Winegrowing has changed more in the last 60 years than in the previous 5,000 years.

Maybe this is hard for you to believe. It was for me.

For thousands of years, humans have been harvesting grapes by hand. Just a few decades ago, giant machine harvesters, with their vibrating paddles beating grapes off the vines, made their way into the vineyards of France.

For thousands of years, winegrowers allowed other plants to grow in their vines, or they dug them out with slowly evolving tools. In the last few decades, an avalanche of chemical and other synthetic products have flooded the market to allow farmers to kill everything in the vineyard except for the vines.

For thousands of years, wine was made by harvesting grapes, crushing them, letting the juice sit until the wild yeasts in the air transformed the sugar in the juice into alcohol (the process known as fermentation), and bottling the wine in an animal skin, a clay pot, or eventually in glass bottles. In the last few decades, winemakers have been able to choose from a virtual panoply of cultivated yeasts in order to start fermentation. Do you want your fermentation to go quickly? Slowly? Do you need a yeast that tolerates a high level of pH? Do you want to make sure that fermentation starts when you want it to?

For hundreds of years, wine has been made in stone caves, the constant and cool temperatures allowing for slow fermentations and gentle aging. A winemaker today can purchase a state-of-the-art stainless steel tank, with computer-monitored temperature controls that connect with an app on her phone for easy surveillance.

The list of advancements goes on and on. Some of these have been positive, such as advancements in cellar hygiene. Some have been downright awful, for the health of the vineyard, for the health of wine drinkers, and for the health of the earth.

This is not the forum for an expansive look at organic farming and its differences with conventional farming, in some sort of broad sense. There are plenty of resources from which to learn about this. Instead, I’d like to give a short history of what brought us to this point in France, discuss what organic and biodynamic farming means from a practical standpoint in the vineyards, and the approach that I take when looking at the viticultural and winemaking methods of potential new growers.

THE RISE OF “CONVENTIONAL” VITICULTURE IN FRANCE

At 02:41 in the morning on May 7th, 1945, the German High Command, sitting at a desk in Champagne, signed the Instrument of Surrender in WWII. There would be celebrations, of course, but the real work of rebuilding France had begun. In addition to the rebuilding of houses, town halls, and entire towns in some cases, France had to rebuild her economy. The years immediately following the war were tough, and the food rations that the French were obliged to use during the German occupation remained in effect. In an effort to lower the cost of food, the French government devised a plan to essentially industrialize the agricultural segment of the economy. The idea was to dramatically reduce the cost of production and with this, reduce the weekly food bill for French families.

Part of the plan to rebuild the economy lay in the construction of a stable, dynamic, and healthy agricultural industry that would eventually be self-sufficient. Until that time of self-sufficiency, however, France would pump millions of francs into French agriculture, including large investments in the vineyard sector. Winemakers were encouraged to use new products in their vineyards, much of it moving from chemical labs to chemical factories to wine country. These new products were largely designed to accomplish two main tasks.

The first was to protect the plant against insects and disease. Even though almost 100 years had passed since the phylloxera blight that destroyed tens of thousands of acres of vines in France, the pain was still fresh. Insects and vine disease could wipe out of parcel of vines in a short period of time, and for the wine industry to thrive, the government needed maximum production. Yes, organic methods to combat these were available, and some growers still used them, but the vast majority of winemakers bought into this new system, and in most cases, saw their fortunes rise.

The second task was to eliminate all competition for water or nutrients in the vineyards. These new chemicals, which could be dissolved in water and sprayed between the vine rows, killed all plant life that was not a grapevine. The idea is that without competition, the vine produces more fruit, and that is exactly what happened. With this increase in plant vigor came larger grapes, larger bunches, and larger harvests. What was less important was the fact that these larger grapes didn’t have larger flavor. In fact, they lacked concentration. These plump grapes might be beautiful, but the flavor hidden beneath their skins was less concentrated and held fewer smells and tastes specific to the place from which they came. Flavor, and the health of the earth, was sacrificed on the altar of “progress”. The government’s idea that if everyone worked the same way, then everyone would thrive, mostly worked; at least for the wineries that stayed in business.

Because, you see, what came from this was a mass homogenization of the wine industry, as well as virtually all agricultural segments across the country. The industrial food system was being born in France, and wealthier land owners, farmers, and winemakers, used their resources to buy up neighboring plots of land. The numbers of French farms declined quite sharply as these larger farms and wineries saw the earth as simply a platform through which to transform vegetal and animal “material” into products that could be sold in the newly-built supermarkets that had begun to sprout up in France. The supermarchés of France demanded product, and lots of it. French agriculture, and viticulture, was now in a position to respond. Within a few years, producing wine using these new methods became known as “conventional.” Organic viticulture and winemaking, practiced for thousands of years, was now the outlier.

ORGANIC AND BIODYNAMIC VITICULTURE

Starting in the late 1960’s, and coinciding with a rejection in some parts of society of the “consumer culture,” organic agriculture began to make a slow comeback. It took decades for this organic snowball to roll faster and faster down the hill, and there’s still a long way to go, but most growers at least recognize the value in a cleaner viticulture, regardless of whether or not they practice it. Some winemakers aren’t willing to make the plunge because they deem it too costly. Some are constrained by their parents, with whom many young winemakers are still in business. Family members sometimes fear that by dramatically changing the way they grow the grapes, they could lose an entire year’s crop, or that if it happens more than once, the winery itself. Some winemakers grow grapes to produce a product, much like wheat or barley, and not for the passion of the profession. It’s easy to understand, as there is often massive pressure on a son or daughter to take over the family winery that has been in existence for 400 years. If you’re not passionate about what you do, working organically is a lot of work.

So what is organic wine growing? It simply means that no synthetic chemicals were used in the vineyard including pesticides and herbicides. To combat these, winemakers have to look to the methods of their ancestors, such as plowing between the rows to control weeds. But to be clear, organic wine growing and organic wine are different things altogether. If grapes are grown organically, the wine might not be organic, since some wineries add synthetic products to the juice and wine.

Think of biodynamic farming as organic ++. Do you remember when your grandparents used the farmer’s almanac to tell them when to plant and when to harvest? That practice, the idea of performing farming tasks according to lunar cycles, is a critical part of biodynamic farming. There’s also the idea that the vineyard should be part of its environment, not separate from it. Biodynamic vineyards often look like they are in a state of controlled chaos, with the vineyard blending almost seamlessly into the fields or woods that surround it. There is a large amount of attention spent on developing the microbial life of the soil in the vineyard. The soils in a biodynamic vineyard are teeming with life and vitality. Although the philosopher Rudolf Steiner is credited as being the father of biodynamics, the fact is that many of these practices have been in place for centuries.

As you can imagine, both of these methods are much healthier for the earth, for the environment near the vines, for the health of those who work the vines, and for the eventual drinker of those wines. Most of us can see the overwhelming good that comes from organic and biodynamic farming. But is there a practical reason for the winemaker to employ these practices, separate from an ethical or moral one? There is.

Conventionally-grown vines are given fertilizer to promote growth, and benefit from no competition for water or nutrients. All other plants in the vineyards are killed by herbicides. As a result, they don’t need to send their roots deep into the earth for sustenance. All that they need is on the surface. The root system is incredibly shallow and may only descend for 18 inches in some cases. Vines grown organically must dig deeper into the earth for water and nutrients, since there is more competition for these things. Biodynamically-grown vines sent their roots deeper still.

Why does this matter? From a pragmatic point of view, deep, well-developed root systems can brave tough climatic conditions better than those whose roots are near the surface. When there’s a “bad” vintage, the organic vines are able to better weather the storm, so to speak, and produce wines that are generally higher in quality than those of their neighbors. Another reason, as I touched on earlier, is that vines that are stressed and in a fight for hydration and food put less energy into growing leaves and large bunches of grapes. There is a marked difference in the size of conventionally-grown grape bunches and biodynamically-grown bunches. The latter are much smaller, but those small berries are packed with flavor and concentration.

Do you prefer quality or quantity? I choose quality.

WINERIES IN MY PORTFOLIO

I believe that we have an ethical and moral obligation to be kind to the earth and to each other. Wineries that make organic and biodynamic wines are doing both, by helping their vineyards return to Mother Nature and by producing wines that do no harm to the consumer.

I am also convinced that organic and biodynamic viticulture produces wines that are alive, dynamic, and soulful. I’ve come to that conclusion through tasting thousands and thousands of wines from both conventional and organic/biodynamic farming. Yes, I’ve enjoyed conventionally-made wines, as we all have. But there is a difference between enjoying something and feeling a connection with it. We feel connection with living things, and these wines are living, breathing proof of that.

My portfolio is based on properties that work in this way, and the people who work these vineyards are as dynamic and soulful as their wines. You have to be passionate to put in the hours required to make wines such as these. When I phone a winemaker, and he is still on his tractor plowing at 10:00 p.m., I’m reminded of this. This work is not for the faint of heart. But it’s worth it.

A few years ago, I wrote a manifesto that still guides my work today. A portion of it reads, “The properties with which I work are consumed with making true wines – wines that are true to where they come from, true to the earth, and true to the winemaker’s obsession with quality. We work with properties who farm using either organic or biodynamic methods. 90% of our properties are certified organic or biodynamic, and all practice organic methods. We wholly support winemakers who harvest by hand, use indigenous yeasts, and who vinify with little intervention. All are leaders in their appellations and harvest at dramatically lower yields than their neighbors. Above all else, they are farmers.”

You should taste a salty, savory old-vine chenin blanc from Thierry Michon at Domaine Saint Nicolas, or perhaps a layered, complex pinot meunier Champagne from Françoise Bedel. These are transporting wines, as are the other wines in the portfolio. Taste these, and I think you’ll understand why this is the stand I take.