May 12: What's On Those Vines? The Napa Edition

I'll be talking about vineyards and pesticides May 12 in Napa. (The local environmentalists invited me). Also featured is Medha Chandra, of Pesticide Action Network.

The two of us did a similar presentation in March in Sebastopol, and this new talk will focus more specifically on Napa and the most commonly used pesticides in California's richest wine county.

Napa was the first county I wrote about when I launched the apps I used to have. Organically Napa was the first of the seven apps I wrote. I will also discuss producers who farm without harmful chemicals and which non-toxic wineries to consider checking out for their beautiful wines.

Details here.

Biodynamic Wine Tasting: Get Your Tickets Now!

It's a once in a lifetime opportunity.

The International Biodynamic Wine Conference (May 6-7) features a Grand Tasting and Party that are open to all. For one night - and one night only -  you can sample wines from 47 Biodynamic wineries around the world.

This is the largest gathering of Biodynamic producers and wines that's ever taken place in the U.S. and it's open to the public.

The Demeter Rocks! Party and Grand Tasting features 130+ wines from Argentina, Chilé, France, Italy and the U.S. See the list of producers here and get your tickets ($75) here.

French Wine Study Finds Wine Lovers Can Taste Pesticides in Wine

Can you taste pesticides in wine? That's the topic French scientist and researcher Seralini set out to explore in a country wide study of wines from popular French wine regions (and one Italian wine region).

The research had expert wine drinkers compare the taste of organic versus non-organic wines grown in adjacent vineyards. Sixteen pairs of wines were sampled.

The wines were individually tested for the presence of 250 different pesticides.

The results showed that the organic wines had only traces of pesticides while the pesticided wines, in comparison, had 4,686 ppb of chemicals.

The average (mean) was 293 ppb, which included the most widely used ones: 1. glyphosate based herbicides and 2. synthetic fungicides.

Tasters preferred the taste of non-pesticided wines 77% of the time, compared to wines raised with pesticides.

In addition, tasters were asked to evaluate the taste of individual pesticides diluted in water at the level of concentration that the substances were found in wine, so that the taste of the chemicals could be analyzed individually. Tasters reported the following tastesassociated with the different chemicals listed below:

In California, the most commonly used pesticides from this list are glyphosate (and Roundup) and boscalid, a bird and bee toxin commonly used as a fungicide. (Imidacloprid, the neonicotinoid that is commonly used on vineyards in California - and is a bird and bee toxin - does not show up on the study list as it is prohibited in the EU.)

Use these links to read a summary news article and the whole study.

If California were to repeat such a study, it might reflect the use of these top two pesticides for wines from the following regions, where glyphosate and boscalid are commonly used on wine grapes.

Updates on Glyphosate Courthouse Hearings

PRI- Public Radio International (the print section) picked up my story (originally published by Civil Eats) on glyphosate hearings which sent it to the top listing for news on "glyphosate" in Google search this morning.

In other news, the story continues. I spent the day yesterday at the courthouse again as Judge Chhabria got a master class on the finer points of epidemiology with Dr. Beatrice Ritz of UCLA.

You can read basic coverage of the day here. from Courthouse News, (which sent the only other reporter  in the room).

Chhabria had a lot of questions about latency - what is the relationship between exposure and symptoms?  Ritz explained to him that latency varies, depending on a number of variables, including age.

I'll write more about this later today. In the meantime, you can read the transcript here.