The Second Wave

Five years ago, drinkers in Singapore were just beginning to understand the terms “skin contact”, “orange/amber”, “pét-nat” and “glou glou” (literally “glug glug”, or easily quaffable wines) that arrived with the proliferation of natural wines in Singapore. Fronting that trend were the rebellious wine bars—Wine RVLT, Le Bon Funk, Bar Cicheti—all of which are still going strong. Nothing much has changed at these establishments: they still largely do not have a wine list (bottles are displayed with prices handwritten with chalk), deploy alternative music playlists, and offer mostly natural wines and fewer conventional ones.

Another thing that hasn’t changed: the ambiguity of the term “natural wine”, which is not codified the same way organic and biodynamic wines are,