Stoke Newington restaurant Dandy had its first incarnation as Dandy Café, a frequently packed pop-up squeezed into a shipping container-filled alleyway in London Fields. Now it’s a 50-cover site overlooking Newington Green, offering all-day dining, great coffee and an in-house bakery. Scaling up has clearly been no small task for Australian founders Messrs Daniel Wilson and Andy Leitch, but it’s testimony to the strength of the initial concept that the bigger space, with its communal table, vintage school chairs and assortment of potted plants, still feels both intimate and welcoming.

For Mr Leitch, ingredients, their provenance and their distinct taste are very much at the core of what Dandy does. On the dinner menu, this translates into dishes that incorporate artisanal produce from the British Isles and close neighbours, often cooked lightly on a barbecue grill to preserve maximum flavour. And this approach extends to the restaurant’s wine list, which features a range of “natural” wines – that is, wines that have been made without the use of additives such as extra sugar and sulphur dioxide (for regulating fermentation). “It’s about taking a less interventionist approach to winemaking,” says Mr Leitch. “It’s acknowledging the fact that wine is, at its heart, a fermentation of a fruit juice. It is a natural process. And allowing that to express itself and express where the grapes have come from. And the things that go into making the grapes taste how they do.”

The best natural wines, says Mr Leitch, therefore possess a certain clarity of expression that offers a very different experience from industrially produced wines, but the burgeoning field is not without its obstacles. Some natural wines are unfiltered, which means they are cloudy. Others may contain excess sugar, and still be fermenting, which means they can taste slightly fizzy upon first opening, or even smell faintly of a barnyard. In both cases, these aren’t signs of a defect, but simply expressions of a wine that some will like and others will not. “As with anything,” says Mr Leitch, “the first step is always being prepared for something different, or not going in with serious expectations, or being able to taste something within the context of what you know.” In a restaurant that serves natural wines, he says, you can ask for a recommendation based upon what you normally drink. He’s also kindly supplied this beginner’s guide to natural wine, which features palatable and not too “crazy” recommendations drawn from Dandy’s wine list.

“This is a wine from a producer in Friuli in far northern Italy, right near the Slovenian border. The vineyards are terraced up this really steep, limestone-y, schist-y hillside, so its wines present super clean, really mineral, to the point that they almost smell and taste like granite. Not in a weird way, but in a lovely way. The one we’ve got on the list at the moment is a Ribolla Gialla. It’s really fresh and it doesn’t exhibit any of the characteristics of natural wines that freak people out, while at the same time providing all the characteristics of natural wine that people really love. It smells like stones because the soil is stony. It’s such a direct translation of its terroir [the makeup of the vineyard’s soil].”

“Orange wines become so because the grapes are macerated with the skins intact before they’re pressed for the juice. It’s the same reason that red wine is red – the colour bleeds out of the grapes – but in orange wines, though it’s a similar process, they use white grapes. The colour can be anything from a dark yellow through to amber to a really intense orange, depending on the length of the maceration period and so on. And the Denavolo, Dinavaleno is a really nice intro to orange wine. It expresses all the typical elements of orange wines, in that it’s got a nice bit of tannic structure and a nice bit of the bitterness that comes through the skins. But it’s very floral, very light, very easy to drink.”

“This one is a 100 per cent Cabernet Franc, from the Loire Valley. In some ways, it’s classic Cabernet Franc, with a really lovely peppery characteristic. Nice ripe spiced plums, mid-body, beautiful to drink. But it’s made in a very hands-off way. Everything’s done biodynamically. So they plant other crops between the rows of the vines to promote biodiversity and keep the soil rich, and instead of using pesticides, they use chamomile and lavender and things like that. It’s a really beautiful wine, and great for pretty much any red drinker.”

“This family has been making wine since 1886. So this is traditional wine, this is not some new thing. They essentially make their wines pretty much the same way year to year, and they sell it for pretty much the same price year on year. We’ve had in the past vintages from them from the 1990s and earlier – 1986 wines – that you can buy for less than £50 at retail. A bit more in a restaurant, but still not a huge amount. And the first thing that strikes you is that for a wine of that age it’s still so alive. It has that slight effervescence. But you get that incredible complexity of flavours from the age as well. You get that little sherry element, an almost Christmas cake-y, dark spiced fruit flavour. For a wine that’s actually quite light and easy to drink, it has an incredible complexity.”