The husband and wife team behind 2Naturkinder are sneakily responsible for some of the most interesting and heartfelt natural wine we know, in one of the most surprising locales—Franconia, in the heart of Bavaria.

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The husband and wife team behind 2Naturkinder are sneakily responsible for some of the most interesting and heartfelt natural wine we know, in one of the most surprising locales—Franconia, in the heart of Bavaria.

For many of us, there’s a particular bottle of wine that sparks a passion for natural wines. For Melanie and Michael, native Franconians whose careers brought them to London and New York, it was a natural skin-contact bottle from the Loire that captivated them.

Michael grew up among his family’s vines, but their wine was nothing like this, with its vibrant energy. With this bottle, and many that followed, this young couple embarked on a journey that would bring them back to Franconia and into the thick of producing honest, natural wine.

Michael has a particular interest in the bats that live in and around the vines. Biodiversity is a huge priority for the couple, but bats in particular provide something very useful—guano, sourced from a local conservatory. Because the estate eschews chemicals of any kind, natural fertilizer like this is worth its weight in gold, especially in tricky vintages.

Since arriving back in Germany, they gradually converted their vines to organic farming, with an emphasis on a healthy ecosystem; to achieve this goal they plant cover crops and allow a herd of sheep to graze in the vineyard. None of the wines see sulfur at any point, nor any chemical manipulation. They cite Alice Feiring’s mandate, “A natural wine is made with the intent of nothing added or taken away” as inspiration.