Ideas and resources to help you be a more thoughtful wine consumer, maker, and lover.
The Truth About Organic Wine Exposed: Organic Wine is Great – Part 2
In Part 1 of The Truth About Organic Wine Exposed: Organic Wine is Great, I introduced the two warring world views known as "organic" and "conventional" viticulture, and I addressed the argument that organic viticulture allows for toxic substances to be used in grape growing, as long as those substances are naturally occurring. Read it here if you haven't already, and then let's continue with:
Argument Against Organic Viticulture #2
2. Sulfur may not be dangerous, but it’s not that great either.
Sulfur has very low impact on human or environmental health. If there is any danger to humans, it is not inherent but caused by over-use or misuse. With proper protection for vineyard workers, and use according to the recommended guidelines, sulfur is about as safe as you can get besides using nothing (which may be a real option to consider).
The gist of the argument, then, is that sulfur is less effective than some synthetic substances that can be sprayed in vineyards, and therefore must be used more often.
This is true. Sulfur, to be effective, must be sprayed approximately once a week during the growing season until the grapes begin to change color (a process known as veraison), and after rains. The most common synthetic alternatives only need to be sprayed on average once every two weeks. That means fifty percent less “stuff” gets sprayed and the vineyard gets fifty percent less tractor traffic with conventional methods, potentially.
A lighter touch, as far as humans touching nature, is almost always a good thing. But would you rather be heavily touched with a feather, or lightly touched with a chainsaw? Personally, I’d take the feather.
Of course sulfur can be over-used and mis-used and improperly used, but so can synthetic chemicals. The attempts to vilify organic viticulture on the basis of sulfur are neglecting a look in the conventional mirror.
Argument Against Organic Viticulture #3
3. Synthetic (conventional) chemicals are targeted and more effective.
Sometimes this is true. Sometimes a synthetic chemical is much more targeted, effective and longer-lasting than any organic option.
It is also true that sometimes that more targeted and effective synthetic chemical, used in conventional viticulture, is an insidiously poisonous, cancer-causing, environmentally-destructive substance as well (see #1 in Part 1 and #4 below).
Take the phomopsis example in Part 1, Argument #1. It is likely that several of the six proscribed synthetic chemicals are much more effective for preventing or treating phomopsis than the one organically allowed substance (sulfur). But did you read those hazard statements?
If you have a headache, a bullet is a much more targeted and effective treatment than aspirin too.
For the final nail in the conventional coffin, keeping with the morbid metaphors, let’s talk about the conventional chemical that has been allowed for over half a century, considered to be a virtual magic wand of effective and targeted treatments, and has become the most used pesticide on the planet.
Argument Against Organic Viticulture #4
4. Glyphosate (Roundup) isn’t that bad.
Most of the people who once made this argument stopped doing so recently, as more and more research is being done that isn’t funded by Bayer/Monsanto (the producers of Roundup, which is the most common product containing glyphosate), and as more of the cover-up is being exposed. But out here on the interwebs there are still articles, like this one, that purport the relative safety of glyphosate (often in a straw-man argument against copper sulfate, which has known high toxicity).
In a short few years, these arguments will be seen as ridiculously quaint relics, at best, from a time when “people just didn’t know better,” like old advertisements showing a doctor’s favorite brand of cigarettes, and the health benefits of smoking while pregnant. At worst these arguments, and articles, may be seen as part of the cover-up.
For a much fuller treatment of glyphosate use in viticulture, check out my article Glyphosate Isn’t Bad… It’s Horrendous. Or watch this video if you are prepared to go deep on the science:
Glyphosate was promoted as a targeted-strike herbicide, like a GPS guided missile against weeds. It is now used at a rate of 300 million tons per year. So even if it was a guided missile, that many missiles cover a pretty massive target, and of course result in a lot of collateral damage.
Glyphosate was designed to kill life. So we shouldn’t be surprised, when used as extensively as it has, that it does that job in a devastating, systemic way that pervades nearly our entire food system and has deep, lasting effects on our global environment and the health of all creature (ourselves included) who live in it.
That isn’t to say that if we eliminate glyphosate (which we should), conventional viticulture will be just fine. Glyphosate should be a lesson to us about the extreme dangers of using synthetic chemicals, or any chemicals, without long-term, unbiased, controlled analysis. The fact that conventional viticulture allowed glyphosate to happen is one of the strongest arguments against it and in favor of organic viticulture. A horrible substance like glyphosate has never been, and would never be allowed to be used in organic viticulture.
But conventional viticulture didn’t just allow for the use of glyphosate. It allowed, and continues to allow for a dizzying number of pretty hideous substances, like 2,4‐D (2,4‐dichlorophenoxoyacetic acid), captan, and acifluorfen for example.
When I said organic viticulture was the way to save the world, this is what I was talking about.
But there are still more arguments against organic viticulture, and more reasons to love it. To read them, go to Part 3 of The Truth About Organic Wine Exposed: Organic Wine is Great.
Glyphosate In Wine: It Isn't Bad... It's Horrendous
When we truly understand what is at stake with the continued use of glyphosate in wine, viticulture, and global agriculture, I think the only responsible choice for our lives, and for the life that extends beyond ours through the environment to our children and their children and beyond, is to ban it outright, everywhere, forever.
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world. Over 300 million pounds of it are sprayed annually, much of it on our food as it grows. High levels of glyphosate are found in nearly all the food we consume in the US, including Cheerios, Oreos, and pretty much everything made by Nabisco, General Mills, Quaker and many others.
It is also a known carcinogen, likely the cause of vast health and environmental destruction, the truth of which has been covered up by corrupt government officials at the highest levels who have been bought out by Monsanto, the makers of the glyphosate-containing product, Roundup.
Oh, and glyphosate also wreaks havoc on wine quality.
If that all sounds like conspiracy theory craziness – the rantings of a mad wine blogger who has lost his bearings – wait a few years. They probably thought the same about the people who first raised an alarm about the health impacts of smoking cigarettes. Trust me – the next version of the movie The Insider will have glyphosate and Big Ag in place of cigarettes and Big Tobacco – though I won’t predict the casting.
Also, I’m not the first to raise the alarm. To date, 28 countries have proposed, introduced, or passed legislation to limit or ban glyphosate. The US is not one of them. In the US, several local governments have passed or proposed some ban or limit on glyphosate – including Los Angeles County. Over 11,000 lawsuits, related to the cancer-causing effects of glyphosate, are pending in the US against Bayer AG, who bought and owns Monsanto. With the knowledge we have about glyphosate now, the only healthy, sane, and moral choice with regard to glyphosate is an immediate and permanent ban on any production or use of it anywhere.
If you are selling wine made from vineyards that use glyphosate (Roundup), you are selling poison. When I walk the wine aisles at Ralphs, I see rows of bottles laced with an insidiously carcinogenic substance that also destroys our environment and may be the cause of a host of health epidemics including autism and Alzheimer’s.
Unfortunately, glyphosate is still widely used in conventional (non-organic) viticulture. To this day, the use of Roundup is endorsed by the California Sustainable Winegrowers Alliance. Believe it or not, you can be “Certified Sustainable” and still spray copious amount of glyphosate in your vineyard. Sound unbelievable? Download the CSWA’s “Code of Sustainable Winegrowing” here, and see for yourself.
The CSWA isn’t alone in this. LIVE certification also allows for the use of glyphosate, though it advocates for decreased usage.
Glyphosate has been so heavily used for so long, and our vineyards are so systemically saturated with it, that even vineyards that converted to organic viticulture years ago are still producing wines that contain glyphosate.
Ironically, this substance that viticulturists have seen as a “magic wand” for weed control, targets the exact pathways in plants that are responsible, in grapevines, for creating the flavor and aromatic compounds that make a good wine complex and delicious. So as glyphosate has been taken up by the vines, through the earth on which it was sprayed, it actually diminishes the complexity and overall quality of the finished wine. To me that would be enough to warrant its ban, even if it didn’t, you know, kill you.
To see understand why glyphosate is so horrendous, both to the world and to the wine-world, please take the time to watch the video above. This presentation, by Mimi Casteel, of Hope Well winery, is the best, most comprehensive evisceration of the chemistry and cover-up that have enabled glyphosate to pollute our lives that I have found. I will warn that it goes deep scientifically, and requires your thinking cap. For me it also goes deep emotionally.
Our great human folly is that our timeline is highly influenced by our own mortality.Mimi Casteel
A few months ago while in wine country checking out a few newer wineries that are using organically or biodynamically grown grapes, I and my compadres made an unplanned stop at a saloon-like local wine bar. The proprietor, a wine country veteran with a drunk-it-all-before demeanor, introduced us to his lineup of about a dozen pours, none of which had been derived from organic grapes. When I questioned him about this choice, he admitted indifference, and the following brief exchange occurred.
“I’m just not a fan of ingesting glyphosate,” said I.
He shrugged. “I don’t care too much about glyphosate. I’ve been drinking wines made with glyphosate my whole life.”
“I guess I just prefer not to have a known carcinogen in my wine,” I parried.
“I start chemo on Monday,” said he.
What do you say to that? I chose nothing, and the discourse died abruptly.
I’m not suggesting that glyphosate is the cause of his cancer, though who’s to say it’s not? Nor do I think he was trying to help me make my point. His livelihood depends on his selling of wine that he knows contains glyphosate. The surprising bit, though, is that his attitude showed a morbid “I’m doomed anyway, so who cares?” version of indifference.
One of the most insightful comments that Mimi Casteel makes in her presentation on glyphosate (see video above) is that our great human folly is that our timeline is highly influenced by our own mortality. In the face of what we know about glyphosate, any kind of indifference is utterly selfish.
When we truly understand what is at stake with the continued use of glyphosate in wine, viticulture, and global agriculture, I think the only responsible choice for our lives, and for the life that extends beyond ours through the environment to our children and their children and beyond, is to ban it outright, everywhere, forever.
[IMPORTANT NOTE: If we ban Glyphosate, many of the chemicals that are used as alternatives and that would replace it are actually much worse. Things like 2, 4-D and Dicamba are regularly used to grow millions of acres of row crops like corn, soy, and wheat, and they are extremely toxic to human health. Many grape growers in the the US Midwest, where row crops dominate the landscape, have experienced defoliation and death of their vines from “drift.” Drift is when 2, 4-D and Dicamba get carried by gentle breezes up to a half mile away from where farmers spray them on their row crop fields. 2, 4-D and Dicamba are also Bayer-Monsanto products… just like Agent Orange. We cannot simply remove Glyphosate from the market to solve the problem or other much worse things will spring up to take its place. We must change the system that allows these chemicals to be used in our food system. We can and should make laws that require farmers to undergo safety training about the dangers of these chemicals before they may purchase and use them, require any food growers or manufacturers to list these chemicals on any food products that result from their use in the production of the food and beverages, and in some cases actually ban the chemicals as threats to public safety.]
Of course the reason we began Centralas is so that we could have a platform to talk about this, and the myriad other benefits of practicing and supporting organic viticulture. As consumers, our primary power is our choice of where we spend our money. And as self-serving as it is for me to end with this, it’s still true that buying a bottle of Centralas wines, instead of wines whose grapes were grown with glyphosate, is a power that you can exercise to defund glyphosate and take a step toward a better world where glyphosate is never used.