Natural wine, made without chemical fertilisers, pesticides, filters, machinery, wood barrels or added yeast, are gaining popularity in Hong Kong

"I just drink it and feel like I'm running through this field of butterflies and daisies. It takes you to another place."

That's not something you usually hear about a wine, especially from Alison Christ, a sommelier with a New York accent and tattoo-covered arms. But this is no ordinary wine - it's a Domaine Lucci Noir de Florette from the Adelaide Hills, made without chemical fertilisers, pesticides, filters, machinery, wood barrels or added yeast. It's a natural wine - in other words, a controversial but fast-spreading approach to winemaking that is quickly gaining fans in Hong Kong.

"You can really feel the love that goes into it," says Christ, who owns MyHouse, a Wan Chai restaurant and bar with a list of around 450 wines, the vast majority of which are natural. Christ first fell in love with wine when she visited Italy with her grandmother. She began training as a sommelier after she started working at her father's Italian restaurant. But it wasn't until she came to Hong Kong and met natural wine specialists Cristobal Huneeus and Karim Hadjadj that she fell down the rabbit hole of natural wines.

"It's a bit addictive when you fall into it," says Hadjadj, who along with Huneeus is a founder of La Cabane, a natural wine shop and bistro in Central. "You don't find the same emotion in other wines."

Huneeus adds: "You have a new dimension in terms of fruitiness, the terroir, the soil. With natural wine, the roots of the vines plunge deeper into the ground, so you get what we call the message of the water."