wine drinkers alike covet particularly good years of wine, and when a rare bottle is kept on the shelf as its brothers and sisters and emptied over the months and years can make for a perfect storm of damn good and extraordinarily expensive selling wine. 5. Chateau Margaux 1787 | 4. Chateau Lafite’s 1869 | 3. Shipwrecked 1907 Heidsieck | Chiming in at number three is a bottle of champagne that was salvaged from a Swedish Freighter off the coast of Finland in 1998, the 1907 Heidsieck, which sold at numerous auctions and brought in as much as £163,000 (or $275,000 US).

The kicker here, folks is that 2,000 of these bottles were recovered, but the story of the commissioned ship destined for the Imperial Court of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia that had been torpedoed by a German Submarine in World War I adds significant historical significance to the 100-plus year old flavor. 2. 1947 Cheval-Blanc | The 1947 French Cheval-Blanc is widely recognized as the most expensive sold bottle of vino in history at $304,375 (see the next wine for the asterisk* explanation). In 2010, the 67-year-old bottle was sold to a private collector at a Christies auction in Geneva. According to the Classification of Saint-Emilion wine, the Cheval Blanc has a class A status [and] … of all the merlot wines, there are only two which were granted with this classification. The grapes were said to be legendary between April and October of 1947, and the survivor bottle that outlived many a person is the only known bottle in the Imperial format from this particular Saint-Emilion vintage.