City Restaurants Look To Quench Patrons' Thirst For Natural Wines

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Mainstream wines look out, natural wines are making their move into more city bars and restaurants.

As CBS2's Vanessa Murdock reported, if you're a wine lover your taste buds are probably perking up right now.

"You have wine that is highly industrialized with human intervention, natural wine is a movement against it," Wine Spectator, Tasting Coordinator, Gillian Sciaretta explained. "Generally speaking natural wines tend to be lower in alcohol, higher in acidity, less fruit forward, and flavors that are really distinct.

The distinct flavor seems to be sought after.

"I thought this would make me happy," Alison Price Becker said.

The bar and restaurant scene in the city can sense the thirst.

"Natural wine was a quick decision, just normal, this is what we had to do," Laurent Francois, Managing Diector, La Botaniste.

La Botaniste, on the Upper East Side, opened in January. The food is organic, the wine au natural.

"Going back to basics with food and wine," Francois said.

The concept has been more successful than expected.

"We were pretty surprised by our wine sales, pretty happy," Francois said.

Yassine Bentaleb, managing partner of Ten Bells on the Lower East Side said if you're looking for an introduction to natural wine chardonnay from cite du join is an excellent choice.

"I like wines to be natural, meaning there's nothing added to it and nothing taken away from it. Just grape juice fermented. Shows a lot of craft from the wine's maker," Bentaleb said.

Open since 2008, Ten Bells was one of the first restaurants to serve only natural wines. They started with fifty on their list.

"We have almost 300 wines now," Bentaleb said.

Natural wine lists are growing, as is the number of establishments serving them.

If you want to know what bars and restaurants serve natural wines consider downloading raisin, they're map pinpointing locations.

Most natural wines are made in small batches, so in general they're slightly more expensive. However, you can get a great bottle for $15 to $20.