Grenache heads unite: Sonoma organic vineyard leader Phil Coturri with Philippe Cambie, Grenache guru and winemaker at A Deux Tetes
This week wine lovers around the world mourned the loss of the renowned Rhone winemaker and consultant Philippe Cambie who died at 59 after a storied career. He had a hand in making 15 wines rated 100 points by Parker, et. al.
Cambie was also an advocate for growing wine grapes organically.
The last tasting
Locally he worked with Phil Coturri (yes, they were two Phils and both PCs), on the pair's tiny label, making incomparable Grenache wines. Named A Deux Tetes, the label is a suitable description for two grand hommes.
Listen to a podcast featuring Cambie and Coturri here.
Here are my tasting notes on the current release wines from A Deux Tetes tasted this summer. While the wines seem pricier than most Grenache based wines, there is a reason - they are stellar wines in a class by themselves.
Isabel Gassier, a southern Rhone native whose father and Cambie were good friends, was the boots on the ground winemaker in Sonoma making the wines working with Cambie's quite complex protocols.
All of the wines were farmed by Phil Coturri on properties where he is the vineyard manager. Coturri is a huge fan of Grenache, evangelizing it for its fine sensory qualities as well as for being a wine of resilience-an optimal choice for growing wine in a warmer climate.
NAPA WINES
Napa Valley Miller Vineyard Rosé 2019 (100 cases, $49): Aromatic, textured and intensely flavorful with peach and citrus notes. A delicate, distinctive licorice note–essential for Grenache rosé, Cambie says–persists from the nose through to the finish. Show's rosés potential to achieve great heights.
Oakville Ranch Grenache 2018 ($88): A blend with 7 percent Mourvedre, it offers deep cherry notes coupled with red fruits, exhibiting impressive concentration and depth.
SONOMA WINES
Sonoma Valley Rossi Ranch Grenache 2018 ($88): More feminine, compared to the Oakville, this impresses with its floral nose before developing into cherry and blackberry notes and a long finish.
1. Importance/impact of being retweeted or reposted: WineFuture 2021 post must have been reposted. (But maybe it was worth reposting).
2. Wineries getting new certifications: Donum getting organic certified was just one of many. Others this year included Hanzell, Opus One, and Crane vineyard at Salvestrin. In Argentina, Domaine Bousquet announced it is going biodynamic and seeking B-Corp certification. Plus Napa's expanding organic sector with Quintessa and Hoopes joining its ranks.
4. Pesticides: Paraquat and Chlorpyrifos, some of the top "baddies" on the decline. Chlorpyrifos IS gone, finally, but paraquat still remains in a shocking 1 in 8 vineyard acres. Remember that when you buy those supermarket wines from the Central Valley. Is it time to change those habits?
5. Fetzer and Bonterra - is its behavior ethical? Fetzer is making brand claims that purposefully drive consumer confusion.
6. Organic Wine - can it be profitable? A question no one should have to ask, but like many wine myths, people often believe it is not profitable. It clearly is profitable in California and Oregon (and Washington), where there is a Mediterranean climate (and it does not rain at harvest time), but it requires a certain skillset. Consumer demand for organic is still growing, according to Wine Intelligence and other market reporting sources. It is especially going strong in Europe.
Wishing you a happy holiday and a fun filled new year. Let's drink some great wines!
The end of the 2021 is in sight and what does the future hold?
Before you make any predictions, read my interview with MW Jeremy Cukierman on his new book on the future of wine amid the challenge of climate change.
One of my favorite Oregon wineries for value priced wines (many priced from $25-30) as well as for its outstanding no added sulfite LIFE Pinot Noir, Cooper Mountain Vineyards, has recently expanded, acquiring new vineyards in the Willamette Valley. This is the type of winery everyone likes to see more of.
An early adopter of organic practices, it was the first Oregon winery to be certified biodynamic.
The newly purchased vineyards, which are being converted to organic and biodynamic certification now (expected to be completed in 2022), increase the winery's planted acreage from 102 to 200 acres, making it the fourth largest organic and biodynamic vineyard owner in Oregon. A worthy way to celebrate its 40th year!
I first heard Philippe speak at the Demeter booth of the Sonoma harvest fair where I was mesmerized by his knowledge of biodynamic vineyards. Since that time, he has become a teacher to me and now to hundreds of French vignerons in France where he teaches biodynamics in Burgundy, the Rhone and the Savoie.
A 25th generation winegrower, his research into 19th century (that's the 1800's) French viticulture has revealed that many of the plants used in biodynamics have their source in traditional practices (which Rudolph Steiner incorporated into his advice on biodynamic farming and which he is thought to have learned from relationship with his herbal mentor Felix Koguzski).
It is for these historical reasons that Coderey prefers to refer to these practices as Traditional and Biodynamic Viticulture, giving credit where credit is due.
Coderey, who lives in Sebastopol, works today with many vineyards in California, planting new vineyards in and Santa Barbara County (Grimm's Bluff and Duvarita's Christy & Wise) and consulting widely (Byington, Grgich Hills, Preston Farm & Winery, Spottswoode, Tablas Creek, and many others).
He converted the Westwood estate vineyard in Sonoma which was certified biodynamic in 2017.
What many may not know is how modern microbiome data can document the effects of biodynamic practices. Here's a look at the practices and the microbiome testing he has been doing at Westwood.
In America, Guigui is not a household word, but in France, many know him for his years as wine editor of the prestigious Gault & Millau. He became a specialist in organic and biodynamic and a champion of these wines, starting an organic wine festival and competition in Paris in 1996. When this pioneering ventures started, more than 200 producers participated, showing how widespread the movement was even back then.
Today more than 13 percent of French vineyards are certified organic with more on the way. It's been estimated that more than 300 producers in Bordeaux alone are converting to organic certification this year.
In order to help American readers understand more about the history of the now popular organic wine industry in France, I am sharing this article with you. It was published in the French wine magazine Vitisphere and, thanks to Google Translate, here it is in English.
Some themes are common to the state of organic wine in the U.S.–the lack of understanding (and appreciation for) organic wines, despite the fact that a disproportionate share of top wines come from these producers. The overlooked fact of conventional wine–polluters don't pay, but taxpayers do–for water pollution and other ecological impacts.
Boldings are mine.
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27 years ago, you launched an organic wine fair, Amphores: was it visionary when you see the current growth of the category?
Pierre Guigui: "No matter how the wine is made, the winemaker can do whatever he wants, if the wine is good, it is good!" Thirty years ago, in the 90s, this watered down sentence was commonplace in the professional world where questions of ecology, the environment, the dangerousness of synthetic chemicals, additives, inputs, corrective oenology, industrialization, etc. were not relevant (and yet ...).
Sometimes we could also hear, "The other day I tasted an organic wine, frankly it was really bad." And, very often, the person who had uttered this sentence had tasted at most two or three wines from organic farming during the year (the wine-making specifications were formalized in 2012 [in the EU]). To form a general opinion, so categorical, based on the appreciation of a few wines seemed unreliable to us and the idea of organizing a more exhaustive tasting in order to better understand the motivations of these organic winegrowers seemed essential to us.
Was this competition also there to reward quality organic wines, in the face of a more heterogeneous offer at the time?
I have never shared this point of view. As early as 1996 certain names, precursors of organic, biodynamic and even nature were already known or in the process of being.
In Alsace: Pierre Frick, Kreydenweiss and Weber. In Bordeaux Le Puy and Meylet.
In Burgundy: Dominique Derrain, Montchovet, Leroy, Vignes du Maine, Rateau and Giboulot.
In Champagne: Fleury.
In Loire: De l'Ecu, Cailloux du Paradis, La Sansonnière, Coulée de Serrant, Pierre and Catherine Breton.
In Provence: Romanin, Sainte Anne and Hauvette. In the Rhône: Combier and La Canorgue.
All these winegrowers were precursors of "wines from organic farming" by already practicing "cleaner" than conventional vinification and, from memory, some were even in a natural and / or biodynamic approach.
In view of this list, the proportion of talented areas out of the 200/250 organic producers in 1996 is remarkable. And this without counting other names a little less known, such as Garrelière, Gaillard for the Loire or even Bordeaux already in the avant-garde like Courson, Ouzoulias, in Rhône Jean David et des Cèdres or even Eugène Meyer one of the very first (if not the first) biodynamist of France based in Alsace.
Other names in a natural movement were in the organic landscape but not necessarily certified in 1996 such as Marcel Lapierre, Pierre Foillard, Yvon Métras (Beaujolais), Gramenon (Rhône), Pierre Overnoy (Jura)… And each year the list s 'extension with prestigious names, great talents, illustrious unknowns yet artisan winegrowers but little communicating. Organic wine has always been good, you just had to put a magnifying glass on it.
How do you see the current commercial development of organic wines: a long-awaited deployment or the fear of industrialization?
Organic will develop when it is accessible to as many people as possible. The greater the demand for this type of wine and food, the more production will turn to organic. This question is crucial, because organic production costs more for the end consumer, but conventional production costs more for the community. The costs of cleaning up are stratospheric.
Cost of cleaning up nitrates in water? "70 euros per kilogram, and between 60,000 and 200,000 euros per kilogram for pesticides" according to the study by the general commissioner for sustainable development, etc.
We discuss here the notion of indirect costs (sometimes called externalized costs). Indeed, a conventional industrial wine of a few euros is more expensive (to the community) than an organic artisanal wine.
Without wishing to overwhelm with figures yet another example: "the additional estimated household expenditure, generated by this pollution linked to surpluses of nitrogen and pesticides of agricultural origin would lie at least in a range of between 1,005 and 1,525 million d. euros, including 640 to 1,140 million euros passed on to the water bill, representing between 7 and 12% of this bill on a national average. »And this not to mention the costs related to diseases etc ...
As for industrial bio, it remains for me less polluting than industrial chemicals.
How do you see natural wines in this landscape?
I think everyone benefits from a continued vagueness with non-organic natural wines, which sometimes claim to be more organic than organic, and which in fact are "out of control". Everyone does what they want and peuy, but natural wines that make people believe they are organic without certification, it remains a deception. The consumer is no longer in this jumble of labels and self-proclamation. Unfortunately, to date you have found plain wines that are non-organic with SO2 levels that no one has checked. Fake natural wines remain for me a brake on the development of organic.
You are also involved in the association of Breton winegrowers: with climate change, does the future of French wines lie in new terroirs, such as Brittany?
The vine has always existed in Brittany as in Île-de-France. And this even before global warming. It does exist in Champagne, while the rate of sunshine is not the highest in France. But this region has invented a wine that matches its climate. In Brittany, we can speak of a renewal with a climate that will facilitate maturity.
Does this Breton viticulture have to be organic at the outset to be part of the future?
Young people who settle in Brittany are generally very attracted to organic products. The future will tell if this will translate into certifications but very likely.
You are not completely leaving the sector: what are your projects?
Yes, if I stop running the competition, I won't leave the world of wine. I run a “know how to drink” collection at Apogée. I am organizing a trade fair "Buvons terroirs" with around fifty organic winegrowers, the first edition of which will be on November 22. And I freelance a bit on demand. For the rest, it is associative, such as the "Buvons Pantin" show in June, Breton winegrowers, the brand new "Movis" association which brings together journalists and authors of wine and spirits ... A busy retirement.
Today's Bloomberg news offers up a recipe for pumpkin pie that is circulating online at The New York Times and elsewhere.
It's a lighter pie, with the addition of meringue to decrease the density–a plus in Julia's mind.
Julia Child’s Aunt Helen’s Fluffy Pumpkin Pie
Serves 10
One 15-ounce can pumpkin puree 1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp. granulated sugar 1/2 cup light brown sugar Kosher salt 1 1/2 tbsp molasses 1 1/2 tbsp bourbon or dark rum (optional) 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon ½ tbsp ground ginger 1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg 1/8 tsp ground cloves 2 large eggs, separated ½ cup heavy cream 1/4 cup milk, plus more if needed 1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust Whipped cream, for serving (optional)
And the ever informative Smith College grapevine (on Facebook) notes that Julia's D.C. home is now for sale, although it looks significantly altered from the time when she lived there. See the owner's Instagram pix for his renovations.
The 2021 harvest marks a special milestone for Salvestrin's Dr. Crane vineyard - it will be the first time the grapes are certified organic.
Owned by the Salvestrin family for 77 years, this historic Napa site first planted in 1859, achieved organic certification July 21. Pictured here are Rich Salvestrin, an owner, and viticulturist and associate winemaker Natalie Jane Winkler.
The Salvestrin family purchased 25 acres of the Crane vineyard (which was originally 335 acres with a winery located where the St. Helena High School sits today) in 1932. The site is among the oldest to be continuously farmed in Napa. Fifteen acres of vines are still part of family's holdings of the historic Crane vineyard.
Uniquely the winery also offers lodging in the historic Dr. Crane house, now the Inn at Silvestrin.
If local climate change mitigation experts have their say, vineyards in the Ahr Valley, planted on steep hillsides, may no longer want to keep their row orientation facing downward in long rows that send water rushing down to the river and towns below, says Professor Lothar Schrott, a geography professor at the University of Bonn who heads the university's disaster management program.
Instead, vineyard owners may consider terracing the steep hillsides.
Forests composed of a high number of spruce trees and a low number of deciduous trees also pose a risk in the region, says Schrott.
(His comments on this topic begin at 24:24 in the program.)
According to the documentary, it can take 100 years to transition to a more balanced, mixed forest.
The German government has devoted $30 billion for disaster recovery in the Ahr Valley, which was devastated by severe flooding July 14, damaging more than 46 wineries in the region. Eighty percent of the wineries grow Pinot Noir, which is called Spatburgunder, on the chilly, slate slopes here.
Schrott's assessment is that many mistakes were made in the region. He says preventive measures would have been more cost effective than dealing with the disruption and damage of the flood.
More than 160 people died in the flood.
In a story familiar to California's growers, insurance companies have agreed to pay only a portion of the damages, so winemakers in the local coop reached out for help and hundreds of volunteers came to their aid to help clean out warehouses and preserve wine that could be rescued.
Though Germany provided more than 4 billion Euros to Mozambique for climate mitigation, climate change experts there and in Bangladesh criticize developed countries for not providing more funding to deal with relocation and mitigation efforts, saying the funds Germany gave to Mozambique were 1/8th of the amount Germany gave to the Ahr Valley.
I have been following Beate Ritz's work for about ten years now - ever since the German born, UCLA epidemiologist released studies about Parkinson's in the Central Valley associated with pesticide use.
Her 2019 research showed links between the paraquat and insecticides used heavily in the Central Valley - doubled the chances for farmworkers and residents to get Parkinson's, a disease that affects the nervous system.
Paraquat, a widely used herbicide, was banned in the EU in 2007, but is legal in the U.S. Until 2018, it was used in vineyards in California, including those certified sustainable by the Wine Institute's CSWA program.
I saw her in person for the first time in Federal District Court in San Francisco during the Daubert hearings over Monsanto and glyphosate. (Daubert hearings are when a judge decides what experts are qualified to speak in court. See the story I wrote at the time for Civil Eats here). I didn't realize she was the same researcher I'd followed. I just heard her speak and thought, wow, that's a remarkably intelligent person.
I would say she single handedly probably had more to do with the judge's rapid science education on epidemiology (which he initially dismissed as sort of a loosey-goosey science) and may have been the main reason that the Judge Chhabria decided to recall her and other experts for an unanticipated extra week of scientific input so he could learn how to evaluate specious claims (especially those coming from Monsanto) in those early days court proceedings on glyphosate.
So I was more than a bit surprised and pleased to tune into a German TV new documentary from DW (the German equivalent of PBS) and there she was. The German TV producers even included graphics of her California studies in the program.
For those of you who would like to see what decent, responsible journalism looks like when it comes to pesticides, look here. (If only we had this kind of reporting in the U.S.)
Ritz is on the California Air Resources Board's Scientific Review Panel and in 2018-2019 was named one of the most influential scientific researchers for her work from 2006-2016.
In 2021, her most recently published studies include one on the association of childhood brain tumors linked to mother's exposure to pesticides. The study showed that residents living in areas where pesticides are used, not just farmworkers, were affected.
From the UCLA press release:
The research – “Residential Proximity to Pesticide Application as a Risk Factor for Childhood Central Nervous System Tumors” - is being published in an upcoming edition of the peer-reviewed journal Environment Research, and is available online. Pesticides have been investigated as possible risk factors for childhood cancer since the 1970s, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified more than 100 as possible or probable carcinogens, based on toxicological and epidemiological data.
To see the specific focus on vineyards and pesticides in the program, see this video excerpt, which begins with the vineyard pesticide use in Bordeaux, where Parkinson's has now been listed as an occupational health risk for vineyard workers.
Dry Farm Wines, WINC, Scout and Cellar, and a host of other direct to consumer wine brands are touting "Clean Wines" as better than anything.
Why organic certification doesn't count for as much as "clean wine" is a byproduct of the natural wine movement, which has made consumers focus on additives in wine - additives like sugar, MegaPurple and other baddies. Consumers like focusing on additives, because they can read lists of additives on food products. It's familiar ground.
And natural winemakers like focusing on them, too, since, in the US, very few natural winemakers grow grapes (which was supposed to be one of the essential definitions of natural wine) and focus instead on all the things they DON'T add to wine instead of what they do do - choosing fermentation vessels, aging vessels, deciding on length of various processes, etc. etc.
The Clean Wine Crowd haven't yet really addressed farming issues. ("Trust us" is a common refrain.) While they often try to avoid the O word - organic - they don't mind if their version of organic is what is increasingly referred to as "non-certified organic."
(Were there too many sulfite questions from confused consumers over the USDA's idea of Organic Wine being sulfite free?)
This week, an indie vintner and I tasted wines together and she assured me one of the wines was from a "non-certified organic" vineyard. The next day I looked it up on the county's pesticide use report. Not organic. A lot of fungicides.
She was dismayed and felt betrayed. I've seen the same response from many of my colleagues. "How could someone lie to me?" they say.
I've been dismayed often, too. It's hard not to take it as a sense of personal betrayal when someone is untruthful, as if you will never find out what they are really farming with in their vineyard. Do you really appear to them to be that much of stooge, you wonder? Or, to give some of them the benefit of the doubt, do they themselves not know what their vineyard management company is doing?
I've come to the conclusion over years of researching this topic, that, although there are some innocents out there, many vintners just lie. They are just so used to no one ever reading the pesticide use report.
Do they must think the pesticide use data stays inside a database in Sacramento for its entire life?
Apparently they do. I could give countless examples of this phenomenon but I won't - at least not today.
The companies staking their claim on making "clean" wine are often using "non-certified organic" grapes. Some are also buying certified organic - from Bonterra's former growers (who are organically certified) in Mendocino (Bonterra found cheaper organic grapes elsewhere and abandoned many Mendo growers) or from certified organic producers elsewhere, including Emiliana in Chile - without telling consumers the grapes are actually certified organic.
Now Bonterra's taking aim at these green mantle wannabees - certified organic's thieves - and the thieves' soaring sales and popularity (WINC just filed for an IPO this week, meaning it could go public) and fighting back with this new video, released a month ago. Take a look in this Bonterra video below.
(Bonterra's lawyers must have gotten more powerful, since this video, unlike most wine videos, appears to only be viewable on YouTube - where your age can be confirmed? Pullease. [That is not the spirit of Dionysos, is it?] Still, click on over.)
One quibble: though the Made with Organic Wine standard IS better than 95 percent of the wines out there in terms of the additives that can be used, it should be noted that all organically grown wines in the U.S. can use a LIMITED number of additives, and that list of permitted additives does NOT include MegaPurple, etc.
On other fronts, Bonterra's sales are going well. Here are the latest stats from Concha y Tora's annual report:
Until now, Bonterra has pretty much had a virtual monopoly in regular supermarkets as the only Made with Organic Grapes brand ($11-16ish), while Bronco brands like Shaw Organic have a captive spot at Trader Joe's for the $4 buyers. Newcomers like Scheid are lining up to fuel domestic organic options at Whole Foods, which has been not stocked much organic for years.
This week, The Drinks Business named Concha y Toro, Bonterra's parent company, "International Drinks Company of the Year." The Chilean based winery became a B Corp this year, a prestigious achievement, which the publication cited as impressing their judges.
Fetzer Vineyards, owned by Concha y Toro, already had become a certified B Corp. in 2015.
While Bonterra's wines are organic, those branded with the name of its parent company, Fetzer Vineyards, are not, although a newly released Fetzer Vineyards brand sustainability marketing video obscures that fact, branding the entire Fetzer Vineyards with the organic halo effect. It's like Coca Cola trying to say it's sugar free - taking a product attribute and applying it to the corporate brand.
Is this ethical?
Bonterra's case production is dwarfed by that of Fetzer's, which is not clear in the video.
Fetzer Vineyards' branded wines are made from grapes treated with herbicides, pesticides and fungicides primarily from Lodi and Central Valley growers, despite the happy picture the video paints which refers ONLY to its organic estate vines, which all go into Bonterra, not Fetzer Vineyards' other brands.
A frame grab from the video may imply that Fetzer's wines all use these practices. Fetzer Vineyards the company has certified organic vineyards it owns and uses for Bonterra wines. But Fetzer Vineyards' (the company) other wines do not. The 900 acres of estate vines are a fraction of the grapes the company sources from.
Fetzer has made much of its "sustainable" sourcing, but sustainable wines may use many toxic substances in the vineyards that, in my humble opinion (which counts for naught), are not worthy of a B Corp award. Consumers will have to learn that B Corp does not mean organic and apparently, it can mean deceptive branding as well.
But many other green halo wine brands do the same. While it is commendable that Boisset and Benziger have biodynamic estates - and Boisset's is growing quite a bit - both of those brands could be painted with the same brush. Boisset makes fewer than one percent of its wines from its biodynamic vines. (For years it prominently displayed the biodynamic calendar on its home page, but has since stopped that.) At Benziger the number is seven percent. At both of these brands, as well as at Bonterra, the biodynamic wines are the most expensive wines. That is not the case for many other biodynamic wineries (Emiliana, Lunaria, Cooper Mountain in Oregon, Montinore Estate in Oregon, and others).
Good luck, consumers! It's tricky path to dodge the greenwashing and find the truly green gold. Remember it's often the wine, and not the brand, that is organic.
It's hard to believe that anyone can have Nigel's real last name, as in Nigel Greening, and be a famous biodynamic vintner. But that's how it goes.
Greening's Felton Road winery is one of New Zealand's most well known organic and biodynamic producers and during the celebration of organic wine in New Zealand this past week, he weighed in on Zoom for a trade tasting. Here are his comments from the event, which he joined from the UK, where he has been for 16 months, waiting for the rules to be relaxed so he can head home. He responded to questions sent during the online event.
Here's the video or scroll down for an edited transcript.
ON THE ECONOMICS OF ORGANIC FARMING
When it comes to the economics of organic farming, it's not really about the cost of one kind of farming versus the other. Because when you start doing organic or biodynamic farming, you change the way you farm. You change the things you want to do.
And so regardless of the rules, you're not doing the same stuff. With us, it started with Hey, we'll have some chickens, and hey, look, those hills, we need goats on them. And we now only cows to keep the goats company. And, wow, we're gonna have to grow some animal food. And what about making some single vineyard compost?
So what you're doing isn't the same. And that's one reason why it's very hard to compare the cost.
But it's surprising - it doesn't go up as much as you might think.
THE WINE TASTING
The samples of the wines [you all tasted]: I thought all showed that the wines were fairly comfortable with themselves. They weren't trying to prove anything. They were just being what they should be.
LABELING ORGANIC OR BIODYNAMIC WINE
There were quite a lot of conversations going on about the issues with labeling and standards.
We're now 20 odd years into organics. And still most of our wine is not labeled organic.
That's not because it isn't organic. It's because just the sheer grief of trying to deal with all the details of 45 markets, each with their own organic rules and variations - means that in most cases, in this world, people know that we're biodynamic, and have been for 20 years. They know we're organic. So we don't have to put a label on it.
[But] We do in some markets.
ORGANIC VERSUS BIODYNAMIC
One little point within all of this is biodynamic versus organic.
Some people...ask...What percentage is biodynamic? What percentage is organic? You can't really label it or measure it that way because a lot of wineries will be certified in both. And so it's quite hard to pick one from the other.
But in general, within the EU system, you have to be certified with an organic certifier if it's a New Zealand wine, which is a longer story that we won't go into.
So that means that even though we've been Demeter certified for a long time, we had to adopt a BioGro [New Zealand's organic certifier] certification as well, simply because that became necessary. It gets very, very complicated. I can tell you, that's the worst bit.
COVID LOCKOUT
I'm in the UK. I've been locked out to the winery now for 16 months, which is Whoa, yeah, that's not easy. But I'm really, really hoping that I'm going to be able to be allowed back in in January. New Zealand has locked out...[while] other people have locked down. While New Zealand is locked out, and trying to get a slot to get back through biosecurity is so difficult...we're waiting for the rules to relax, so I can get back to the winery. And so I have to do everything remotely.
WHY BIODYNAMIC?
Why did we go biodynamics, not organics, from the start? We started with organics, but I was keen on biodynamics.
And the reason for that was that I'd worked a lot in my past life with the car industry. And I had been really horrified, by the way that they equated quality with fewer defects. They have this generally accepted idea that if you have no defects, you have a quality product. And I thought, That's nonsense, you can have perfect rubbish, you know, it's about quality is the input in a lot of the defects necessarily that you take out.
And I felt that was organics was clearly more like a list of it was more like zero defects. These are all the things you mustn't do.
Biodynamics, for all its flaws - and some of the slightly crackpot areas - was really a philosophy that was focused on here are the things you should do, as opposed to other things you shouldn't do. I liked that.
I'm not sold on all aspects of biodynamics. And that's fine. It's a broad church. And all of us kind of get home or get off the bus at slightly different points. But we all share the same kind of passion for how you manage this ever changing ecosystem of the land.
CONSUMER DEMAND
What is the uptake on consumer demand for organics? The answer to that is I don't know, because for so long now everybody's kind of known that we were. So it's really, really hard for me to answer that one. You'd think there has to be a greater awareness? But it's difficult to know. I think it varies from country to country.
THE FARMER'S FOOTSTEPS
I'll tell you the thing that I find interesting - and that's a thing all the way around the world - that essentially, people who are farming organically and biodynamically in most cases, spend a lot more time physically on their land. There's a saying that a farmer's footsteps are the best compost. And I think getting out of a tractor and actually being on your feet and bending over and digging in the soil with your hands, really thinking about what's going around is something that all organic farmers, biodynamic farmers have in common.
We're trying to unravel this amazing web. Somebody made reference to James Milton's lovely thing, you know: "be careful how you step on my land, you're not standing on the dirt, you're stepping on the roof of another kingdom."
And we're trying to understand that kingdom, the kingdom where one spoonful of soil has more life than there are people on earth. And that's quite cool.
COVER CROPS
What are the most popular cover crops planted in New Zealand for organic vineyards to bring life back into the soil? We go wider and wider. And often it's based on things that we like.
I was getting the guys to plant peas because I wanted peas to pick for lunch. And then we found pigeons came to eat the peas, because pigeons like peas and then we found falcons came to eat pigeons, because falcons like pigeons. And suddenly you've opened up this whole new little ecosystem that you didn't know was going on just because you added some peas.
Cover crops are interesting, but it's often most interesting just to do something nice, you know, do things because you'd like to eat them and then see what else the world likes to eat that comes and plays in your vineyard.
ADIEU
I'll wrap up now. Thanks to everybody for listening. And yeah, I hope to see all of you soon.
Congratulations to Jeremy Cukierman MW, Michelle Bouffard and Herve Quinol on the publication of their new French language book on wine and climate change, entitled What Wine for Tomorrow?
Cukierman (left) and Bouffard (back row, to the right of Cukierman) are featured in this celebratory photo, commemorating the book's publication at a Parisian wine shop.
(To see a who's who in the photo, go to Cukierman's Instagram feed here for the tagged version).
The book is published by Dunod. It's available in both hardcover and as an ebook.
The three authors bring a variety of experiences to the project. Herve Quinol is a climate scientist, Bouffard a Canadian sommelier who runs the Tasting Climate Change conference, and Cukierman, a former wine merchant, an MW, and now dean of Kedge Wine Business School in Bordeaux.
In Vitisphere, a French wine publication, Cukierman is quoted as saying, “We are sharing everything that seemed inspiring to us, all the worthy initiatives, the questions and the answers. The book embraces the entire supply chain with a single ambition, and that is to take a positive approach to an issue that is often anxiety-inducing or alarmist."
“Announcing major predictions should be done with caution. The great vineyard sites were chosen for a combination of factors, one of which is climate. Only this factor has changed and Vitis vinifera is a very resilient plant with the ability to adapt. Some ancient forecasts predicted that certain grape varieties would disappear, but they are still here!”
The publisher may release an English language version, but until then, you will just have to brush up on your French. Both the print and Kindle version are available online on Amazon.
"We're not standing on dirt, but the rooftop of another Kingdom," says biodynamic vintner James Millton, nicknamed The Godfather of organic wine in New Zealand.
He was quoted by other New Zealand vintners who are certified organic in an online trade tasting yesterday, where participants tasted through six different varieties of wines.
While most people think of New Zealand for Sauvignon Blanc, as well as Pinot Noir, yesterday's tasting included an Alsatian field blend, a Chardonnay, a Chenin Blanc, and a Syrah.
Having just cataloged all the organic wines of New Zealand - there are more than 450 - I was interested to see some of the faces behind these wines on the webinar.
(For the sake of comparison, the U.S. has about 1,600 organically grown wines, all of which come from certified grapes but most of which have no organic labeling on the bottle).
According to BioGro NZ, the country's sole organic certifier, New Zealand currently has nearly 5,000 acres of certified organic vines and about 1,000 more acres in the three year process of conversion. This acreage represents more than 10 percent of all New Zealand vineyard acreage. There are 102 organic wine producers and 235 organic vineyards, according to Jared White, organic wine specialist at BioGro NZ.
In the U.S., which has more than 550,000 acres of wine grapes in California alone, organic vineyards are estimated at around 25,000-30,000 acres or around 3-4 percent.
In New Zealand, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir are the most popular varieties by far. As far as regions go, Marlborough and Central Otago have the highest percentage of organic wines, at 48 percent and 22 percent respectively.
The graphics below are available here. (May require free registration).
Northern New Zealand
Southern New Zealand
Pinot Noir acreage - 890 hectares - far outnumbered any other red wine (total of 1,110 hectares), while Sauvignon Blanc similarly dominated the white wine production at 786 hectares (out of 1,282 hectares of whites total).
During the webinar I attended (there were two sessions to choose from), I was able to chat with a few voices in the room and learn more about what having an organic wineries association did for the vintners involved and which markets were top buyers.
Very few countries have organic wine associations to help market wines, conduct tastings and educate the trade on organic farming and wine standards. (The rampant misinformation about organic and biodynamic wines and standards in the U.S., even among wine professionals, is a result of the lack of such a group in the U.S.)
I asked if having an organic wine association had been a useful step for the group.
Clive Dougall, chair of Organic Winegrowers NZ (OWNZ) and vintner at Deep Down Wines, said the organization, "has been critical. It has been going for about 15 years and has grown the sector, through education, solidarity and support. It started out small and insignificant, but OWNZ is now incredibly current, credible and powerful."
Dougall said the top markets for organically grown wines for OWNZ members are primarily in the EU, (no one mentioned the U.S.), citing buyer interest in Belgium, Holland and Germany as well as in the Nordics and Sweden (where government policies encourage organic wine imports).
For me the knockout wine in the tasting of six was the Chenin Blanc from Millton's Te Arai Vineyard in Gisborne, which, I was happy to see, is sold at K & L in San Francisco for about $30 a bottle.
I just watched the upcoming release Julia about the cook/chef/writer who launched the American food revolution. (Or was it the French food revolution in America?)
Anyway, for the millions of Julia fans, the good news is there is a new documentary to add to the firmament of Julia movies. And this one lets you see food in a way you've never seen before - with luscious shots, filmed in macro, edited in slo mo and set to a score that breathes life into every shot.
The Mill Valley Film Festival is screening the film in October. There are two dates and neither appears to be sold out yet. Watch for the film to hit theaters Nov. 12.
Joan Baez, Carlos Santana, and Taj Mahal are just a few of the musical luminaries who pay tribute to Cesar Chavez in this new documentary, Song for Cesar, scheduled to screen at the Mill Valley Film Festival.
The movie will play in theaters on Oct. 14 in Berkeley (at BAMPFA) and on Oct. 15 at the Sequoia Theater in downtown Mill Valley.
You can also see the film online through the festival; tickets are $8 to stream it, but only a limited number of tickets are available.
The Oct. 15 screening will be followed by a live music concert at Sweetwater, a benefit for Cesar Chavez's Foundation and others. Tickets are $285 for the concert.
Some of the stars in the film:
The trailer:
For more videos on the background of this project, years in the making, see the movie's website.
Tickets for the MVFF members go on sale Sept. 12-14. Tickets open for the general public on Sept. 15.
Announcement from Hanzell Vineyards' Instagram page:
"It’s been a long time coming but it’s official…we’re now certified organic through CCOF!! For years, we have been farming this land with intention and commitment to ensure the health of our ecosystem while considering our impact on the tiniest fungi to the grandest of trees, and everything and everyone in between. Care for our vines, the woodlands, native wildlife, grazing animals and more than anything, the health and well-being of the people who make up this Hanzell family have driven every decision we make. It feels good to hold this sign and to be able to say that we’re certified organic, knowing all the hard work over the years means something to people beyond our front gate. We look forward to many more years, farming and sustaining this treasure we all love so much."
According to the USDA organic database online, in addition to the grapes, the winery has also been certified organic, which is usually done when a winery begins to make certified wines (in addition to growing certified grapes).
Chris Malan has been a voice for the environment in Napa County for decades. She wrote the following letter to the editor (see below) published in the Napa Valley Register on Sept. 2. I am reprinting it here as many will not see it on the newspaper site.
For those who want to read the prequel to this modern day disaster, James Conaway's Book The Far Side of Eden chronicles Mahan's earlier fight, with the Sierra Club, to increase environmental protections for Napa's hillsides.
As the Washington Post wrote in its book review in 2002:
"Led by a community activist named Chris Malan and supported by the Mennen Environmental Foundation, environmentalists girded for battle to protect the Napa hilltops from new vineyard development. Malan sought a moratorium on new vineyards on the valley's steep slopes, citing damage to the Napa River from erosion. She and her supporters felt that prior efforts at regulation -- the 40-acre minimum lot size for the hills set in 1973 and the 1988 winery definition, which restricted business activities at new wineries–simply were not enough. Ratcheting up the rhetoric, "environmentalists [began] calling grape-growing 'alcohol farming,' the act of planting a vineyard 'graping the land,' and wineries 'alcohol factories,' " Conaway writes."
The Napa River became a dry river bed with stagnant pools in early July. Many local and state efforts to get the Water Boards to protect optimum stream flows for fish met deaf ears.
I live and recreate on the Napa River. I organized a Napa River scientific collection project in May 2021 that included water grabs, aquatic insects, and the first ever algae collections throughout this river basin. It took my team a year to establish our sampling sites.
Starting the project on May 13, we didn’t expect the streams to drop so quickly from one day to the next. The day we started we were chasing water in order to collect the samples. We had to scramble to find alternate sites as irrigators were dropping the stream flows quickly. Surface and groundwater pumping simultaneously during one of the worst recorded droughts quickly depleted stream flows and by the end of June the Napa River was a dry river bed with isolated stagnant pools.
We did find adequate stream flows above the big reservoirs like Milliken, Bell and Rector because they are steep canyons where diverters can’t pump or extract near the streams. Also, in State Parks like Bothe and Bale Mill the streams had sufficient flows to keep the aquatic ecosystems in good condition, as evidence that surface and groundwater diversions wreak havoc on stream flows. These conditions are occurring State wide as water has been over appropriated long ago by the Water Boards allowing more water to be extracted than what normal rain fall can replenish the streams causing them to steadily drop in flows since 1950. Climate change has caused prolonged drought and water extractions should have been curtailed long ago.
After studying the Napa River ecology for 20 years, it is an ecosystem like no other, with 34 native fish including California Fresh Water Shrimp, river lamprey, Red Legged Frogs, steelhead and Chinook. We discovered new species of aquatic insects and our studies this year discovered new species of diatom algae. All of this richness in biodiversity is in jeopardy due to a lack of regulated groundwater extraction and lawlessness in surface water pumping.
Groundwater-dependent ecosystems such as vernal pools are allowed to be graded with impunity by vineyard developers throughout the watershed, riparian pumpers secretly hide their pumps and dry up the streams, reservoirs are built without permits, stored water is not used for intended purposes and groundwater extractors pump recklessly all this on top of decades of habitat degradation (deforestation) and pollution are all human impacts collapsing our watersheds. These dry brittle watersheds continue to set us up for catastrophic fires.
Additionally, as streams decline in flows, pollution becomes more devastating such as eutrophication or harmful algae blooms where toxins can kill animals and humans.
Recently, the State Water Resources Control Board curtailed the Delta water diversion permits. A few days ago they added more streams and Rivers to this curtailment order including these two streams in Napa County: Cache and Putah Creek that flow into the Delta.
Later this Water Board approved curtailments on the Scott and Shasta Rivers and settled on voluntary compliance to start the curtailments.
The reason for curtailments is to keep the fish in good condition but on the Napa River most of the fish are now dead because the Water Board failed to protect the public trust which is the right to fish, swim, recreate and use potable water. More and more wells are going dry in Napa County. If we had kept water in our streams, our groundwater recharge would be healthier.
Napa County Board of Supervisors play a huge role in the dewatering of the Napa River be cause they continue to allow approvals of numerous groundwater wells.
The State Water Resource Control Board should immediately curtail the Napa River to allow for recovery of the aquatic ecosystems. Additionally, the Napa County Supervisors must put a moratorium on all new groundwater well applications until the Napa County Groundwater Sustainability Plan, required by the State Groundwater Management Act, gets submitted to the Department of Water Resources by 2022 for subsequent review and approval.
Chris Malan, Executive Director, Institute for Conservation Advocacy, Research and Education, Napa
Newton viticulturist Laura Deyermond displays the winery's new CCOF sign
After a four year transition, Newton Vineyard has completed organic certification on all of its estate vineyards.
The last few years have been a bumpy ride for Newton Vineyard. It rebuilt portions of the classic estate, with its underground winery, gorgeous English gardens, and stunning views, only to have much of it destroyed in the Glass Fire (2020) that struck Spring Mountain hard.
It was a low blow. Newton had just celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019 with much fanfare and a celebration of the very talented team and winemakers who went on to become successive waves of Napa rock stars–John Kongsgaard, Aaron Pott, and Andy Erickson.
But now it's being rebuilt.
The winery was founded by Englishman Peter Newton (1926-2008) who made a fortune in the paper industry and then again by creating Sterling Winery in 1964 and selling it to Coca-cola in 1976. His love of wine led him to reach for even grander dreams in the then untested wilds of Spring Mountain, where he bought 560 acres in 1977, transforming it into a thing of splendor.
The 2020 fire took out most of the 73 acres of Spring Mountain vines–all but 6 acres are now being replanted–but the winery still looks to its 23 acres in the Carneros and its 16 acres on Mount Veeder for uninterrupted production.
LVMH has owned a majority stake in Newton since 2001, bringing in French born Jean-Baptiste Rivail as estate director in 2017.
The winery began the organic certification process in 2018, completing certification on the Spring Mountain estate in 2020 and on its two other vineyards in July of this summer.
It is best known for its unfiltered Chardonnay, from the Carneros vines (a blend of organic estate fruit and purchased non-organic fruit), and a Bordeaux blend, The Puzzle, from Spring Mountain.
It also produces a 100% Cabernet from the Mount Veeder estate.
(The winery also purchases non-estate, non-organic grapes for a number of other Newton wines).
Newton's new winemaker, Andrew Hove
Also this summer, Newton has just seen its former winemaker Alberto Bianchi depart to focus on his own label, Ena, and to become the winemaker for Adamvs on Howell Mountain. The new winemaker is Andrew Holve, who has been the assistant winemaker for the past 6 years, giving him deep familiarity with the grapes, terroir and wines from the property. Philippe Melka continues as the consulting winemaker.
Viticulturist and grower manager Laura Deyermond (seen above), with Newton since 2018, is overseeing the replanting. Assessment of the vine damage was done with state of the art aerial mapping.
The winery intends to fully rebuild on Spring Mountain, but in the meantime, current releases are all the more precious as the estate grown The Puzzle will be in short supply while replanting begins. It generally takes 3 years after replanting to harvest and then 3-4 years for aging before a fine red wine is released. But these vines will get a nice, fresh start on organic soils this time around as regeneration begins anew.
Raise a glass to the sunsetting of chlorpyrifos, one of the most dangerous agricultural chemicals that was used for decades on wine grapes (and other crops).
In California, its use on agricultural crops came to an end Dec. 31, 2020.
Still, it's shameful that it wasn't banned earlier, despite many attempts by scientists, pediatricians, the medical community and public health officials. It was on its way out the door when Trump prolonged its use by overturning attempts to ban it during his administration.
Yet what's most shameful of all is that it was ever used and then continued to be used on California vineyards. In 2018, the most recent year in which California released aggregated pesticide use data, the state's wine grape growers used 52,902 pounds of it on 28,822 acres.
WWI-WWII: GERMANY'S WEAPONIZATION OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMICALS
In World War I, the Germans established chemical warfare by introducing mustard gas, a breakthrough chemical weapon, against the British, killing as many as 20,000 in the first six weeks it was used on the battlefield. This success led the Germans to continue to develop chemical warfare.
The Nazis took developing organophosphates as chemical weapons to new heights in World War II, enhancing work done in 1936 byGerhard Schrader, a pioneer in organophosphates used as systemic insecticides in agriculture. His discoveries of the deadly nerve gas Sarin and the toxic organophosphate Tabun gave Germany a huge advantage in chemical warfare.
Schrader in his lab, I. G. Farben (photo: Bayer Archives)
In Germany, Zyklon B [not an organophosphate], which had been invented in the 1920s, as a pesticide and delousing agent, became the most famous chemical in World War II. When the Nazi's came to power, they turned the deadly gas on the Jews in Nazi concentration camps.
Tabun was used on Jewish prisoners as well as hundreds of Schrader's other compounds.
Germany's chemical warfare in World War II wasn't the end of the story, though, as Sarin and Tabun have continued to be used, most notably in Syria.
ORGANOPHOSPHATES IN PEACETIME
Schrader discovered malathion, which was also used in agriculture.
After World War II, German manufacturers and others returned their attention to the use of organophosphates in ag.
Excerpt from von Hippel's The Chemical Age
When the most famous post war insecticide, DDT, which worked so well against malaria, turned out to be more toxic than had previously been thought, Dow Chemical launched chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate insecticide [not a systemic] in 1966. It was created as an alternative to DDT and became widely used and well known under the product names Lorsban or Dursban.
(To anyone interested in reading more about the historical development of these chemicals, I recommend Frank von Hippel's excellent and fascinating 2020 book The Chemical Age, published by UChicago Press, which presents a compelling, detailed history in several chapters of the main German and Nazi personalities and their competitive races to become the top dog scientist. The book details the interconnected strands of Germany's agricultural pesticide and chemical weapons research.)
A DEAD END
But chlorpyrifos, too, was soon found to be highly toxic and years of research have only shown more and more severe impacts on health.
These have been published over decades in peer reviewed medical studies, linking the chemical to declines in children's brain health and increased risks of cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
In a pesticide hair testing study of 150 people, conducted in Europe by the Green Party, chlorpyrifos was found in 10% of the people tested. (It can be eliminated by eating an organic diet.)
Groups of medical and scientific professionals–including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Academy of Sciences–have called for it to be banned since the 1970s.
CALIFORNIA AND CHLORPYRIFOS
So in order to grow wine grapes, 52,902 pounds of chlorpyrifos was still used in 2018 despite its significant and known impacts.
As recently as 2015, in Sonoma, Gallo sprayed 147 gallons of it on 400 acres at Two Rock on Gina Gallo's favorite Chardonnay vineyard.
Kendall Jackson used 16 gallons on 13 acres on Brown's Lane in Petaluma.
Sonoma Cutrer sprayed it on 100 acres in Sonoma County in 2017.
2018: Hot Spots
The state agricultural pesticide map lets us take a look at where chlorpyrifos was most intensively used in 2018 (the most recent data the state has made available). Here are some of the hot spots, generally located along the spine of Route 99, running through the heart of the Central Valley, supplier of supermarket wines to the nation.
Lodi
Bakersfield
Certified Sustainable Wines May Be Grown With Chlorpyrifos
Even more shocking is that a bottle of Certified Sustainable Wine from the CSWA can still be grown with chlorpyrifos today if it's used during the winery's first year of certification. For vintages before 2017, there were no restrictions on its use in "certified sustainable wines."
Though sales of it are banned in California, it could be obtained (until the EPA ruling now) in other states.
Groundwater Contamination
As I wrote in a previous post here, "All this comes in the wake of epidemiological studies released in 2009 showing rural Californians drinking private well water in Tulare, Fresno and Kern counties had an 82% increased chance of getting Parkinson's due to chlorpyrifos being used in their areas."
Now, at long last, there will be a law against it.
UPDATE
*August 30 editor's note: Portions of this post on pesticide history have been revised and updated with specific citations in response to reader feedback asking for more details.
The original version contained an error regarding Zyklon B; Zyklon B is not chemically related to chlorpyrifos (as has been incorrectly reported in other articles on the Internet), since it is not an organophosphate insecticide, and this has been corrected.
New text was added on pesticide history to provide a broader context for the development of this class of chemicals and to provide more background on the linkages within the German and Nazi era development of these chemicals.
Germany's leadership in the early and mid 20th century led it to become the giant that it is today in pesticide industry. The latest advance of this cultural and scientific movement was Bayer's 2018 purchase of Monsanto (and Roundup), which has mired the company in financial and internal leadership battles, after the merger was completed under intense scrutiny. According to the Wall Street Journal, this was "one of the worst corporate deals."
