Meet the ‘hipster Pied Piper’ that helped turn London on to natural wine

Honey Spencer recalls her first natural wine experience with a shudder. The year was 2011, or thereabouts, and the somm and her now husband and business partner Charlie Sims were at Soho’s Ducksoup on their second (possibly third) date. 

“We ordered two glasses of Merlot and they were great: plump blackberry, velvety tannins and low acidity. The perfect Sunday roast wine and exactly what you’d expect from the grape.”

Naturally, the pair ordered two more but were disappointed to find they were wildly different to those which had come before. “It was all red crunchy fruits and a little fizzy too. I assumed they’d simply served us the wrong wine but the bartender said ‘no, it’s a new bottle and that’s just what natural wine is like’. As a newly-qualified sommelier that had been taught wine was predictable and formulaic, I was furious.” 

Spencer quietly filed natural wines under “bullshit” and went back to serving conventional ones. But there was something about the wild, enigmatic liquid she couldn’t get out of her head. So she dipped her toe in again. And then again.

A dozen or so years later, Spencer is an authority on natural wines having dedicated her career to understanding them and – latterly – championing them. She recently penned a book entitled Natural Wine, No Drama (Pavilion Books, £25)​​ in which she jokingly describes herself as a "sort of hipster Pied Piper" and is by some margin the UK’s most high-profile natural wine sommelier. It’s a tag she is not altogether comfortable with, but more on that later. 

Late last year she opened her own natural wine-focused venture with Sims.​​ In East London, Sune made its debut on Restaurant’s​ list of the top 100 restaurants in the UK earlier this summer.​​ 

Jumping on the natural wine bandwagon 

Spencer’s early experiences of natural wine will resonate with many, especially those that encountered the stuff in the late Noughties and early 2010s when the London scene was in its infancy. During this period, a sharp increase in demand saw established producers scramble to implement practices that are associated with the movement including organic, biodynamic and regenerative viticulture and a more ‘hands-off’ approach in the winery.

New winemaking operations were also set up from scratch, often by entrepreneurs that knew little of grape growing and vinification (natural or otherwise). On top of this, a lot of London restaurants – with some notable exceptions including Ducksoup, Covent Garden’s Terriors and Hackney’s Sager + Wilde – were jumping on the bandwagon and didn’t fully grasp the intricacies of the product they were serving.

“There were a huge amount of teething problems,” recalls Spencer. “One of the biggest issues back then was that wines were being released to market too young. They were like disgruntled teenagers that had just been on a long journey. They were often perceived as being faulty when all they needed was six or so months in the bottle to integrate.”  

Another thing that turned people off in the early days was the side order of sanctimonious patter that often accompanied them. “They were presented as something that we all needed to get used to for the good of the planet. It was almost as if they were a punishment we had to endure to be considered ethically sound consumers. That was so wrong. People don't want the moral argument shoved down their throat when they are just trying to have a nice time.” 

Entering the post-funky era

Natural wine is now in a much better place. Producers have got better at making it, distributors have got better at supplying it and UK restaurants have got better at selling it. Once embarrassingly late to the party, London has largely caught up with places like Paris, Tokyo and Copenhagen to become a key player on the global natural wine scene. 

The category is now making the transition from being a trendy niche that many – particularly older generations – were suspicious of to something that has become largely normalised in forward-thinking restaurants.

Key to this shift is that natural wines have become more approachable with the category having now entered a new post-funk era. While some more hardcore establishments continue to seek out more challenging styles the emphasis is now on cleaner wines that are less redolent of farmyards, nail polish remover and - as The Observer critic Jay Rayner once memorably had it  - unwiped arse. 

Probably the best natural wine scene in the world

Spencer started her career as a sommelier at Jamie Oliver’s now closed Shoreditch restaurant Fifteen (it was while working here she met Sims and had that first, wholly inauspicious, experience of natural wine). From there she ventured further East to Hackney’s Sager + Wild, which at the time served a mix of natural and conventional wine. 

“Interestingly we weren’t supposed to talk about wines as being natural,” she recalls. “The subject was deemed too contentious for a business that was in its infancy. We’d recommend natural wines and if people didn’t like them we’d just change them for something more traditional.” 

Spencer and Sims quit London in 2015 and headed to Copenhagen where natural wines had been embedded in ambitious restaurants for some time, not least Noma. “It was partly because I couldn’t find anyone in London that could explain them to me sommelier to sommelier. At that time most somms were just getting upset with them.”  

What was supposed to be a casual fact-finding mission turned into something more serious when Sims bagged a front of house role at Noma (he would leave as restaurant manager) and Spencer found work at some of the Danish capital’s most vaunted natural wine bars as well as with natural wine supplier Sune Rosfroth, the man credited with turning Noma’s chef founder René Redzepi onto natural wines. 

Spencer’s time in Copenhagen was formative and underpins her approach to the category to this day. “There’s a real confidence around natural wines in Copenhagen because they are the norm. It was less about the politics and more about how to actually work with the wines,” she says. 

Returning to the UK 

After a bit more travelling – including a spell in Australia and working on Redzepi’s Mexico pop-up – the couple returned to the UK in 2020. The pandemic notwithstanding, the timing was good. Spencer admits that she assumed London would still be at odds with the rest of the world and that “boomers would still be cowering at the thought of a cloudy bottle” but it turned out that the capital – and a few other major cities – were starting to get behind the category.

Having worked in markets that were further along on their natural wine journey, Spencer was able to bring something new to the table and has been in high demand as a consultant penning lists for high-profile restaurants including Osip in Somerset and Akoko, Bossa, Native and July in London.

She was also directly employed by Paskin & Associates as its director of wine overseeing the wine programme for venues including The Palomar, The Barbary, The Mulwray and the Michelin-starred Evelyn’s Table but recently left to concentrate on her debut solo restaurant project.

Sune or later

Named after her Denmark-based mentor Rosfroth, Sune is located on Hackney’s buzzy Broadway Market overlooking the canal. East London has no shortage of natural wine specialists but the restaurant - which is pronounced like soon - has made an impact nevertheless, chalking up positive reviews from The Guardian’s Grace Dent and The Standard’s Jimi Famurewa. 

While Sune is pitched as an approachable neighbourhood place, it is considerably more sophisticated than it might appear at first glance. “Charlie and I are striving to take elements from the more elevated places we have worked and feed them into Sune. The food Michael (Robins, Sune’s head chef) cooks is detailed and we really pride ourselves on the nuanced hospitality that we provide. But we didn’t want to run a tasting menu restaurant. It was mainly a lifestyle thing. We have a young child and we want Sune to be a family place.”

Spencer, Sims, Robins and their business partner Spencer Large are now seeking to smoothly make the transition from hot new thing to beloved neighbourhood restaurant. “It feels like a distinct chapter change,” Spencer says. “Front of house admin will be a big part of it. As we switch from taking reservations on Resi (which will soon pull out of the UK market) to another bookings platform we will look carefully at how we keep in contact with guests and how we get them to come back.”

Later this year, Sune will start opening on Tuesday evenings (it is currently open for lunch and dinner Wednesday to Saturday and on Sundays from 11.30am to 3pm) and there are also plans afoot to construct a 15-cover terrace that overlooks the canal.

Keeping it clean

In keeping with the other wine programmes Spencer has overseen, the offering at Sune is focused on cleaner wines. “Natural wines were once a little wild and unapproachable. But now there are lot of producers making fine, very clean wines. Our wine list tells that story. But everything on the list is full of life and vibrant.”

Like a lot of natural wine-focused places, the intention is that the majority of guests will ask the team what they should be drinking rather than pore over a long list. This hand-selling approach is a good fit for the category because, unlike conventional wine, where a wine is from and what grapes it is made with won’t necessarily give much of an indication as to what is in the bottle.

“Natural wines are far less linear than traditional ones,” Spencer explains. “You can’t rely on formulas and tried and tested combinations. The appellation a wine is from is potentially less important. It’s often more about the style of a given producer. On top of this, you are working with a product that is constantly changing. Traditional wines do evolve in the bottle, of course, but always in a certain direction.”

The problem with the classics

At Sune, the focus is on the liquid in the bottle at that moment above all else. This means that natural wines that are from famous regions can be problematic. Understandably, people ordering wines like Sancerre, Chablis and red Burgundy have a fixed idea of how such wines should present themselves. 

“It is usually the heavy hitting French appellations,” Spencer says. “We put an amazing Chablis on the by the glass list the other month that tasted like grown-up lemonade. But it didn’t taste like a conventional Chablis. And the sort of guest that is willing to spend £17 on a glass of Chablis is also the sort of guest that wants it to taste like Chablis.”

Said atypical Chablis no longer features on Sune’s by the glass list. Now when Spencer lists a wine from a classic region she ensures it ticks most of the boxes associated with the appellation. “At the moment we have Savagnin on from the Côte de Beaune for a similar price. It’s an unusual wine because Savagnin is not really associated with the appellation, but it drinks like a beautiful fine white Burgundy. We can have a USP without scaring people off.” 

To decant or not to decant

Spencer has a number of other tricks of up her sleeve to ensure she doesn’t deter more traditionally minded drinkers and showcase her wines at their best. For example, she regularly instructs diners that might be unsure about the slight pétillance or light reductive notes in their glass to simply swirl it away. 

Decanting is also employed more frequently and for different reasons than it would be in a venue focused on conventional wine. “At Sune we don’t just use decanters to aerate or to add a bit of theatre,” Spencer explains. “Sometimes we decant to allow elements of the wine to come together. Alongside this, natural wines are more likely to be reductive because producers often use less or no sulphur. Decanting is a good way of reducing reductive notes. Skin contact wines also benefit greatly from being aerated because they have tannins.” 

But some natural wines are so brimming with life that they could easily get mousy if they are exposed to too much air. At Sune, such wines are kept especially well-chilled and poured slowly. “It's about nuance and being able to predict what a wine is going to be like and how it is going to behave based on a combination of experience and intuition,” she adds.

Once bottles are open the team aim to sell them through within a few days because the shelf life of natural wines tends to be a little lower than conventional ones. For this reason, Sune’s recently launched Sunday brunch service is focused on cocktails rather than wine in an effort to reduce the amount of bottles that are open when the restaurant is closed early on in the week.

Refusing to be pigeonholed

While it’s difficult to think of anyone in the restaurant world that has done more to further the cause of natural wine over the past few years Spencer doesn’t want to be seen as a one trick pony. “I love classic wines and you'll always find classic wines on my lists. But the producers I choose tend to fall within my parameters in that they are either organic, biodynamic or regenerative, use native yeast fermentations, don’t filter or fine and use judicious levels of sulphur. I’d rather be seen as being a sommelier that has an imagination and a proclivity for walking that path less trodden.”