Just a reminder that this Wine Fundamentals series aims to answer questions that often come my way from casual drinkers and new learners. If you’re in the industry you may want to opt out of this section of posts or just pass on by. Also, if you’ve been around a while, you may notice that this isn’t the first time I’ve written about this, but I’m trying to group some of these essential topics under a single heading to make them easier for first time readers to find.
Three years ago, this blog was still a baby going by the placeholder name of Bottles and Plates, because I had no clear idea what I was going to do with it, and was leaning toward a more general food, beverage, and travel sort of thing. I was preparing for my WSET Level 2 exam, but that was my first foray into formal wine study. I think I had started working part-time in a wine store exactly one day before I published this post on Organic, Natural, Biodynamic, and Regenerative wines. Check it out if you’re curious about my skeptical newbie takes on organic (in which I shamefully jump on the sulfite vilification train), natural (trying to appreciate it but clearly not entirely on board), and regenerative (“woo-woo”). I was writing my way through my discovery process, which is still much of what I do here. None of what I wrote back then was incorrect, exactly, but as I write this Wine Fundamentals series and tackle farming methods and why we might care, some of the information is due for a brush up.
First of all, I’m axing natural wine from this post, because natural wine is not a farming method. Natural winemaking embraces low intervention farming, without synthetic inputs in the vineyard, which often equates to organic, regenerative, biodynamic, or some variation thereof.
Second, I am going to use the term “viticulture” from time to time, which is simply agriculture specific to grape vines.
Conventional Viticulture
Let’s start with conventional viticulture, which is the baseline you can expect in wine unless the producer says otherwise, although I say that with a significant caveat that I will come back to at the end of this section.* Conventional viticulture focuses on yield and consistency above broader environmental concerns, and thus basically allows almost any practice a grower might choose to maximize their crop. The vines are usually grown as a monoculture in large blocks, which can make them more vulnerable to pests and diseases. To control the pests and diseases, synthetic pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and GMOs are fair game. Highly mechanized farming is common, which can compact soil, increase erosion, and deplete nutrients, which in turn also requires fertilizers. They may use heavy irrigation methods, creating water shortages and washing chemicals into the local water supply.
So, that all sounds pretty bad, and it often is. But you should also understand that there’s a lot of gray area here, and not every grower who isn’t certified as organic/biodynamic/regenerative is just wildly plundering the earth. It’s possible to be technically conventional, but take soil health, biodiversity, and water usage very seriously, and use synthetics in a very limited and targeted way that is sometimes less harmful to the environment than organic-permitted substances like copper and sulfur. Some growers are simply not certified, because it’s often expensive and time consuming to get certification. If you care about these issues, you should also understand that there’s nuance to decisions about farming methods. Some of those nuances get grouped into labels like sustainable, green, fish safe, etc., but some aren't explicitly noted at all because there’s no clear way to say on a wine bottle exactly which specific farming techniques you’re using.
Organic Viticulture
Organic viticulture is usually officially defined by what is not used in the vineyard: synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. A small note here: the last time I wrote about this topic, there was some debate about how one defines a synthetic substance, because some of the things allowed in organic farming might well be considered synthetic. The gray area seems to involve substances that enter the plant vs. those that cover it like an armor, and a better term than synthetic might be “systemic.” But at this point, I also want to be clear that while certification largely depends on what is or isn’t used in a vineyard, organics is not simply about what substances are or aren't permitted.
Beyond what is prohibited, organic farming focuses on building soil health, increasing biodiversity, and controlling pests naturally. When you can’t simply spray the problems away, more intensive vineyard management is required, which might mean techniques like managing the leaf canopy, cultivating certain nutrients in the soil as natural vine strengtheners, relying on approved products like copper and sulfur, and employing pheromone traps and natural predators to control insects.
Biodynamic Viticulture
Biodynamics emerged in the 1920s from Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner’s lectures to farmers who were concerned with declining soil health, seed vitality, and food quality as chemical use in farming increased. Steiner proposed that a farm might be viewed as a living, self-sufficient organism that integrated plants, animals, and soil in an integrated system where you’re likely to find farm animals living in the vineyard, gently tilling the soil with their hooves while dining on the ground cover and leaving fertilizer behind. He also incorporated a cosmic and spiritual worldview involving the sun, moon, and planets, using lunar calendars and planting schedules, and utilized specific homeopathic preparations, usually manure and silica packed into cow horns. These are the aspects that made me declare it “woo-woo” three years ago, but you know, results often make one reconsider, and some of the most highly respected wines in the world, like Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, are biodynamic. If it works for DRC, it works for me. Biodynamic viticulture is an organic farming method that eschews chemicals because they damage the health of the soil and system, but it goes beyond organics in its holistic approach. Certification came quite quickly for biodynamics with the establishment in 1928 of Demeter, which continues to hold rigorous standards.
Regenerative Viticulture
Regenerative viticulture takes elements of organic and biodynamic farming one step further and focuses on restoration of an already-damaged environment, while skipping the cosmology of biodynamics. Cover crops, biodiversity, improvement of the water cycle, and capturing and storing carbon dioxide strengthen not only the soil and ecosystem of that vineyard, but also work more broadly against environmental destruction and climate change.
As I noted in 2022, I got interested in regenerative agriculture when I saw the documentary Kiss the Ground, which suggested that climate change is not the inevitable and insurmountable problem many of us assume, but can in fact be shifted by farming practices that begin with restoring the soil. Regenerative viticulture has become a special area of interest for me, and I wrote the research paper for my WSET Diploma about it. You can find the layperson’s recap of that paper here, with the entire paper available at the same link below the fold for paid subscribers.
Why Do We Care?
Hopefully I don’t need to convince you that pillaging the earth is bad. We’re in the midst of an environmental crisis, and any attempts to lessen the impacts of that crisis are better than doing nothing at all. Earlier this year I wrote about this topic for a Wine Conversations series, where I mostly focused on the labeling and how helpful or not it was for consumers who are concerned about environmental issues and chemicals in their wine.
I’m also increasingly convinced that farming methods that are careful about both grape quality and the overall health of the surrounding environment produce the best wine. Is every grower with some kind of sustainability certification making amazing wine? No. Is every conventional farmer making sloppy, sub-par wine? Also no. But wine has always involved a close connection to the land, and its no mistake that those who see themselves as stewards of the whole of the land and all that lives on it often grow the best quality fruit that is most expressive of the place from which it came. We all have a choice when we’re buying wine, even at value price points, and personally I lean into wines produced with thoughtfulness about both the wine itself, and the way the grapes that go into it are farmed.
A few somewhat uncomfortable words about the blog and my current life
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