How does Organic Viticulture differ from Conventional Viticulture?

 

Conventional agricultural practices, adopted in large part over the past 50 years, have stripped the minerals essential for healthy crops from the soil, necessitating the increasing use of artificial help to replace what is being lost year after year. In fact, entire families of insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides are currently being used in conventional wine grape production.

 

The cornerstone of organic farming is the soil. Maintaining a healthy, biologically active soil is the main objective for an organic farmer. In the vineyard it means cultivating the soil and planting cover crops, instead of applying herbicides. It means using natural fertilizers, such as composted animal manure, versus chemical fertilizers. Organic growers use no synthetic growth-regulators (such as Alar). As for not using pesticides, the organic alternative is to encourage natural predators of insect pests instead of using poisonous insecticides. Organic farmers promote "biodiversity" and allow plants other than vines to grow in and around the vineyard. Biodiversity helps regulate the vineyard soil by attracting beneficial insects, spiders and predatory mites, as well as provide shelter and food (pollen, nectar and other bugs), and replaces the need for chemical pesticides or insecticides. What cannot be fully controlled through biodiversity can still be managed organically, through the use of naturally occurring plant or mineral extracts, which leave no residues in the soil. In wet climates the main difficulty is raised by the use of copper sulfate against mildew, which leaves over time levels of copper in the soil that need to be monitored.

 

To answer the problem of weeds, conventional farmers use chemical weed killers. The organic alternative is to allow the weeds to grow, and mow them periodically so that the cut weeds rot back into the ground, thus providing organic fertilizer.

 

There is no doubt that growing using organic principles protects the environment and the people who work in the vineyards from the adverse effects of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. Organic is more than simply a way of farming. It is also a philosophy. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said "We did not inherit the Earth from our forefathers, we are borrowing it from our descendants."

 

How does Organic Winemaking differ from Conventional Winemaking?

 

In the cellar, "organic" suggests minimal processing and no use of chemical additives. Organic winemakers pay particular attention to three factors: the use of yeasts, the filtration/fining method, and the use of sulfur dioxide.

• The need for cultured yeasts in organic winemaking is reduced by the farming practice itself, since wild yeasts remain present on the grape skins, unperturbed by weed killers or insecticides. Therefore their use is limited to difficult weather conditions which would threaten the harvest or to initiate a slow starting fermentation.
  
• The physical treatment of the wine (like fining and filtering) is kept to a minimum. A small amount of proteins derived from animal products (milk, eggs, fish) is traditionally used in the fining process. Sometimes the process is unncessary or different types of clay are used, therefore qualifying the resulting wine as Vegan.
  
• Minimizing the use of sulfur dioxide as an antioxidant is a common obsession of organic wine makers. It's very difficult, meaning risky, to make a wine that will keep well without adding at least some additional sulfites to those naturally produced which have no protecting power. This is particularly true of white wines, which ferment separated from the grape skins. Red wines ferment with juice and skins together, providing them not only with their color but also with tannins, a natural preservative.
  
• On the other hand the use of temperature control during the winemaking process is widely spread since it is only a physical process which allows a more precise control of the types of flavors that will develop in the wine.

All of the wines imported by Organic Wine Company are "Certified Organic" by ECOCERT and contain only a minimal amount of sulfur dioxide. The average amount of total SO2 found in the bottles analyzed by the official BATF laboratory is 40ppm (parts per million) for our red wines, 60ppm for the white wines and 80ppm for the sparkling wines. Conventional wines typically contain up to 2 to 3 times these amounts. The rule set by the USDA for organically grown wines calls for a maximum of 100ppm in the final product.

 

 

Feature Article: "Organic Wines: Why Should You Care?"