WINE: A CHEMICAL-FREE TERROIR? By Mark Criden We are stardust Billion year old carbon We are golden Caught in the devil’s bargain And we’ve got to get ourselves Back to the garden. Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock,” 1970 Hard though it may be to believe, I sometimes get mail that has nothing to do with college tuition or wine. Case in point: a recent conservative fundraising dispatch arguing that voters who honed liberal political instincts in the sixties are a few clowns short of a circus. Starting out cordially enough (“Please allow me to introduce myself; I’m a man of wealth and taste”), the letter rapidly boiled over: “Nothing in the history of the 1960s suggests that our country has ever been mistaken either in our war-making policies, or our regard for the environment.” Well, sorry, pal; you get no sympathy here. Forget war for a moment (as if!) and focus on this: since World War II, American and European agricultural practices have wreaked havoc with much of the earth’s ecosystem. Decades of overzealous applications of industrial-strength fertilizers, weed killers and bug sprays may have increased crop sizes, but at the cost of fouling our rivers, damaging our air, and choking off the nutrients that sustain our soil. Small wonder the agronomist Claude Bourguignon discovered that there’s more life in the sands of the Sahara than in the soil of many farms in Europe. Many farmers and their customers have now recognized that “better living through chemistry” is a devil’s bargain. Once the anxiety over herbicide and pesticide residue in our water supply and bloodstreams was no longer solely confined to flower children, we began to see an explosion in the availability of organic and other more naturally grown products. Today, even mainstream supermarkets have large sections devoted to food grown by methods designed to minimize harm to both the environment and ourselves. Naturally, you’d think that winemakers—who more than any other type of farmer are forever extolling the virtues of their land—would have been at the vanguard of the chemical-free movement. But unlike the food world, “organic” has a nasty reputation in the wine biz. Many wines billed as organic taste like swill, and those made without any chemical treatments, including the preservative sulfur dioxide, have the shelf life of milk. Pop a cork and a wild animal might leap from the bottle. But forward-thinking grape growers realized that even without the “organic” label, they needed to radically reduce chemical treatments, if for no other reason than they were crippling the very vineyards that gave their wine its distinction. Each bottling is considered unique—and therefore desirable—precisely because the vineyard that brands it has an inimitable character due in large part to its living, breathing microscopic flora and fauna. The best winemakers realize that healthy, unpolluted, living soil is critical to making fine wine. And so they’ve gotten themselves back to the garden. See the sidebar for a recommended list of producers who make world-class wine using enlightened agricultural techniques designed to tread as lightly on the earth as possible. Many employ organic regimens, but you’ll rarely see that word on their labels, both because of the poor reputation enjoyed by organic wines and because being certified as “organic” wine is an enormous, time-consuming headache requiring financially prohibitive vineyard and wine cellar techniques. But all of these recommended winemakers employ, at a minimum, sustainable techniques like integrated pest management, relying primarily on non-chemical means to prevent and manage bug infestation, or the philosophy espoused by many smaller French growers called lutte raisonnee under which all chemical treatments—herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers—are limited as much as possible. Of special note are the adherents of what seems like the voodoo fringe of organic viticulture known as Biodynamism, developed by Waldorf school founder Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s. More than a set of holistic farming practices, biodynamics is practically a religion, complete with its own set of esoteric commandments and rituals. Cult members see their vineyards in the context of the wider pattern of lunar and cosmic rhythms. They time their planting, treating, and harvesting according to events that have more in common with astrology than agricultural science. Their calendar, along with their homeopathic vineyard treatments, have brought scoffs and guffaws across the globe. Just one problem for the skeptics, though: studies suggest that biodynamics really does work, and that biodynamic farms had significantly higher soil quality than even organically tended vineyards. There are a number of leading producers who, since adopting biodynamic principles, have improved the quality of their wines markedly—and some of these, such as Huet (Vouvray), Joly (Savenniéres), Leroy (Burgundy), Leflaive (Burgundy), Chapoutier (Rhone), Gosset (Champagne) and Zind-Humbrecht and Kreydenweiss (Alsace), are among the best in their appellations. Even Domaine de la Romanee-Conti admits to the practice. California converts include such prestigious wineries as Benziger, Bonterra, Joseph Phelps, Araujo, and Robert Sinsky. Steiner may not have foreseen the shift from blind obedience to governmental and scientific pronouncements to one that questioned their authority. He prophesized neither Vietnam, Max Yasgur’s Farm, nor Weapons of Mass Destruction. But he believed, as do our greatest winemakers, that our gardens could be tended in a way that maximizes life and health and connects us to each other: Then can I walk beside you I have come here to lose the smog And I feel to be a cog in something turning Well, maybe it’s just the time of year Or maybe it’s the time of man I don’t know who l am But you know life is for learning. Mark Criden is the former chair of the Buffalo Branch of the International Wine & Food Society. SUBSCRIBE NOW Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top