And Suddenly There Was Life! Winery Video Genre a Work in Progress - with New Game Changing Network-ability!

March 30 - yes, just a month and a week ago - I posted that we were finally living in the Golden Age of Online Tastings. Suddenly, with Zoom lowering everyone's standards of the level of video production that was required to be seen in public, wineries, even the ones still in the dark ages, were able to find cameras, tripods and more and whip into action.

IN THE BEGINNING: THE FIRST ERA - PANDEMIC WINE TASTING VIDEOS 

As this new genre unfolds, it's exciting to see. It's exhibiting the same kinds of stumbling steps that early day movies or talkies did. The first thing the movies did was film theater productions, until they discovered that didn't translate well. Talkies were a similarly transformative transition.

Today's winery video genre is no different. It has started out by imitating a show it already knows how to put on: the winemaker talking about the wines in the tasting room, or, gosh, for real excitement, in the vineyard.

Matthew Goode and Matthew Rhys, cast as wine newbies in The Wine Show

Contrast these videos with my other pandemic staple - The Wine Show, a fantastically watchable and incredibly instructive show (on Hulu here in the States) with two knowledgeable wine hosts and two stellar actors - the two Matthews - who play the role (sort of like reality TV, sort of not) of interested novices. Big budget, high production values and some very experienced television hands at the helm here. This must have cost a fortune, and I would say, it's probably the first wine series that didn't suck.

Compare that with the wineries' videos. Now yes it costs more, but winery tasting rooms and staff also cost a lot. Why so stingy with the video budget when that's your new lifeline? And your tasting room is c l o s e d.

Right now some online tastings are incredibly boring, some are filled with food and cooking and dogs in an attempt to be some kind of home based reality series. Some are hosted by humorous characters - I'm thinking of Frog's Leap and Tablas Creek. Frog's Leap's generally humorous personalities shine through in their father son duo. Two characters ARE better than one.

Tablas Creek's videos features the winery's shepherd Nathan in conversation with the winemaker Chelsea. (When I saw Nathan present on the topic of sheep at the 2019 Ecofarm conference, I thought he had missed his calling as a standup comedian. Now it looks like central casting has recognized his prodigious, native talent.) Having an expert and a non-expert play off of each other is a good format, as many a producer will tell you.

Sadly some video tastings just expose how male dominated a lot of wineries are. When you see the four guy lineup in their individual Zoom squares, it can just feel odd that there are no women.

THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION: MAKE BETTER VIDEOS

Part of this was well captured in Amber LeBeau's blog post How Can We Make Virtual Wine Tastings Less Sucky? that really struck a chord. And while wineries search for better ways to film stuff (ask your teenager kids, please but don't let them involve models and makeup and a ton of Insta selfies), we can ask them to improve their game. We want to keep watching as wineries host these week after week.

LeBeau published some tips in her post for wineries on how to make better videos. Hallelujah. Having made PBS docs for 5 years (including with Peter Jennings and Joseph Campbell) and more than 50 films for Apple and written a bestselling book on how to make videos (before YouTube.com had even launched), I am grateful. Guidance is needed.

There are people who are actually professionals who can help you and they are very cheap to hire. Wineries CAN have fun drone footage for very cheap. Wineries CAN have restaurant somms come and talk about their wine, their region, their varietal. Wineries CAN have better backgrounds and maps and diagrams.

Singer Johnny Legend with
 Jean-Charles Boisset

If I were still teaching this stuff, as a first step, I would recommend that wineries watch The Wine Show.

While you don't need to hire a great actor or Hollywood celebrity (although some, like Jean-Charles Boisset have, doing tastings with Johnny Legend), but you can do better than you are now.

Look for the characters within. I used to cast documentaries - you meet a 100 people and pick 10 for the hour show or 5 for an Apple product intro on how people are saving the world with Macintosh. We used to look for people who were a little over the top, because when the pro camera went on, most people deflated. But that's no longer the case as everyone is used to video cameras on phones today.

Create little segments to break up the video. Have video roll-ins - i.e. little videos you can bring in to add variety to the show. Interview your pruning guys. Add a chef or a somm or a wine critic or blogger or super fan. Who is your oldest wine club member? Who is your youngest hire in the winery? Where is the furthest place where people are drinking this wine - Japan? China? Stories are everywhere, not just in your tasting room and not just about how your wine tastes. That's how you sell in a tasting room, but not on TV.

THE NEW "NETWORK" FOR WINE TV

Today LeBeau announced that her partner, Beth, a former Googler, has launched a new platform for finding online wine tasting events.

Bravo. VirtualWineEvents.com is a fantastic aggregator for online tasting events all over the world. Sort of like the YouTube we all need to find just the winery tasting videos.

It is free to the wineries to participate and also saves the links to archived tastings in a searchable database. What an incredible resource for anyone researching wines!

It also divides events into tastings versus webinars - a useful distincion.

You no longer have to rely solely critics scores or questionable consumer reviews or the faking it description from a newbie wine store clerk. (There are also great wine store clerks who generously share their knowledge. - find them and keep them!) But now you can go directly to the source. This is world changing for global wine - the sewing that can stitch the quilt together.

I look forward to checking out the scene and seeing how this new genre evolves.

THIS WEEK

Thanks to Virtual Wine Events, I'm now looking forward to these online events this week:

• In the Bordeaux Vineyard (at 10 am today)

• The Dish on Dirt with the Society of Wine Educators

• Matt Stamp (MW) on Napa Valley terroir with the Napa Valley Vintners

• Taste with Karen - The Great Wines of Oakville

And about so many more.

Sorry, gotta go! I have to join Mary Gorman-McAdams, MW and "dive deep into the Bordeaux vineyard, exploring the climate, soils and grape varieties planted....and look at traditional vineyard practices and how these are evolving and how they shape the styles and quality of the wines produced." (Update: The webinar did not actually deliver on this premise, though).

Bring it on.

See: how it went.

VIDEO: Enjoy a Love Letter to Biodynamic Agriculture (From Kiss the Ground)

So many videos take a technical approach to trying to explain biodynamic. Who was Rudolph Steiner? What are the preps? Is farming by the moon for real? Our common questions are mostly not on target because biodynamics is not about these bits and pieces.

This video gets it right...it's regenerative agriculture that farms with life.

You can also catch the follow on podcast with Rudy Marchesi of Montinore Estate here.

Once you've seen it, hop on over to BD.wine, to explore the more than 50 producers who make wine in the U.S. from biodynamic grapes and check out 250 wines. There are also 100+ wines under $25 for daily drinking.

Visit and subscribe ($25 a year): BD.wine.

And...coming soon...classes on Biodynamic Wines! I'll be announcing more details here soon, or signup for the free email list at BD.wine.

Instagram: It's Not Just Eye Candy Any More

In the era of the pandemic, wineries are waking up to the possibilities of digital marketing.

Here's my new article (featured in the promo photo on the left)
Levels of the Game: Game-Changing Moves on Instagram on how some wineries are powering up their Instagram campaigns and getting results.

Thanks to industry marketing expert, Taylor Eason, and Tablas Creek's social media marketing manager Ian Consoli for their comments.

French Researchers Find Glyphosate Link to Breast Cancer, Leads to More Aggressive Cancer, Also Strikes Younger Women

I missed this study when it first came out, but am glad to share it this week since it's an important chapter in the medical detective novel about herbicides that we are living in the middle of.

French cancer researchers have found that glyphosate causes cancer when it's combined with other risk factors. (Cancers usually develop as a result of multiple factors.)

In studies with rats, the researchers found that when glyphosate was combined with molecules linked to oxidative stress, more cancers resulted. Oxidative stress is the result of aging, smoking, alcohol, diet or other factors. Oxidative stress changes the structure of the genome of the breast, which can accelerate the growth of cancer.

"Especially, herbicides have been increasingly recognized as epigenetic modifiers," the studies' authors wrote in their introduction to the paper published in Frontiers in Genetics.

Glyphosate not only promoted cancer development, it also supercharged cancer both in the disease's severity and target.

• 50% of the rats in the study got cancer

• Cancer growth was more aggressive

• The type of cancer it accelerated is one that attacks younger women

“What was particularly alarming about the tumor growth was that it wasn’t the usual type of breast cancer we see in older women,” Sophie Lelièvre said. “It was the more aggressive form found in younger women, also known as luminal B cancer.”

Lelièvre is a professor of cancer pharmacology at Purdue, which also participated in the study, and serves as the co-leader of Purdue's International Breast Cancer & Nutrition project, a group of medical researchers around the globe.

“This is a major result and nobody has ever shown this before,” says Sophie Lelièvre, professor of cancer pharmacology in Purdue’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “Showing that glyphosate can trigger tumor growth, when combined with another frequently observed risk, is an important missing link when it comes to determining what causes cancer. ”

Read the rest of the story from Purdue here or coverage from Sustainable Pulse here.

The scientific article can be found here.

What to Drink in a Pandemic? Biodynamic Boxed Wines from Italy - And You Can Order Them Online

Pandemic? Don't panic. You can still move the climate change needle towards the good earth citizen end of the dial, avoid in store shopping and drink excellent, inexpensive table wine grown by an Italian coop in the Abruzzo - fair and friendly.

The amazing Lunaria brand winery is my hands down favorite when it comes to recommending a pandemic wine.

Choose your color: red or pink...I am a huge fan of both, though I tend to favor the what I call rosé.

Lunaria's Montepulciano d'Abruzzo

Demeter certified, biodynamic wine from Italy, this wine is $72 for TWO boxes, making it the equivalent of $36 a box or $9 a bottle. It's made by a cooperative on the eastern coast of central Italy  You can order it online from Organic Wine Exchange here.

Lunaria's Pinot Grigio - A Copper Colored "Rosé"

The same cooperative also offers a beautiful crisp, clean Pinot Grigio that is also a lovely balance of fruit and acidity. You can buy it here.

See the comments section for a list of retailers (provided by Mountain People's Wine in California).

Video on Demand: Seralini on Pesticides and Wine

The most brilliant scientists of our generation who are focused on pesticides and environmental health rarely give public lectures. They speak to their peers at professional conferences and present their research findings in peer reviewed journals, preferring to share the precise data and insights and analysis in those circles.

However, we are lucky to have the Environmental Health Symposium's video of Professor Seralini available to see. For $29 (to defray the professional video production costs), you can see and hear this clear and educational presentation from the leading voice against pesticides and about pesticides in wine.

Have a look here (and click on #11) to order.

After Pesticide Testing Revealed Pesticides in Natural Wines, New French Natural Wine Standard Requires Certified Organic Grapes

A definition for natural wine? For years, wine drinkers have been asking the question, "What is a natural wine?"

There have been many answers. For some, no sulfite additions has been the main criteria. Many objected to that definition alone, saying that the intent was to use organic grapes as well. And no other additions.

Quoted in the French wine magazine Vignerons du Val du Loire (use Google translate to see the article in English), the leader of the certification effort, Jacques Carroget, said the certification was needed to prevent the use of non-organic grapes in natural wines.

Carroget said testing for pesticides in natural wines made the standard necessary and that he and others were shocked by the results of testing.

“We realized that some wines had levels of pesticide residues such that it could not have been caused by the neighbors. Clearly, these were not organic wines. It was unthinkable that natural wines were not organic. So a few decided to launch the Syndicate for the Defense of Natural Wines, with a real commitment charter," he's quoted as saying in the Loire publication.

Jacques Carroget, Loire winemaker
and head of the Natural Wines Union

After ten years, the French have adopted a standard that should prevent that from happening again.

The designation comes just three months after Alice Feiring, the American wine writer who paved the way for French natural wine producers in the US and championed their cause, began publicly criticizing the natural wine movement in an article published in the New York Times in December.

"The movement, built on honesty and simplicity, is being corrupted by opportunists," the article's subtitle read.

But in an article published on Wine-Searcher last week, Feiring applauds the new certification standard, which allows the use of the logo for "Vin methode nature" to be applied under two different standards.

One standard is zero sulfites. (The logo pictured above is for the no added sulfite category). A second allowed standard, with a different logo, allows the addition of sulfites up to 30 ppm.

In addition the standard prohibits mechanical harvesting. No filtration is allowed.

For many, the new French certification comes at a time when boundaries on what is "natural" are needed. In the U.S. many natural winemakers would not qualify to use such a standard as they often do not use certified organic grapes and some of the purchased grapes they use are mechanically harvested (typically in order to make prices lower).

[Current standards in the US for organically grown wines allow for two different sulfite levels. Zero sulfites qualifies a wine to be designated "Organic Wine" while a wine with up to 100 ppm can be labeled "Made with Organic Grapes." While only certified organic grapes are included, natural wine enthusiasts often do not like that these wine standards permit a limited number of additives to be used.]

Another longstanding value in the French winemaking movement was that the winemaker also be the winegrower. In the U.S. natural wine making community, this is rare as most wineries are buying grapes from growers. A few are in transition to growing the grapes and exercising more control in the vineyards.

A few natural winemakers in the U.S. do have estate vineyards that are certified organic or biodynamic. These include AmByth Estate and Powicana Farms, both of which make Biodynamic Wines that are certified sulfite free and additive free. Johan Vineyards in Oregon also makes a Zero Zero Pinot Noir that fits this definition and Cooper Mountain Vineyards has one Pinot Noir (Life) as well.

Frey Vineyards also makes some wines at this standard, but in the past Feiring has claimed that Frey's winemaking process (they make 7,000 cases of biodynamic wine and more than 150,000 cases of organic wine, the latter partly from purchased grapes) is "too industrial" to qualify under her own natural wine definition.

I looked in vain online for a website for the certifying body, the Natural Wine Union, but could not find one. If you find it, can you let me know?

Also, although I found several articles on this new natural wine standard (in Forbes, Decanter, Wine-Searcher and Wine Business Daily), none mentioned the pesticide testing issue. I only found that in the Loire publication. And the Loire story mainly mentioned the pesticide testing alarm bells.

Viva la difference?

Note: In the Wine-Searcher article, Tony Coturri is quoted as saying there are many organic growers who are going off certification. I do not see any evidence of that in my research and so if Tony has examples or data to share, I'm all ears.

Online Tasting Videos, The Golden Age At Last: Part 1 - Porter Creek Vineyards

Congratulations, Wine Industry! You're Making Online Tasting Experiences and Recording Them as Videos!

It's 2020, and for years many of us have been wondering: we're online with video, but where are the wineries?

But finally, the day has arrived when even the most camera-shy of our great producers are doing online tastings and video replays.

 Partly, it's because the tasting room is closed, closed and closed and no one knows when they will be able to reopen. And that means the bar on production values is lower now, and people don't expect polished productions with sweeping drone video footage, vineyard shots and music.

Today the bar is just give us some talking heads! Conversation.

But it turns out those conversations are often better than the experience you would have had on the winery's website or by visiting the winery. You can actually hear the winemaker speak, sometimes at length, as they themselves talk about the growing and the tasting.

A Golden Age has arrived.

I'll be sharing a number of these over the coming weeks. To start off, here's Porter Creek Vineyards from Healdsburg, a producer specializing in Pinot Noir from its biodynamic vineyards in the Russian River.

• Porter Creek Vineyards

 

Biodynamics at Troon Vineyard: The Video

Stuck at home? Want a video break that doesn't include corona virus? Check out the regenerative ag that underlies biodynamic wine grape growing.

 I like this video more than many others about biodynamics because it really does show via drone shots the holistic nature of the biodynamic concept.

It's not just about the herbal and mineral sprays, and not just about biodiversity, and not just about soil health. It is an eco system based approach.

 

My Hot Tip from the Oregon Wine Trail

It's not often that I say, "BUY THIS," but at the Oregon Wine Trail tasting yesterday in SF I have to admit I was really wowed by one wine in particular.

The fact that is costs $39 and tastes like wine three times the price is why I feel compelled to mention it here. Purity. Translucence. Finesse.

Here is the wine.

Weed Slayer: Organic Wonder Drug for Weed Control is Just Clove Oil Basically

At Unified Wine Grape Symposium this year, I attended the panel on Weed Control and the big buzz at the end of the 90 minutes panel seemed to be the moment when moderator John Roncoroni asked the audience, "Who here is using Weed Slayer?"

Hands shot up, and most were not from organic growers (who are a tiny percentage of those who attend Unified).

In the race to stop using what Ronconi and others called "the hammer," - i.e. Roundup - growers have been looking for a kinder, gentler replacement for years.

So today's blog post by Craig Camp of Troon Vineyard - a deeper dive into Weed Slayer - is much appreciated.

Slide of the Day | Remember to Count: Chemical Fertilizer Energy Inputs Compared to Compost (Typically Applied in Organic Systems)

Slide from Glenn McGourty presentation

Last week I visited Russell Ranch at U.C. Davis for soil health presentations, including those by Kate Scow and her team who have recently documented the dramatic impact of compost in sequestering carbon.

Today, while searching for something else, I came upon Glenn McGourty's fabulous presentation on soil health and vineyards.

We are often told that "sustainable" wine grape growing is the answer to climate change and soil issues, and that because organic certification does not require regenerative practices, it is not as good for the environment.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as, even though the regulations don't mandate healthier soil practices, most organic growers do use compost.

Tillage turns out to be not nearly as important as previously thought (as long as it's just the top 6 inches, according to the Russell Ranch study's experts).

Slide from Glenn McGourty presentation

The slide above shows that, aside from carbon sequestration alone, compost has HUGE benefits when we look at the resources needed to fertilize soils with chemicals.

You can see McGourty's whole slide deck here.

I guess I haven't yet posted anything about the U.C. Davis trip (except on social media) so here's a link to the published version of their compost research from CalCAN.

And as a slide from the presentation last week shows (see below - the vertical bar on the right) there is vast potential for carbon sequestration in the organic farming example where compost is applied.

In recent years, the U.C. researchers have also added a fourth system in which compost is added to conventional plots with cover crops to see how well soils treated with conventional chemicals sequester carbon.

To date, scientists are divided over what the impacts are of using compost in non-organic systems in terms of the impact on carbon sequestration.

Compost study results from Russell Ranch study, published 2019. The compost (organic) system on the right sequestered
far more carbon - about 0.7% per year which added up to 12% over the length of the study, The study has recently adopted a fourth category - which includes compost with conventional farming. Note that cover crops, while they have many virtues, do not aid in carbon sequestration, according to the researchers.

IN PHOTOS: Slow Wine Guide 2020 Tasting

Slow Wine Guide 2020 kicked off its annual tour yesterday in San Francisco with a sold out tasting at Pier 27.

The event consisted mainly of Italian wineries (the core of the book's focus) and is based on the book Slow Wine Guide 2020. The Italian version of the book contains more than 500 Italian wineries and 1,000 wines and is the bestselling wine book in Italy.

You can download a free copy of the English edition here.

The English version includes 366 Italian wineries and 245 U.S. wines, including 176 from California and 69 from Oregon.

Enjoy these photos of U.S. organic and biodynamic producers from the event:

Lulu McClellan (right) of Handley Cellars in Mendocino's
Anderson Valley
with Don Neel (left) of Practical Winery & Vineyard

Mitch Hawkins (left) and Jerry Baker (right) of
Hawk and Horse Vineyards, located in Lake County's Red Hills AVA

Rosemary Cakebread's delicate Gallica wines (from Napa, Sonoma
and Amador County grapes) were featured at the tasting.

Jason Drew of Drew Family Cellars in Elk (above Anderson Valley in
the Mendocino Ridge AVA) poured his award winning reds and a Chardonnay.

Ehlers Estate winemaker Laura Diaz Munoz

Jeff Chaney from Grimm's Bluff in Santa Barbara County poured the
biodynamic estate's Sauvignon Blancs and Cabs

Slow Wine Guide 2020 | Free EBOOK Here

Happy to announce that the 2020 edition of Slow Wine Guide is now out.

As a Senior Editor for California, I wrote about 60 of the winery listings in this year's guide. It was a pleasure to meet winemakers and to work with Deborah Parker Wong, Senior Editor, and Jeremy Parzen as well as all the field contributors in the two day marathon tasting in Sept. where we tasted all the wines nominated for awards.

California wines just keep getting better and better. What rockstars we have!

Get a free download of the book here:
https://edigita.cantook.net/campaigns/kU9mBoSQD5mA7Tt3/participants/7nPpW3SEb8WruDmH

Slow Wine Guide is the number one bestselling wine book in Italy with more than 5,000 copies sold.

The Slow Wine Guide 2020 Tour kicks off next week:

• February 18th, San Francisco, California: Pier 27, The Embarcadero
• February 19th, Seattle, Washington: Bert & Tot Ballroom, Block 41
• February 21st, Denver, Colorado: Asterisk, Downtown
• February 24th, New York, New York: Union Park, Flatiron
• February 25th, Boston, Massachusetts: Artist for Humanity, Fort Point

UK Organic Wine Sales Up 47%, Says UK Soil Association's Latest Report

A new story published in Forbes today shows that organically grown wine is making great strides in the UK market.

• Sales of organic wines increased 47% to $65 million

"U.K. retailer, Waitrose, is a big winner as it is the largest supplier of organic wine with over 70 organic wines from 18 different countries," the article said.

Organic Yum for Your Valentine: Port Style Wine Paired with Chocolate Covered Walnuts

Good things come in twos like port wine and chocolate covered walnuts. Where can you find them from an organic producer in California? 

From Manzanita Manor Organics.

This Paso based, women owned enterprise grows walnuts and makes a port style wine which they sell along with chocolate covered walnuts. A two pack with both is just $29.

Order now to get them by the all important date-Feb. 14.

I ran into Cynthia and Jutta at the Ecofarm wine tasting this year, where they also featured their delicious chocolate covered walnuts, which I sampled, so I can say this vintage is every bit as good as last year's.

But don't take my word for it. Try them yourself.

The Ecofarm Chronicles | Day One

Once again, the farmers went to the sea. The organic clan is gathering for its annual migration to Monterey's Asilomar conference center for the 40th Ecofarm conference. A stellar lineup of speakers enthralled, depressed and rallied the tribe.

Great science presentations are a tradition. This year, pesticide researcher and government whistleblower Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, kicked off the conference with an opening speech on the need for growing the grassroots movement for regenerative agriculture.

Jonathan Lundgren presents the case for regenerative ag in a workshop Thursday at Ecofarm. Video of his keynote was livestreamed on Facebook and will be posted on the Ecofarm YouTube channel.

A former USDA scientist, Lundgren's research on the effects of neonicotinoids on monarch butterflies was too hot for the chemical industry to handle and it was suppressed.

In 2015, he filed an official whistleblower complaint (during the Obama administration) and was later dismissed from his government position.

Today he works with the grassroots movements in regenerative ag from his farm in South Dakota, (Blue Dasher Farm) and Ecdysis Foundation with students.

"What we need is a Manhattan Project for bees. That is what we need for food production," Lundgren told workshop attendees at a morning session on bees and pesticides. "Millions of dollars have been spent on keeping a broken system. It's time instead to change agriculture."

"Our current systems are fundamentally flawed and heading for a cliff. We need to burn them all down and rebuild them."

Lundgren said new methods are also more profitable.

"Regenerative agriculture is more successful. The systems are transferrable, scaleable and successful. More organic matter in the soil increases yields."

Stacy Malkan of U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit that focuses on transparency in the food system, talked about the pesticide-propaganda chemical industrial complex, pointing out the heavy disinformation systems that chemical companies utilize to sway public opinion, government policy and science itself. Aside from direct subsidies, the companies employ an army of PR professionals and consultants, she said, pointing to newly released documents.

In a Jan. 2020 article entitled The Playbook for Poisoning the Earth by Lee Fang, Malkan said that recently released documents included in the article show the full scope of chemical industry's influence which is more entrenched and well funded than has been known.

"As Gary Kasparov says," Malkan stated, "the point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is too exhaust your critical thinking to annihilate the truth."

In another session, on vine mealybugs, U.C. entomologist Kent Daane and vineyard manager
Erin Amaral reviewed strategies for combatting vine mealybugs.

In the past, the dangerous neurotoxin chlorpyrifos has been used in attempts to suppress the vineyard pest. Its use has tapered off, and beginning in two years, the chemical will no longer be available for use in California.

Daane and Amaral outlined major biocontrol efforts with different types of predators and parasitoids and a discussion of the pros and cons of each.

The audience was captivated by Daane's videos of mealybugs secreting poison to kill predator ants.

Growers face difficult challenges in keeping vine mealy bugs in check whether they use conventional  or approved organic methods, though the organic growers' challenges appear to be greater. Growers using conventional methods are spending about $80-120 an acre at a minimum, Amaral said.

Organic solutions were more costly.

An audience member asked Daane about his view of drone programs to drop predator eggs into vineyards. Daane said he thought drone delivery may not be as effective as spot placement of larvae on infested vines.

"First of all, I don't like using the eggs, because they are not as effective as releasing larvae. And when they are dropped by drone, they might fall on the ground rather than the and don't get to the leaves, where they're needed. More work needs to be done to determine its efficacy" he said.

Bob Quinn's concluding slide in his presentation the past, present and
future of organic farming. After, lunch, attendees heard from keynoter Bob Quinn (a presentation that will later be posted on YouTube) who outlined a vision for the future of organic farming.

Quinn called on the audience to visualize a new form of homeland security - one that encompassed food sovereignty as basic to security. Tying food to health was another key component of his vision for the future.

"Sixty years ago we used to spend 18 percent of our income on food and 5 percent on healthcare (or sick care). Today we spend 9 percent on food and 16 percent on healthcare. It's roughly the same amount of money. We made food cheap and abundant at the cost of our health," he said.

Thirdly, Quinn said, regenerative, organic agriculture is the right way to address climate change.

Quinn, a grain farmer in Montana, went organic in 1991. He launched the KAMUT brand of durum wheat.

He called upon organic farmers to switch the economic system from Commodity to Community and told the story of a community project to help the local Indian reservation residents switch their diets.

"We live near a large Indian reservation where a many people have diabetes," he said. "Working together we were able to help them start growing their own grain on 500 acres and now they are putting in a new flour mill. We helped them start growing lentils, which they can use for oil, too."

The crowd gave him a standing ovation.

Surendra Dara and Pam Marrone at Ecofarm

U.C. scientist Surendra Dara presented an afternoon session on beneficials, an emerging area of research in agriculture. Dara has worked food crops but said he will soon be devoting some of his time to wine grapes.

Biopesticide entrepreneur Pam Marrone attended Dara's workshop and the two indirectly discussed possible new fungi based products they might collaborate on in the future.

SF Wine Competition: Best of Class - The Organic Winners

Three organically grown wines got Best of Class awards at the SF Chronicle Wine Competition this week.

1. McFadden Vineyards' Brut 

A local's $35 bottle once again bested brands like Domaine Carneros and other well heeled labels. McFadden's Brut has been a winner in the Brut category more often than not for almost a decade.

(Its sparkling rosé is also a top choice, but in limited production).

2. King Estate's Domaine Pinot Gris

A knockout wine (at $29) this limited production wine from the southern end of Oregon's Willamette Valley is made from biodynamic grapes.

It also got a 93 point score from Wine & Spirits magazine.

3. Carol Shelton's Wild Thing Zinfandel

Sourced almost entirely from organically grown grapes, this affordable ($19) Zinfandel is partially fermented on native yeasts, a feat few can match at this case production level (8-10,000 cases). The grapes come from Mendocino.

The annual public tasting of these wines takes place in SF on Sat. Feb. 15.

The Decade in Review: What You Were Reading 2010-2019 | Most Popular Topic (#1 in a Series)

Dear Readers: congrats, you're an inquiring bunch.  You've been willing to follow me over hill and dale into a wide variety of wine topics. I salute you for that.

I've just taken a look at the most viewed blog posts of the decade (well, only back to 2011, which is when I started this blog), knowing not much but wanting to learn a lot. Look where our collective curiosity has taken us, from zero to 450,000+ page views.



I've never been one to try to get page views (if I was, I would have been much more active on instagram et al), but it was helpful that Google Blogger counted them for me and could show me all the posts that got more than 1,000 page views. There were more than 25, so I've grouped them into major topics. Here's today's topic, which got the most page views as a group.

1. Wine Industry Green Marketing aka Greenwashing

Is the wine industry great a green marketing or what?

From rebranding government enforcement guidelines (Napa) to declaring 100% victory (Sonoma), the industry sometimes really outdoes itself.

Examples:

• The original Napa Green vineyard certification was a rebranding of the Fish Friendly Farming guidelines (which combined federal, state and local fish protection regulations), laws that were already in effect on growers. (Napa Green was modified over the years, but not a lot).

But wineries got to put a green logo on their websites and claim they were creating green farming programs.

Now sustainability is a great movement and a good goal, but the vintners proved to be extremely adept at overstating their accomplishments and understating what really changed in quantifiable terms, despite their annual sustainability reports. They also obscured the fact that sustainability doesn't have much, if anything, to do with pesticide reduction, which was not their program's primary goal.

And they were so successful that they were able to pay higher grape prices for sustainable grapes (versus organic grapes), leading to a reduction in organic grape production in Mendocino and leading Bonterra to court walnut farmers in Lake County (offering 20 year contracts for organic grapes) in an attempt to grow its organic grape supply chain.

• Sonoma's been the most visible offender in overstating what is not obvious to consumers. Their sustainability programs are so diverse even for one county that no wine professional (good luck to you WSET types) or consumers can even discern what they mean.

Sonoma lowered the bar as far as it could possibly go, letting growers and wineries choose four different standards (some with teeth, mostly not) for their vineyard certification and three other standards for their winery.

What Sustainable Means: Lots of Consumers Think It's Organic (But It's Not)

The two standards with teeth (that Sonoma recognizes among four total) were originally regional programs--Lodi Rules and SIP (Sustainable in Practice, from the Central Coast]--developed at the local level and not meant to get everyone into the tent, but to set a high--or medium high-- bar. They really were a challenge to do better.

Then Big Wine got into the game, and they've got a lot of power and money. Companies like Walmart decided to adopt sustainability requirements and required all their suppliers to meet them. Big Wine had to have a dress to go to the ball in.

So the Certified Sustainable Winegrowing program was created. The experts on using less in the vineyard were, of course, the organic folks, like Andy Hoxsey and Paul Dolan, who took leadership roles in trying to get their brethren to stop using so much water and so many chemical fertilizers.

But the CSWA program eroded the medium high bar, replacing it with a notion of continuous process improvement and until recently permitting anyone to use the worst neurotoxins on the planet (paraquat, chlorpyrifos, etc.) and be CSWA certified if they promised to do better next year.

But the CSWA has a lot of money to do marketing and suddenly there was a glossy book on sustainability for consumers and self promotional videos on what a great job sustainable farmers were doing (without ever mentioning pesticide use). And they continue to "educate" the wine industry in free seminars at the SF Wine School and elsewhere, which the organic and biodynamic folks never get to do.

Just like Trump voters, "persuadable" consumers were easily convinced to the point where the industry's own marketing studies find that 43% of consumers think sustainable means organic, an impression the sustainability industry does nothing to correct. In the case of the Sonoma growers, it is an impression they, in fact, actively cultivated (with Marimar Torres).

As the devoted Napa land use lion and organic grower Volker Eisele (who was influential in my education) put it:

"The wine industry is focused on "sustainability" - and not pesticide reduction - because the wine industry is the most adept at marketing and they know the market. The market wants something green. And so this is why you have all these euphemisms. You call it "sustainable" farming practice. You do all these things. 

"I say, "sustainable" farming practices is counting the bugs before you spray them. It is undefined. Nobody knows what sustainable practices are because the obvious thing would be that ultimately if you are sustainable, you get rid of poison. And you would have to have other standards - erosion prevention, and habitat restoration, and all of those things - they should come automatically. But it's all very nebulous."

Sonoma Certified Sustainable press conference amid vines that have nothing but BARE SOIL (a sustainability no no) between the vine rows. Green cover is recommended. These rows have either been extensively sprayed with herbicide or tilled until the soil is dead. Let's hope 99% of growers don't do this or we're not going to see any carbon drawdown.)

Here are the top posts on this topic:

6,687 page views
• Dark Side of Sonoma's Sustainability Movement: No to Organics, Deep Deception and When is a Standard a Standard? (Part 1)
(I removed this from the blog for 18+ months and only restored it as an archive post this week).

3,237 page views
• Part 2

1,855 page views
• Sonoma Gets Its (Toxics) Closeup: What's On Those Vines? A Look at Carcinogens, Neurotoxins, and More

1,057 page views
• The Emperor's New (Green Marketing) Clothes: "Sustainability" Program Ramps Up in Sonoma - Headed by Marketing Professor

Extra:
557 page views
• Sonoma's Certified Sustainable Glyphosate: Average of 81,319 Pounds Each Year for Four Years in a Row

Other stories include:

1,304 page views
Your Tax Dollars At Work: UC Davis Professor Dr. Carl Winters of UCCE Shares Song "I Sprayed It On a Grapevine" with Sonoma Growers at DPR Accredited Educational Event--"No Problems with Glyphosate"

The most wild ass video of the decade had to be the Sonoma viticultural "education" event that featured Carl Winters trying to get a group of growers to accompany him in singing his last song (while on the government's pay roll, but he still gets a pension), "I Sprayed it on a Grapevine" sung to the tune of "I Heard it Through the Grapevine."

Despite the latest medical reports on glyphosate's connection with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, thousands of lawsuits (three of them successful at the time) and UC medical research on the connection with liver disease, Winters told growers there were no problems with glyphosate and dismissed the UN scientists' assessement of glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. (The IARC scientists, who tend to be conservative, are generally regarded in medical circles as the gold standard).

1,286 page views
In the New York Times, Another Greenwashing Story About Wine: Why?
Painful to witness was a New York Times piece written, not by a wine professional, but by a reporter apparently offered a junket by Kendall Jackson. (I am assuming actually that the paper would have paid for all of his expenses). Having been mentored by a former top NYTimes editorial board member and editor (James P. Brown, now deceased), I was particularly appalled.

Did David Gelles, a business reporter, really have no idea how he was being played?

My dream is that good folks at Columbia Journalism Review and journalism schools everywhere would use this post as fodder for how not to cover an industry. Gelles seems to have taken everything at face value and includes no corroborating sources. The part where the Jacksons take him on a helicopter ride should have been a clue as to how sustainable they really were. (And why are they meeting with the National Wildlife & Fisheries guy? Did they do something wrong?) If only Greta had been there.

I'll continue to on to the other major topics in The Decade in Review in the days to come.

Ding Dong the Wicked Witch—Chlorpyrifos (Used on 5% of Wine Grapes)—is Dead (But Only Sort Of): California Bans Sales (But Not Yet Use) Effective February 6

Five percent of California's wine grape
growers use Lorsban, a restricted material
linked for years to neurological diseases in
children and adults.

For decades, scientists—and especially pediatricians—have been calling for a ban on chlorpyrifos, an old school insecticide that is used by conventional and, sadly, yes, sustainable growers.

Starting Feb. 6, sales of the neurotoxin in California will be banned.

Glasses up! Break out the bubbly!

But maybe fill up the glasses only half or a quarter full, since this is not actually a full glass victory.

Over the years, I have written a number of articles about chlorpyrifos in the wine industry.

Sold as Lorsban, the insecticide has a dark history—invented by war chemists in Germany before World War II)—and has been in the cross hairs of public health authorities since the 1980's.

For the last year data is available—2017—California wine grape growers used 49,417 pounds on 26,430 acres.

Why should we care about this dastardly chemical? And will banning its sale in the state end its use?

• In a pesticide hair testing study conducted by the Greens in Europe, it was found in 10% of the 150+ participants.

• It's linked by numerous scientific studies to neurological conditions—including damaging child brain development—and neurological diseases like Alzehimer's and Parkinson's.

• It contaminates water supplies in California where it's used (now mostly in the Central Valley, but it's been used in Sonoma, Napa, Monterey and elsewhere over decades. It's becoming increasingly popular on wine grapes in the Tulare region). A story published by Environmental Health News about the study conducted by Beate Ritz (an expert who also testified in the Roundup trials, but that's another story) published in Environmental Health Perspectives summarized the study's findings:

People drinking well water within 500 meters of a dozen or more of the pesticides had a 66 percent greater rate of Parkinson’s, the study says. Airborne exposure only slightly increased the risk. [Boldings mine.]

• It also pollutes the air. 

• It is highly toxic to bees.

Heard enough?

• In 2015, the EPA said it wanted to ban the pesticide, but the wheels of government moved slowly. Cal EPA issued a press release in 2015 expressing its concerns over chlorpyrifos and worker safety. Its report stated,

"We are concerned about some workers who mix, load and apply chlorpyrifos to agricultural and other non-residential sites...We are also concerned about workers who work around areas that are treated with chlorpyrifos as part of their jobs." 

When Trump assumed power he killed the proposed nationwide ban.

Surprisingly

• Sustainable wine growers in the Wine Institute's Certified Sustainable Winegrowing program may use it but only during the first year of certification. (Why would this be allowed?) It is used to wipe out nematodes in replanting vineyards, controlling vine mealybugs and other uses. Basically, it's an exterminator.

• The California Association of Winegrape Growers, showing no compassion towards workers, residents or health officials (or the reputation of their industry) opposed the ban on selling it. According to an article published on Wine Business.com, the growers "and other agricultural organizations argued chlorpyrifos as another 'tool' in the farmers’ 'toolbox.'"

Sadly

• No one can legally buy chlorpyrifos in the state of California, but it is available outside of California. While California is now on the road to banning its use, that milestone, if approved, is two years away, according to state authorities. They are moving to cancel its use after a period of transition in which $5.7 million has been allocated to help growers using it try other products.

For now, its use was not made illegal—only its sale—so it remains a restricted material.

That means county ag commissioners must issue permits for its use. While ag commissioners are able to grant or deny permits, they cannot actually deny a permit for a legal chemical and it is still legal to use chlorpyrifos.

Just ask the Sonoma County ag commissioner's office: they had to give Sonoma Cutrer a permit to spray it on 100 acres in 2017. "We can't prohibit it because it is legal to use it, even though it's restricted," a spokesperson for the office said. Locals were alarmed. And rightly so. There is no requirement to warn when spraying is approved or about to take place.

UCLA researchers have documented the problem of ag commissioners' reluctance or inability to stop the use of restricted materials, writing a report on ag commissioners' track records. Read their full report here or local news coverage here. Certain counties will be more or less likely to continue granting permits.

A FEW CASE STUDIES FROM NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WINE COUNTRY

• SONOMA

Gallo used 147 gallons of chlorpyrifos on 400 acres at its Two Rock vineyard.

Gallo sprayed 147 gallons of it over Gina Gallo's favorite Chardonnay vineyard, Two Rock, in Petaluma in 2015.

Sonoma Cutrer sprayed it on 100 acres in Sonoma in 2017. (Source: Sonoma County Ag Commissioner's public data—pesticide use report records—available from the county ag commissioner's office upon request).

Parents with children in nearby schools and homes are not required to be notified when the spray is used.

• NAPA

Laird Family in Napa (and Sonoma) has consistently used chlorpyrifos for years.

It is the largest land owner in Napa with 5% of the county's vines.

So why are Laird Family's wines sold even at Whole Foods in Berkeley? (You'll have to ask Whole Foods' wine experts or post on Whole Foods social media.)

Take a look at the second post on chlorpyrifos here to see maps of where wineries used it from 2000 to 2017 (latest year data is available). 

Wine Geeks: How to Relax Over the Long Holiday Weekend—Watch Fungi and Wonder About Their Influence on Wine

The weather's cold. It's time for a fire and a feast. And the warmth of the boobtube?

Many of us will have a little leisure time this coming week (after Thursday) and look for some kickback time - possibly spent on a screen.

I can recommend a few fun options.

BIG SCREEN

The movie Fantastic Fungi is now in (obscure, art) movie theaters in the Bay Area and maybe where you live. I saw it this weekend at the delightfully quirky New Parkway Theater in Oakland where it's playing until Nov. 28. It's also going to the Roxie in SF. 

“Louie Schwartzberg’s lightly informative, delightfully kooky documentary, “Fantastic Fungi,” offers nothing less than a model for planetary survival.” NY Times Review

“Schwartzberg’s film quickly proves to be one of the year’s most mind-blowing, soul-cleansing and yes, immensely entertaining triumphs.” - Roger Ebert

Yes, you can take the whole family, including visiting relatives. The time lapse action will entertain them all. And you.

After the film, which is mind blowing and FUN, you may find your appetite has simply been whet. Not satisfied? Move on to...

YOUR OWN SCREEN

Genius researcher and explainer Paul Stamets has a lot of great YouTube talks (including TED talks) but to my mind, the best one by far is the one he gave at EcoFarm in 2017, just two short years ago. You will see just how much radically inspiring, super cool scientific discoveries he's been making about mushrooms.

One example is saving the bees with fungi. Yes, saving the bees.

Yes, there's fun stuff about magic mushrooms, but the magic of mushrooms goes so much further than even what Timothy Leary and the Terence and Dennis McKenna experienced.

Find out what I'm talking about in Stamets' talk. One example: antiviral properties in mushrooms that inspired the Dept. of Homeland Security in a post 9-11 world to give grant money to study Stamets' mushroom collection where it was discovered that out of 200,000 antivirals, one mushroom compound proved the most effective way of combatting potential bioterrorism. Or the largest network of fungi—in Oregon—that covers four square miles.

Stamets' latest research probes ways to save the bees, and succeeds in using mushroom extracts to kill off the varroa mites infecting and killing bee colonies. There's hope!

After watching these videos, the next morning it became clear to me what is happening in biodynamics is that the cow poop aged in cowhorns decomposes with the help of fungi. The powdery substance that emerges after six months is teeming with fungi.

Who knows: it may turn out that the sole reason that the tea known as 500 (a solution of the thoroughly decomposed poop) works is that it is an effective way of spreading an awesome antiviral (fungi) on the vines.

Who needs chemical fungicides when nature's are at work?

It also means we should be re-examining the impacts of using chemical fungicides: are they killing off the useful fungi deep in the soil that's pulling those minerals out of the rock layer and into the vines? Now I want to know more about arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, which a friend told me about today, and its role in grapevine soil.

Do we know which precise fungi are in 500? It would be likely that it varies from farm to farm, and yet...do we know? Where's the research?

Was the specificity of the instructions for making 500 an attempt to control the process so certain fungi would appear?

Stamets goes on to talk about how the red bellied polypore mushroom degrade pesticides, including DDT.

Today, I walked out into my yard where there are four giant eucalyptus trees and for the first time, one of them had a mushroom at the base of it. (Rain had not started yet at that point).     

Are mushrooms ready to tell their story?

Organic Champagne?! Mais Oui! French Group Proudly Flaunts Their Eco-Cred, Dispelling the "Organic Wine Stigma"

Morgane Fleury of Champagne Fleury, the oldest biodynamic grower in Champagne,
at the San Francisco tasting organized by the Association des Champagnes Biologiques.
She also runs a wine shop in Paris, Ma Cave Fleury, carrying her family's wines.

France's vintners have embraced organic wine growing and certification in far more vast numbers than U.S. producers, but there's big divide between those who make fine wines and those who make lower priced, table wines in how the groups talk about organics.

Overall, the table wine producers from Languedoc-Roussillon and other regions are happy to put the Ecocert (organic certifier in France) logo on their bottles and exhibit at Millesieme Bio, but fine wine producers with certified organic vines in Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhone and elsewhere haven't been so enthusiastic about waving their organic flags. (The situation is the same here in the U.S. Substitute Mendocino for Languedoc-Roussillon for the table wines and Napa/Sonoma for the fine wines).

Now comes a vanguard--what a breath of fresh air--an organized, proud and effervescent gang of organic Champagne producers.

Vincent Couche was the first Champagne grower and one of the first vintners in Champagne to become biodynamic

Grower champagne, or terroir champagne (probably a more accurate term) flourishes in the margins of the Champagne region but not all producers are working organically and fewer still certify or bottle label their organic certification. (The same is true of producers in the U.S. In Napa, out of 50 wineries with certified organic vines making at least one wine solely from certified grapes, only 10 label their organic certification on the back label).

No other organic fine wine producers have risen to the organic communications challenge, proudly declaring the benefits of organic and exhibiting as a group.

The Champenois do so amidst a region that uses the most pesticides on wine grapes in all of France. (The black regions in the map below show the highest use of pesticides. The black region in the upper right is Champagne.)

In their first American tour, the group of 15 producers from the Association des Champagnes Biologiques took over San Francisco's Cerf Club Tuesday for an intimate, informal trade tasting. Only two percent of the region's producers have certified organic vines (up from 0.5% in 2009), but they're ready to make noise about it. (There are a total of 63 producers in the region with certified organic vines. Roughly 1,400+ acres [out of a total of 83,000+] in Champagne are certified organic. Fewer still are certified biodynamic).

Though I only found out about the tasting at the last minute from a friend on Facebook who was in attendance, it was enough to make me drop everything and drive over the bridge for the last precious hour of the tasting.

No more having to go booth by booth and having to ask, "Are you organic?" as is standard protocol at most tasting events. (Though I often ask tasting organizers in advance which producers I might target who are organic, it is usually impossible to get a list of them.) No more smirks and stares, like why would being organic be important? And why would certification matter?

Here, to my profound amazement, I not only met many of the 15 organic producers but also more than a few Demeter certified biodynamic producers. Some of these producers have been organic since 1971 and biodynamic since 1989.

The natural wine magazine Glou Glou features an interview in its Champagne issue with Jean-Pierre Fleury, the first to go down the biodynamic path.

From Glou Glou, Champagne issue, No. 1 (Sorry I wasn't able to find a link
online to purchase the issue, or I would have posted it here).

The association was selling copies of Glou Glou (now transformed into Super Glou, a New York based importer) which covered the region's organic producers. They wrote about AND defended certification, a rare phenomenon. In the U.S., most natural wine people do not like to talk about certification. It's almost a dirty word: like, "what, you don't believe us?! Trust us." (I wouldn't; ask to see the spray reports. And be sure to do it on a wine by wine basis with U.S. natural wine producers since most are buying grapes from uncertified sources.)

ORGANIC PRIDE

Bottle Labeling

Each producer had the little green leaf, the Ecocert label, on the back of the bottle.

Why Organic Matters

Glou Glou's coverage talked about growers' practices and why they are so important. It had a frank explanation about copper. (Headline: "Copper is a problem invented by industrial agriculture to undermine organic farming.") It had a timeline of the organic movement in Champagne. It had explanations about soil, and terroir, and root depth. Without the bullshit.

Why Excuses for Not Being Certified Are Just Excuses

There was a section called "The Gaslighting of Organics," detailing the typical excuses given by other wineries for not being organic.

They were all too familiar: "It's too expensive." (In the U.S. it ranges from $11-40 an acre, a little known fact. If you can't afford that, should you really be in the wine business?) Their answer: Ecocert certification fees are 800-1,500 euros a year. Which translates into costs of one to two cents per bottle. 

How much time does certification take? Their answer: 3 hours a year maybe? But it's worth it because, "it gives our customers greater transparency."

For those who don't certify, they had these words: "In Champagne, there are lots of people who say they're organic, but not certified. Why? Because they're not organic," says Vincent Laval in Glou Glou.

Pascal Doquet echoes that observation, "Winemakers who say they farm organically but aren't certified are almost always liars, That is to say, they use chemicals in difficult years and they're organic 80-90 percent of the time." (I would say this applies to more than a few producers in the U.S., too). He continues, "I don't know a single winemaker in Champagne who actually farms organically in Champagne who is not certified. Anyone who is not certified continues to justify the existence of the chemical industry. For me, they're against organic farming."

And most damningly, in keeping with my own horror show responses to wine shops (including natural wine shops), Doquet describes his visit to New York wine sellers with Laval: "Everything there was labeled 'organic' or 'organic practicing' or 'organic non-certified.' Yet it was nothing but chemical farming."

Reports on farming practices provided by wine sales reps should be taken at face value.

"Anyone who's not certified can spray pesticides whenever they damn well please."

THE WINES SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

Although I only made it through about 5 to 6 producers' wares, the wines were uniformly fantastic and showed the nuances of terroir and subsoils. It's a pleasure to taste the terroir.

Retail prices were in line with other Champagne producers, with entry level bottles in the $35-50 tier and special bottles around $75 and up. Many also made a zero dosage or no sulfite Champagne as well.

Georges Laval, certified organic since 1974

Georges Laval's boxes show where the wine is from, a lovely touch for those
marketing wines of terroir

Lucie Cheurlin of Champagne L & S Cheurlin

Dominique LeLarge-Pugeot and her husband 
Dominique are the seventh generation at the family 
estate; they are also Demeter certified biodynamic.

Cheurlin

LEARN MORE

To learn more about the producers, visit the association's excellent website or visit the 15 producers this weekend at Raw Wine in LA, where I imagine they will be quite a hit. 

You can also read Terroir Champagne, by the very capable Caroline Henry (featured in a previous blog post here) who lives in Champagne and writes regularly about the organic and biodynamic producers in the region. Her book is the indispensable guide.