Geoffrey Chaucer, writing in the 14th century, already knew the trick: there is nothing new under the sun, only things forgotten and rediscovered. The wine world runs this cycle faster than most. Orange wine had a 'moment.' Kegs had a moment. Chilled reds had a moment. In 2026, cloudiness is having its moment — and M&S is leading the charge with Trouble, a peachy-opaque organic rosé whose name literally translates from French as 'cloudy.' It's the first cloudy still wine on a British supermarket shelf, which is either a genuine retail milestone or a very good press release, depending on your cynicism levels. To understand what you're actually drinking, a quick primer on clarity. Conventional wines achieve their crystal-glass look through fining — adding an agent (often bentonite clay, egg white, or isinglass) that binds haze-causing proteins and tannins, clumping them for removal — and filtration, which physically strips out suspended particles. Neither is compulsory. Racking and settling can clarify wine without additives or membranes, which is apparently how Trouble achieves its haze-free clarity despite being marketed as cloudy. So the terminology is genuinely slippery: cloudy wine can be filtered; unfiltered wine can be clear. Waitrose has no 'cloudy' wines but carries several unfiltered ones, including Catena malbec — a very mainstream bottle. Pét nat — pétillant naturel — is the category that really drove mainstream appetite for haze. The ancestral method involves bottling before fermentation finishes, trapping CO2 naturally. Since most pét nats skip disgorgement (the removal of spent yeast cells that gives Champagne its sparkle and clarity), they arrive at your table looking turbid and alive. They taste that way too: fresher, tangier, and more savagely food-compatible than prosecco, without the sherbet sweetness that divides opinion at every aperitivo hour. M&S has its own English rosé pét nat (currently out of stock, which tells you something about demand), and Tesco sells an Argentinian pét nat chardonnay from the Uco Valley. The 'why bother with cloudy' question has a genuine answer beyond aesthetics. Zainab Majerikova, head of wine for the Ottolenghi group — whose three house wines are all unfiltered and cloudy — points to texture, fleshiness, and rounded fruit as the functional payoff. The theory is that extended lees contact (those spent yeast cells left in suspension) adds a savouriness and structural complexity that filtered wines shed along with their particles. The writer's own framing — that cloudy wine has a 'crunchiness,' that it feels 'food-like' — is evocative and, once you've tasted a good pét nat alongside a pizza, not wrong. Majerikova's practical tip: shake before opening to redistribute the sediment through the liquid rather than leaving it settled at the bottom. The four recommended bottles span the range from supermarket-accessible to serious. Trouble Cloudy Organic Rosé (£12, Ocado) is the news peg — savoury, drinkable, southern French in character. Alma 4 Phos Pét Nat (£12, Tesco) is the Argentinian chardonnay from the Uco Valley, lightly sparkling and textural, genuinely food-versatile. Alella 'La Rumbera' 2022 (£32, Dynamic Wines) is a different animal altogether: an unfined, unfiltered skin-contact wine from a Catalonian legend, 11% ABV, what the article calls 'serious.' And the Ottolenghi Red Wine 2025 (£26) is a subtly cloudy pinot blend — the writer's own candidate for house red, described as a wine you can 'almost crunch,' which is either the best or the strangest tasting note of the year depending on your disposition. What the piece does well is strip the trend of its hype coating and explain the actual winemaking mechanics. What it doesn't do — and probably doesn't need to — is engage with the natural wine debate that sits directly beneath this story. Cloudy, unfiltered, pét nat, and skin-contact wines are all adjacent to, or fully inside, the natural wine movement, which has generated significant controversy about whether 'natural' is a meaningful standard, whether some natural wines are genuinely flawed rather than interestingly rustic, and whether the whole category is partly a marketing construction for premium pricing. That argument is real, and a more analytical piece would name it. This one is content to be a useful, well-informed consumer guide, which is exactly what its format requires.
