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Unfiltered

Wines are routinely filtered immediately before bottling to remove suspended particles such as yeast cells, bacteria, proteins, and fining particles. Many winemakers filter their wines if they think the wine would benefit, while other winemakers either always or never filter their wines. Advocates of filtering assert that filtered wines are cleaner, clearer, fruitier and more stable. Critics of filtering often support the idea of natural, minimal intervention winemaking and claim that filtering strips the wine of some of its character, complexity and flavor. Wineries that produce at least one unfiltered wine can be found in the AmericanWineryGuide.com database by selecting the "Unfiltered" attribute.

Unfined

Fining refers to a wine finishing process in which a fining agent, such as bentonite, egg whites or gelatin, is used to remove haziness, reduce tannins and/or remove unstable proteins. Fining agents are added to a tank or bottle of wine, and as they settle to the bottom, attach themselves to various solids suspended within the wine. Winemakers who place a high value on the idea of making natural, minimal intervention wines typical do not fine their wines claiming that flavors and aromas are removed during the process. Wineries that produce at least one unfined wine can be found in the AmericanWineryGuide.com database by selecting the "Unfined" attribute.

Unoaked

Unoaked, or naked, wines are those that have not had contact with oak. The recent emergence of a large number of unoaked wines is partly in response to the large number of over-oaked wines, particularly chardonnay, that saturated the market during the early 2000s.