When it comes to organic winegrowing, the health benifits are largely felt by someone we all know and love: Mother Earth.
By now, it’s a fact: Wine is good for you. Years of research link moderate wine consumption with reduced risks of cancer, heart disease, stress, diabetes and dementia. In fact, people who drink wine have about one-quarter the risk of getting Alzheimer’s than nondrinkers. Wine is said to help people live longer and, recently, be thinner. Fad diets have even started calling wine the newest secret to weight loss.
So, if wine is good for you, what about organic wine? Even though the pesticides, weed killers and other chemicals used in modern day winemaking probably don’t make it into the glass, putting them in the soil does change the grape. Does it follow, then, that reducing chemicals and growing vines under healthier circumstances produce healthier wines?
Not exactly, say organic winemakers. There are no studies proving that organic wine is any healthier than regular wine. However, growers who use organic methods tend to talk about a broader sense of health—that is, not just the health of the drinker’s body, but also the health of the workers in the vineyard, the land the grapes grow on and the vines themselves.
“It’s analogous to why healthy people don’t get sick as much,” says John Williams, owner and winemaker at Frog’s Leap Winery in Rutherford. “If we have a good diet and get proper exercise, we don’t have to go to a doctor every day or constantly be taking heavy medications, steroids and the like. It’s the same with soil—if we use things like compost and cover crops, we allow for a healthy microbial life in the soil. A healthy soil grows a healthy plant and a healthy plant naturally resists disease and pests.”
Organically grown vs. organic wine
Organic winegrowing is becoming more common. The Napa Valley Vintners Association is starting a green wine certification program to recognize vineyards that go above and beyond standard environmental practices. In 2003—the last available figure—sales of organic wine increased 20 percent from the year before.
“As the organic market grows, many more wines are using the word ‘organic,’ or using organic grapes even in cases where they’re not making an organic claim or seeking certification,” says Jake Lewin, certification services director at California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF). “The market is definitely moving more and more toward organic.”
Wine is usually either “organically grown” or “organic.” Organically grown wine is made from grapes grown without the use of man-made pesticides. Organic wines are not only made with organically grown grapes, they also contain no sulfites, an additive in wine that preserves it.
Sulfites—which naturally occur in wine in small doses anyway and are added to increase their preservative powers in the wine—are regarded by most winemakers as harmless and necessary to the wine’s preservation. There are a small number of people who have allergic reactions to sulfites, varying from headaches to stomachaches to asthma attacks in some extreme cases. A winery can have a vineyard that’s certified organic and still add sulfites to its wine, but if it does, it can’t officially claim to be “organic wine” on the label.
“Sulfites are really exceedingly common in winemaking,” says Lewin. “But not everyone reacts well to them. And they’re an additive. When organic wine standards were being written, they really wanted to showcase wine without any additives.”
To make things even more confusing, a CCOF organic certification doesn’t always mean a winery is using organic practices in every aspect of winemaking. That’s where the green certification program comes in.
“With certified organic, you can be assured a vineyard isn’t using man-made pesticides,” says John Garn, a consultant to California Sustainable Wine Growing Alliance. “But the green program looks at more than just chemical use—it looks at the whole system, from energy use and water to solid waste. You can be organic and have no standards on erosion control. You can be certified organic and have your hills eroding like crazy.”
One step beyond organic winemaking is biodynamics. Started in 1924 by German scientist Rudolf Steiner, biodynamics is one of the oldest nonchemical agricultural movements still in practice. In addition to not using chemicals, biodynamic farmers work with nature to heal and restore their land. Several wineries have undergone the strict biodynamic certification process, including Benziger Family Winery in Glen Ellen.
“On one side with biodynamics, you’re building the biological capital of the land, so you’re regenerating the health of the property every year,” says owner Mike Benziger. “On the other side, you’re making better wine—especially if the quality of the wine is defined as original and unique.”
The book of nature
Instead of chemicals, organic farmers use combinations of compost and cover crops to put nutrients into the soil. They say their methods produce healthier soil and, by extension, healthier vines. Lou Preston, owner of Preston of Dry Creek, saw this firsthand when his winery began the transition to organic in 2001 (the winery was certified by CCOF in 2005).
“Prior to going organic, something was missing in the health of the vines,” he says. “There was a lack of vigor, and both the young and old vines were in decline. After converting to organic, the results were almost immediate. There was a distinct improvement.”
At Frog’s Leap, the decision to go organic was also partly based on the quality difference of organic grapes. “Being organic provides for the long-term health of the vineyards,” says Williams. “We’ve been able to develop soils that no longer need irrigation. We’ve been able to dry farm, and we produce grapes that are much deeper in color and flavor and much more expressive of their native flavors.”
Effective organic growers seek to find a balance so nature’s self-regulating systems will reduce or eliminate the need for chemicals. To do this, the winegrower has to be intimately aware of the land.
“You have to develop a deep relationship with the land and be able to read what I call the ‘book of nature,’” says Benziger. “You not only have to see the visible components of nature—animals, plants, soil—but understand their relationships and how they work together.”
An essential part of that understanding is being able to read warning signs for potential problems, such as early signs of pests. Organic growers use integrated pest management (IPM), a complicated strategy to control pests. It’s usually a combination of monitoring crops for signs of problems, planting vines that do best in local soil, cultivating the quality of the soil so the plants are more resistant to stress, introducing natural predators to the pest and using mechanical controls like hand picking or vacuuming.
Another common IPM method is to devote some land to gardens that attract “good” bugs or, conversely, to let some land revert back to the wild so it can attract natural predators. Preston is restoring the banks of the creek that runs through his vineyard by letting it grow wild and replanting native species where appropriate. Already, the vineyard is seeing more cases of good insects eating the bad ones.
“All those tiny wasps and spiders are disturbed when you spray synthetics,” he says. “This way, the whole environment is healthier and happier.”
Biodynamic farmers create a closed system, where different aspects of nature interact to recycle and reuse resources. Benziger’s goal is for the winery to become its own independent, self-regulating system. To do this, he created systems to let plants and animals to do the vineyard’s jobs. For example, he uses wetlands to recycle winery wastewater. The wetlands break down the organic impurities in the wastewater, and the oxygen from the air flowing over the plants cleans the water until it’s fresh again.
“People don’t believe how well it works,” he says. “People have such trust in technology, they don’t think the natural world works anymore. But that wetland never has to be cleaned, it doesn’t cost a penny and it works 24/7. Cost in these areas can become very efficient over time.”
The downside of organic farming is that the procedures are often slower, more labor intensive, and expensive—at least at first. It takes a large up-front investment to shift to organic, but like Benziger’s wastewater wetlands, it can end up being cheaper in the long run.
“It takes an investment in infrastructure,” he continues. “It’s more expensive to use these methods, but in the end they pay off. If you build a habitat for bats and birds, they’ll come. It takes awhile, but they do come.”
In the case of green winemaking practices, growers often start to see the financial benefits right away. With efficiency usually comes financial savings.
“We want them to think about an integrated approach,” says Garn. “Looking at how much energy you use per case of wine provokes you to ask the question, well, how much water am I using? That way you link system concepts together.”
Not all green practices are smart business decisions. Take the trend of wineries going solar. On the surface, it seems like going solar would save wineries money, since tasting rooms are open during peak summer months. But without first looking at overall energy use, believes Garn, the winery could be wasting its money investing in solar.
Is it good wine?
Some of the flavors people value in California wine can be harder to coax out in organic wine, according to some experts. But winemakers who specialize in organic wine say you get something in return—individuality. Organic wine truly expresses the land in which it’s grown.
“We’re not trying to manipulate something according to a perceived consumer profile,” says Benziger. “We’re trying to produce something honest and real. We’re not looking for the most perfect product, but rather the most authentic. It might have a chipped tooth or a hairy mole, but it’s our baby.”
Whether or not consumers care about organic wine is still up for debate. There are certainly consumers who seek out the organic label. This is especially true regionally—in California, you’re more likely to find people who are looking for organic wine than in many other parts of the country.
“More and more consumers are wanting to know about the system they’re buying into,” says Garn. “They’re buying wine based on how it tastes and forming a relationship with the winery they like. And more folks are asking, ‘How are you growing these grapes?’”
Still, being known as organic grape growers can distract from being known as a good winery. Because of this, Frog’s Leap doesn’t mention that it’s certified organic on its label.
“We don’t emphasize that we’re organic,” says Williams. “We see it as a good business decision to make the best quality wine, not as a marketing decision. We don’t want to be seen as Napa’s organic winery. We want to be seen as Napa’s highest quality winery.”
Back to the future
In many ways, organic farming gets back to what farming was before all the technological and chemical advances of the last century. But that doesn’t mean it’s old fashioned.
“I tend to think of it as postmodern,” says Williams. “We’re using the wisdom of past growers, but not without knowing about today’s advantages. We don’t plow with horses—we use equipment. We’re looking for natural solutions for what we have, not throwback systems.”
The use of chemicals grew in part from a demand for consistent, low-priced projects. After World War I, farmers discovered that if they spread gunpowder on fields, the nitrogen stimulated the soil, which resulted in high quantities of crops.
Growing crops without regard for the cycles of nature takes a lot from the land and doesn’t put much back. This can eventually create unhealthy soil. That’s exactly what organic farming is trying to prevent.
“We pay a little bit back every year,” says Benziger. “The conventional method of farming is to take, take, take from the land and then pay a balloon payment at the end. That’s how the Dust Bowl happened.”
The Dust Bowl, a spate of dust storms that famously swept the Midwest in the 1930s (think of the beginning of The Grapes of Wrath), destroying farming and enhancing the Great Depression, were the result of decades of bad farming techniques. The natural ground cover had been removed through tilling, which exposed the soil, which, in turn, dried out during a drought and was lifted in enormous clouds by the wind.
Organic farming techniques try to avoid similar disasters by good stewardship over the land—to create as healthy an environment as possible not just for the crops, but for the farm as a whole. Organic farming may be more expensive and the crop yield may be less predictable, but in the end, for these wine makers at least, having healthy land is worth it.
