Photo credit: Oleh Veres
Chances are the wine you’re drinking isn’t honest. Chances are it’s cultivated chemically, vinified industrially and manipulated for the demands of the market. Like a recipe for soda made from fruit.
Chances are what you’re drinking is less like wine, more like a wine beverage.
Let’s say you’re the kind of consumer who shops carefully for what you eat. You don’t eat slices of cheese from cellophane wrappers. You don’t eat whipped topping from aluminum cans. Wine—like cheese, like cream, like tomatoes, apples, eggs or beef—is a product made from agriculture. People who make wine from the grapes they grow consider themselves to be—first and foremost and above all else—farmers. In the United States, 99% of wine sold by volume is made from grapes grown with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. More than 99% of wine sold is vinified with additives and processes.
If you don’t eat processed foods, why would you drink processed wine?
Conquest Over Nature
Like any agricultural product, wine changed in the wake of World War II with the development of new technologies. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides were introduced to insulate the growth of vines from the vagaries of their vineyards. Additives and processes were introduced to court the taste of wine to the demands of the market. Wine became more product, less agriculture. Winemakers gained predictable grape harvests and dependable quantities of wine in a conquest over the nature of their vines. Consumers gained wines of easy virtue—a conquest of wine’s nature.
Organic, biodynamic and natural wines controvert that. They are a rejoinder to wine as a product of industry. Their advent occured in the latter part of the 20th century, but each of their origins, histories and practices are distinct from one another.
Organic and biodynamic wines specify practices of viticulture. Organic wines are made from grapes cultivated without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Biodynamic wines are cultivated in a self-sustaining vineyard ecology—without chemical fertilizers and pesticides, with cover crops and creatures, and following the forces of nature (e.g., biodynamic viticulture sows and reaps according to the lunar calendar).
Honest Wines
Neither organic nor biodynamic wines specify practices of vinification, as the process of converting grape juice into wine is called. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau allows American winemakers over 60 additives and processes which alter the taste, color and texture of wine. Organic and biodynamic wines can be vinified with any of them. Some adjust the way a wine appears. Some transform a wine’s identity. The quality of organic and biodynamic viticulture suggests vinification practices that are, more or less, hones—but, just as often, less than more.
Natural wines specify practices of both viticulture and vinification. They’re made from grapes which are cultivated organically or biodynamically and which are vinified without additives. (Adding small quantities of sulfur as a preservative is practiced by some natural winemakers, eschewed by others.)
The benefits of natural viticulture and vinification are honest wines. These wines are exciting. They’re alive. They want to speak to you. You want you to listen to them. But they don’t give themselves away to you. They ask more of you than that. And you want to taste them again and again.
Wines like these aren’t easy to make. They may have flaws. The way they act may vary. They may be less like you want them to be and more like they are naturally.
How to Shop for Organic, Biodynamic, and Natural Wines
There are local shops which stock natural, biodynamic and organic wines, but there are few merchants who can succinctly and reliably represent which are which and why. Best to rely on yourself, your phone and search engines. When you’re at a shop, begin by looking for bottles of wine from these importers and distributors; their names are on the back labels. With the bottle before you, go to the company’s website and read about the wine.
Jenny & Francois Selections: A portfolio of natural wines from around the world.
Louis/Dressner Selections: Natural, biodynamic and organic wines from France, Italy, Spain and Germany. More useful details about their wines can be found on the web site of David Bowler Wine, the company’s New York distributor.
Rosenthal Wine Merchant: Great wine estates from France and Italy, many of which are organic, biodynamic or natural. Those that aren’t are natural enough.
Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant: More great wine estates from France and Italy—organic, biodynamic, natural or natural enough.
José Pastor Selections: Mostly organic, biodynamic and natural wines from Iberia and the Americas.
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