Slow Wine SF Tasting is MONDAY Jan. 24 (Trade Event)

Meet 100 top eco friendly producers from the US and Italy - selected both for their farming practices and their wine quality - at the Slow Wine Guide tasting Monday in San Francisco. 

More than 80 wineries from Italy will be pouring, along with 20 from the US. 

The Italian wineries represent Compagna, Puglia, Sardinia, and Sicily in the south, along with central and northern Italian regions–the Aburzzo, Emilia Romagna, the Marche, Friuli, Lombardy, Tuscany, the Veneto, and, of course, Piemonte, the region that gave birth to the Slow Wine movement.

See the full list here.

US producers include 14 from California, 5 from Oregon and one from Washington state. They are listed here. 

One star * = organically grown (100 percent)

Two stars ** = some wines are organically grown

CALIFORNIA

ADAMVS*

Bonterra Organic Estates*

Burgess*

Cliff Lede Vineyards

Donum Estate

Edio Vineyards at Delfino Farms

Ettore*

Hamel Family Wines*

Mount Eden Vineyards

Samuel Louis Smith

Sei Querce**

Tablas Creek Vineyard**

WineSmith

Wrath Wines

OREGON

Left Coast Estate

Lingua Franca

Ruby Vineyard & Winery**

Troon Vineyard*

Winderlea Vineyard & Winery**

WASHINGTON

Cayuse

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For more information on the event, check out the website where you can also register.

The new SLOW WINE GUIDE USA 2022 edition should launch shortly, too, so stay tuned for that announcement. You can also buy the 2021 guide (with 285 wineries) on Amazon. Some wineries also sell the guide in their tasting rooms.

The Italian guide (published in Italian only) with more than 1,900 wineries will be available at the Jan. 24 event for $20.

There are also some seminars available for Monday as well. 

After San Francisco the tour travels to Seattle, Austin, Miami and New York.

Slow Wine Guide is the most transparent, eco friendly wine guide in the global wine world, systematically listing farming practices (materials and processes used) and winemaking details along with tasting notes.  

Organic Wine Study–Number of French Wine Drinkers Who Regularly Buy Organic Wines Doubles

In just six years, the number of French wine drinkers has doubled, according to a new study from SudVinBio. 

The study was conducted in advance of the biggest organic wine fair, set to take place both online and in person in Montpellier. SudVinBio, the organizer, published the results of the study of organic wine drinkers along with an interview (in French) with Nicolas Richarme, SudVinBio's president. 

The conference will be conducted in two parts–an online conference will take place Jan. 24-25 while an in person fair was rescheduled from late January until Feb. 28-March 2. due to Covid. (I am publishing a separate post about the study's findings.) 

Here's the English translation of the Richarme interview. 

THE INTERVIEW

Question: Six years after the previous one, this new study confirms the increase in consumption of organic wine. Your reaction?

Nicolas Richarme, President of SudVinBio

Richarme: For me, the main information is that we have gone from a consumption of curiosity to an installed consumption, to a structural consumption. 

The gap has narrowed between consumers who report having had the opportunity to taste organic wine, if only once in their lifetime, and regular consumers. 

More than a third of French people buy organic wine frequently! 

Moreover, the dynamic is clearly on the organic side: in markets in which the consumption of wine has declined, the consumption of organic wine is increasing, whether occasional or regular. 

This means that organic is gaining in volume but also in strategic weight. Consumption is evolving and it is moving towards organic. Today, it is in a show like Millésime Bio that we find the future of wine.

French wine consumers who regularly buy organic more than doubled,
 increasing from 17 percent in 2015 to 36 percent in 2021.

Question: What shows the progress of organic wine consumption?

Richarme: Both volume and demand. Fortunately, today we are on our own two feet. The supply is ramping up and the markets follow suit. Production is progressing and will progress further.

See the study results here (in French): https://millesime-bio.com/presse/dossiers-de-presse

In France:

• 891 farms started their conversion in 2021

• 1,313 in 2019 

• 3,186 in 2020

For its part, consumption is increasing and increasing everywhere. And yet there are still some challenges to be removed, the study shows, such as information: the markets are not yet fully aware of organic, which suggests reserves of growth if we continue to educate.

This study is also the first to look at the consumption of organic beer.

Indeed, we are now witnessing an extension of the organic sector. Wine is historically one of the most at the forefront of organic. 

All sectors combined, an estimated 9.5% of the useful agricultural area converted to organic in France. For wine, it's 17%! And wine is a locomotive that drives other sectors, such as cider and beer. 

It is a (nice) surprise to the study to show that one in five European consumers buys organic beer more or less regularly. The demand is there and it will drive production.

Three thousand participants (aged 18 and over) provided responses in the online research. They included 1,000 in Germany, 1,000 in France and 1,000 in the United Kingdom. The respondents constituted a representative sample across sex, age, professions, region and urban areas in each country.