Ideas and resources to help you be a more thoughtful wine consumer, maker, and lover.
The Importance Of Soil Health To Wine, And How To Foster It
I have the great pleasure of hosting the Organic Wine Podcast. I get to talk to brilliant, inspiring people about the amazing work they are doing in agriculture in general, and viticulture specifically. The common thread I found with all of my guests this year is that they see themselves directly tied to agriculture, no matter whether they are wine distributors, sommeliers, importers, winery general managers, or soil scientists and grape breeders.
We are all farmers, ultimately, because we literally determine how millions of acres of land around the world are farmed simply by our everyday consumption choices. Whether we buy this bread or that bread, this wine or that wine, actually has the power to change the world.
With this in mind, I wanted to summarize the dominant and fundamental themes that I have learned this year about wine. You’ll see by the end that there’s really only one theme, and it’s that the ground under our feet is the most important resource we have… and how we treat it will determine our future.
Where does your wine come from?
Soil. Soil. Soil.
It’s all about the soil.
A healthy, biodiverse soil ecosystem helps vines thrive, survive droughts, resist pests and pathogens, and helps create better tasting wine. A healthy, biodiverse soil ecosystem holds water, prevents erosion and run-off, and regenerates fertility. A healthy, biodiverse soil ecosystem pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, enriching plant life and rolling back the causes of climate change.
We cultivate a healthy, biodiverse soil ecosystem by planting the right vines in the right places, never using herbicides or other harmful synthetic chemical pesticides, planting diverse cover crops, fostering biodiversity in and around vineyards, integrating vineyards as much as possible into the natural environment, not tilling, grazing animals strategically, and composting.
2. Plants Are the Best Social Networkers
Plants have evolved to cooperate with trillions of bacteria, and connect to other plants and to each other via massive micorrhizal networks through which they exchange food and information. This is the soil-food-web. Plants are busy making millions of underground connections and communications while we walk about blithely thinking they are just stiff, solitary individuals.
When we till, or plow the soil, we break these vital connections and wound the soil.
3. You Don’t Feed the Vines, You Feed the Microbes
The way vines get the food they need to survive and thrive is by feeding carbon from the air to the bacteria and fungi in their root zone. Those bacteria and fungi break down the organic matter and nutrients in the soil and feed those to the vine in exchange for their carbon-based treats.
So when you put compost in the vineyard, you’re actually giving food to the microbes to give to the vines.
4. Soil Health is a Win-Win-Win Situation
First, let’s start with the lose-lose-lose example: Conventional farming.
In conventional farming you use chemical pesticides to kill many of the beneficial microbes, insects, flora and fauna along with the “harmful” ones. This results in a barren ecosystem which then must be enriched with more inputs in the form of chemical fertilizers. Over time the vines become more and more dependent on the pesticides and the fertilizers because they don’t have a healthy and biodiverse soil microbiome to give them what they need to thrive. They become like ICU patients on an IV. The grapes that result from this system lack the micronutrients and beneficial microbial partners necessary to have healthy fermentations naturally. So the winemaking must now involve the additions of yeast and yeast nutrients to ensure that the wines taste good. All of these additions – in the vineyard and the cellar – come at a cost, and the money you spend on them supports a huge agro-chemical industry and supply chain that perpetuates this unhealthy cycle and all of the damage it does to human and environmental health.
When you instead start by fostering a healthy soil by removing the chemical pesticides and fertilizers, the healthy and biodiverse soil microbiome strengthens the vines, which results in lowered costs as the vines become more and more healthy and less dependent on external inputs from year to year. It also protects the health of those who live and work in and around the vineyard, so you have healthy people to do the vineyard work, as well as healthy bird, animal, and insect populations to keep balance. As the soil-food-web improves each year so does the health of the grapes. Winemaking needs less inputs as healthy fermentations can take place naturally and without manipulation or additives. This results in wine that is rich with flavors that are vibrant and unadulterated. In addition, this system takes money away from the agro-chem industry/supply chain, removes carbon from the atmosphere, cleans waterways, and promotes the health of all.
That’s a win, win, win wine!
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You Are A Farmer
You Are A Farmer.
Yes, you there, reading this right now, YOU are a farmer.
Huh? You may say. Uh, no. I’m not.
Look, this might be hard for you to hear. But it’s true. If you buy your own food and wine, you are a farmer.
Farming may not be the job you get paid to do, but it is the business that you invest in every day. You are the head of a huge farming empire, actually, and you make daily choices about the way in which that empire is run and how the products of that business are produced.
If there is one truth that the world needs to re-learn, it’s that eating and drinking are agricultural acts.
Drinking Wine Is An Agricultural Act
That’s why Centralas is about connection.
The most important connection you can make is that what you choose to eat and drink literally shapes the way we manage and treat the millions and millions of acres of farmland on planet earth, and creates a massive global industry and supply chain that touches the lives of every creature under the sky.
You get to decide what chemicals do or do not get sprayed on tea plantations in India.
You get to decide how corn fields in Iowa are fertilized.
You get to decide if we should clear-cut and burn more virgin rainforest in Indonesia to produce palm oil.
You get to decide how cows in Oklahoma are treated and raised.
And You get to decide how wine is grown in California, France, Italy, etc.
You are a farmer. You are THE farmer.
You don’t have a choice in the matter, really. Sorry to break it to you, but you’re a farmer whether you want to be or not.
The only way not to be a farmer is to never eat anything, and never drink anything.
So really your only choice is what kind of farmer you’re going to be, and what kind of farm you’re going to create and manage.
You do this with every consumption decision you make. With every dollar that you spend on groceries, on coffee, on cheeseburgers with fries, on shots of vodka or bottles of wine, you are literally making farming decisions for the world.
It’s a daunting responsibility, and so it’s understandable that you’d resist it. But you can’t.
You can’t not be a farmer.
You can only be an ignorant, or irresponsible, or uncaring farmer. You can be a farmer who pollutes the world and destroys the health and well-being of all who live here.
Or... you can be a great farmer. You can be a farmer that makes the world a cleaner, healthier, more equitable, just, abundant and beautiful place than it was when you were born into it.
You will be either kind of farmer oh so very easily… simply by what you decide to eat and drink.
Why Is There A Lightning Bolt In The Centralas Logo?
1. “Lightning? I thought those were the roots of a grapevine.” Yep, we like that confusion. Centralas is about connection – rooting the wine experience in agriculture, and connecting people to it and to each other. The lightning bolt connects the sky to the land - where everything that we do begins. The lightning reminds us to stay, um, grounded.
2. Lightning in a bottle. We hope to catch it with our wine.
3. When there’s lightning, there is usually rain. We seem to always need more of that in California, so we enshrined this rain prayer in our logo.
4. The French word for lightning is “foudre” which is also the name for the largest oak vessels used to store and age wine (don’t ask me why). These foudre are traditionally used in Bandol, a region in France designated for making wine from Mourvedre, one of our favorite varieties. We hope to someday make enough wine to fill a foudre.
5. We also love the French term “coup de foudre” which means a sudden and unexpected event that blows your mind, most often used in relation to love at first sight. Similar to the English term “thunderstruck” but more specific to that feeling of having your life overthrown by love. We want you to have that experience when you drink Centralas wines.
For so many reasons, lightning is the perfect symbol for Centralas wine.
6. Very old legends tell us that mushrooms are created by lightning strikes. A great time to go foraging for mushrooms is after a thunderstorm, so maybe there’s something to the legends. Fungi are a hugely important part of growing healthy grapevines, both negatively and positively. We are just beginning to learn how mycorrhizal fungi in the soil are necessary to growing the highest quality wines, while viticulture for the last century has focused on destroying fungi in the vineyard because of things like powdery & downey mildew and bunch rot. We are trying to promote an approach to viticulture that is probiotic, allowing natural vine resistance in cooperation with bacterial and fungal competitors of the unwanted fungi to provide balance, rather than attempting fungal genocide and polluting the earth with hazardous chemical fungicides. So… lightning = pro-mushroom.
7. We live in Los Angeles, where there is almost never lightning. The mild weather here is lovely, but we miss storms, extreme seasonal changes… you know, REAL weather. So our lightning bolt gives us a tiny reminder of things that we miss, like photos of our family & friends who live in other parts of the world.
8. Climate change. This year, 2020, the normal summer drought in the western US was interrupted by lightning storms. Lightning strikes during the very hot and dry late summer (and some usual human thoughtlessness) caused some of the largest, longest burning fires in history. Weather extremes, and the devastation that can follow, are getting worse as the world mean temperatures and CO2 levels rise. Some may debate whether these changes are caused by humans, but our ability to reduce pollution and CO2 in the atmosphere by regenerative, no-till, organic agriculture is not debatable. The lightning reminds us of our purpose to promote this kind of agriculture through Centralas.
9. We chose to celebrate a natural phenomenon because we want our wine to be a natural phenomenon. Of course winemaking of any kind is part of human culture, but the lightning reminds us to put the emphasis on letting nature – in all its wildness – guide the process and shine through in the wine.
10. Violent storms are terrifying, but also thrilling. They remind us how small we are, and that nature has the final say. The lightning reminds us to approach our time here with this sense of humility and respect for the earth.
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The Impenetrable Wall Of Wine: A Horror Story
I walked into my local grocery store’s wine aisle the other day, and I was slammed with a spontaneous psychedelic revelation. (Maybe those weren’t creminis I scrambled into my eggs for breakfast?) The world split open, and my mind went blank.
I became, suddenly, a Wine Innocent.
For the first time I saw the wine aisle with new eyes… as if I had never seen a bottle of wine… as if I had lost all of my wine knowledge that enables me to automatically mentally sift and prioritize, to categorize and sort.
What I saw terrified me.
The Impenetrable Wall of Wine
I saw an impenetrable wall of sameness. I saw an indecipherable wall of text written in a foreign language. I saw an unwelcoming wall of overwhelming choices. Like the cereal aisle, if the boxes were all the same brownish-green color and the cereal names were in French.
But the terror didn’t end there. I got out my phone to look at Instagram, and lo and behold I found the same wall of wine there.
Photo after photo of bottles that all look the same. Bottle shot after bottle shot from retailers and enthusiasts, who I only moments ago had enjoyed following, were now a dizzying display of monotonous, unwelcoming, and redundant sameness.
I opened my wine apps, I went to my favorite wine review websites, and there it continued unbroken – the wall. Row after row of repetitive and intimidating tedium, like the book of Leviticus or an encyclopedia of chemical compounds writ large across my reality.
I staggered backwards in horror.
I saw for the first time what wine looks like from the outside.
Almost as quickly my wine sense returned to me. I began to be able to read the language of wine again. My years of knowledge that enabled me to parse that wall of data – like reading the waterfall of code that is the Matrix – came back and were once again internalized into the distorted prism of my wine vision.
But with it came questions.
Is there not a better way to market and present wine? Are there really only three basic bottle shapes and colors that encompass every style of wine? Why bottles? Do we really need 40 choices each of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay when there are 0 choices of at least 40 other delicious grapes that are made into wine?
And last but not least, could we not attempt to give the “outsider” some information that would actually aid them in trying to explore wine… in a language that they understand? How does someone with no knowledge ever pick a single wine out of that intimidating wall of hundreds that all look the same?
Unfortunately, I don’t have answers.
My hope is that my vision will cause you to begin to ask these and more questions – to question the assumptions implicit in the norms of wine sales and marketing. My hope is that you can pierce through your own wine knowledge to perceive this wall of wine.
Beware though: Once you’ve become aware of it the Impenetrable Wall of Wine, it will leak in at the periphery of your reality. Like taking a trip to the Upside Down, once seen it cannot be unseen. Even after you return to the normal world the vision will haunt you.
At least I hope it does.
Mwhahahahaha!
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What To Do With Unfinished Bottles Of Wine... or What Gifts You Should NOT Get For That Wine Lover In Your Life
The number of devices that have been invented to preserve wine from one day to the next could lead a reasonable person to believe that the great problem facing humanity today is not what to do about the excessive C02 in the atmosphere, but what to do with the excessive O2 that gets into an opened bottle of wine.
Over the years - in an utterly selfless act of assuming the role of wine-test-dummy to solve this very problem - I have tested nearly every wine preservation device, strategy, or gas known to humankind. For the furtherance of science, and ultimately for you, dear reader, and the maximization of your wine-drinking pleasure, I have subjected myself to partially drinking countless bottles of wine... and then attempting to preserve those bottles until a later day (when I would finish drinking them).
It was arduous, grueling work, and I wouldn't have been able to persevere without the higher purpose of your happiness. But now, after an exhaustive 15 year (plus) study, I can finally relay the life enhancing findings to you.
I realize that asking what to do with leftover wine may be like asking the parents of multiple young children what they should do with their spare time. Your response may be a burst of laughter or a confused stare, befuddled by the assumption that a thing called "leftover wine" or "spare time" could ever exist. I might as well be asking about how to educate unicorns with learning disabilities.
If so, good for you. Your drinking habits and your physical fortitude are robust.
For many of us, though, who enjoy wine but not inebriation with dinner, and who are currently quarantined in isolation or have spouses or significant others with a hummingbird's tolerance, a bottle of wine is more than enough for two or even three meals.
On these occasions the niggling fear that we have internalized - presumably because of all the fear-mongering that must be used to sell the preservation devices - is that the poor, innocent, unprotected wine will (horror of horrors) change!
Let this truth perform a coup de grace on your fears: whether you use a preservation device or not, your wine will change.
In a real and somewhat profound sense, wine is change in a bottle. The attempt to make it otherwise actually ruins what is essential about it.
Yes, you can protect a wine from change with a huge dose of sulfites, in the same way that you can protect your child from harm by sealing them in a bulletproof bubble and never letting them out of the basement. It's not good for the child or the wine to be protected in these ways. The absence of change is death, and, trust me, you don't want that in your wine. Or your child (usually).
Thus the first step in figuring out what to do with an opened and unfinished bottle of wine is philosophical acceptance that every glass you drink from the moment you pop that cork will taste different. Embracing this truth helps alleviate the anxiety that results from being so precious about our wine.
On the practical and scientific side, I have found that unless you are willing to spend over $200 on a device, there is no noticeable advantage to using some weird technique, inert gas, vacuum pump or other alleged preservation device. Simply sticking the cork back in the bottle and putting the bottle in the fridge overnight achieves the same level of preservation.
The next day, just get your reds out of the fridge about 45 minutes to an hour before you want to drink them (depending on your home temperature) to allow them to warm up a bit.
Will the wine be the same as the first night you drank it?
Nope. But it might taste even better!
Certain wines improve with moderate exposure to oxygen. It's like fast-forwarding the aging process. And it depends on your tastes too. You might discover that you like a little oxidation in your wine.
Now, leaving an opened wine in the fridge for more than a week is probably going to change the wine for the worse. Feel free to experiment, of course, but honestly if you can't finish a bottle in a week you may want to see a doctor... or start investing in more delicious wine.
What about those $200+ devices you ask? Well, I mean, what's the point? First of all, those devices have $20 replaceable cartridges and are highly breakable, so $200+ is just the start.
But also, using a $200 device to preserve a $50 wine that you didn't finish because it was a school night generally means that you have money to burn. If that's the case, just buy 3 of those $50 bottles and decadently pour any leftovers down the drain, you baller you. Or, you know, give the dregs to me... your wine-loving friend who doesn't have money to burn.
For everyone else, how often do you really open a fancy bottle and not finish it? And if you don't finish the non-fancy bottle, who cares about having it perfectly preserved from one day to the next? You might be surprised to find that you like it better without preservation anyway.
So please, don't buy yourself or the wine lover in your life any wine preservation devices as gifts this holiday season. Just buy wine.
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Wine Vs. Wine Beverages
With this many ingredients, would you consider the wine to be natural?
I often tell people that I believe every wine should be required to have an ingredients list. More often than not when I say this, I'm met with a confused stare.
"What ingredients would you list? Isn't wine just, like… grapes?"
Nope. At least not 99% of the time.
Take the photo above as an example. From my experience, this producer did not list their ingredients voluntarily. The use of organic claims on the label often leads the TTB - the federal agency regulating alcohol labeling - to require an ingredients list (which I think is great). And while I whole-heartedly applaud the farming that is behind the wine pictured, it is also an example of a pretty common, and long, list of ingredients used in conventional winemaking.
Is this still a wine? Or is it a wine beverage?
The ingredients pictured above and more are common in nearly all of the wines that most consumers drink regularly.
Let me put it this way: Nearly every wine that is available for easy purchase for the average consumer contains more ingredients than Coca-Cola.
(There are seven ingredients in Coke, though one of them is "flavorings," which is plural, and we don't know how many types of flavorings are included in Coke. Similarly, the single ingredient "yeast nutrients" is plural and includes, minimally, vitamins, minerals, and yeast hulls).
Now some would argue that the Coke analogy is unfair, because Coke's ingredients actually end up in the bottle of soda that you consume, while wine's ingredients are mostly settled or filtered out. However, some of those ingredients used in winemaking do stay in solution in small amounts.
But more importantly: every one of them affects the flavor of the resulting beverage. They aren't just neutral catalysts used to facilitate the process of fermentation. They actually change how the wine tastes.
Every one of the ingredients shown in the photo impacts the flavor and/or appearance of a wine, some by adding things thought to be pleasant, others by removing things thought to be unpleasant.
And there are often processes used, in addition to additives, to change the flavor of wine.
Most wines are fined. Fining is a process of removing proteins from the wine so that it appears clear. It also affects the textural flavors of a wine, or the way it feels in your mouth. That's why the animal product "gelatin" is in the ingredients list in the photo. Gelatin is commonly used to fine wine, as are egg whites and bentonite clay. Isinglass is another fining agent, less often used, from fish bladders.
Fining is why most wines are not vegan.
Also, most wines are filtered - a majority undergoing what is known as "sterile filtration." This is another removal process, meant to eliminate any microbes in the wine. It also strips color and flavor - maybe not a lot, but a noticeable amount.
There are many more processes that are regularly used in most of the wine you see on grocery and liquor store shelves as well.
I'm not saying we should be morally opposed to these practices. None of them make the beverage unsafe or toxic. I'm just saying that the more ingredients and practices used to add, alter, and remove flavors and textures and colors, the further we are getting from what I believe the average wine drinker would consider to be, well, wine.
What if this producer hadn't been required to list ingredients?
That’s actually the case for most wines. Ingredients labeling isn’t required, so you’re unlikely to ever see a list like this on a label.
Most consumers clearly assume that, in the absence of an ingredients list, wine is as natural as lettuce.
But the moral of this story is: Don't.
Eliminating Wine Marketing BS
Have you ever noticed how every wine region is known for its "distinctive terroir" and every vineyard is farmed with "sustainable practices" that create wines of "unique character?"
Seriously. Every one. Go look at any winery website.
Here's a sample blurb from a CA Pinot Noir bottle:
"Blank Vineyard is our Estate Vineyard. It was established in Blank-Year in the heart of the Blank Region of the Blank AVA. This region is know for its distinctive terroir, where conditions demand patience and reward with finesse and flavor. The vineyard is farmed with sustainable practices and comprised of Blank Clones/Varieties/Soil-types/Slopes/ETC, each adding unique character to this rich/elegant/special/delicious/excellent/ETC wine."
I literally took this off the back of a bottle of wine, with minor tweaks. Just fill in the blanks, select your terroir-variables and adjectives, and voila! you too can sell wine with utterly meaningless drivel.
Of course it's true that nearly every patch of earth will produce wine that tastes somewhat differently from wine from any other patch of earth. Uniqueness is inherent in terroir. But this universal uniqueness means that it is neither individually special nor meaningful to our consumer choices.
And what exactly does "sustainably farmed" mean? If you are certified sustainable (SIP - or one of the myriad other approximations of sustainable certifications like LIVE, Salmon Safe, Napa Green), you can still use carcinogenic chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. So where do you fall on the spectrum of stainability exactly?
If you aren't talking about your viticulture in specifics, I will bet big money it's because you use some of those carcinogenic chemicals on your grapes... like RoundUp. "Sustainable" is a virtually meaningless buzzword and should never be confused or conflated with Organic or Biodynamic.
Also, how was the wine made? What was added to grapes in the winery? Does the use of terms like "hand-crafted" or "natural" or "clean" or "low intervention" or "with excellence" really tell us anything? Nope.
We all know that marketing is sales, and sales is spin, and spin is nice sounding BS. What's the big deal?
Behind every meaningless buzzword used to conceal status quo chemical agriculture and highly manipulative winemaking from you is the belief that you are not much more than a mindless consumer.
The onslaught of meaningless marketing slogans like “sustainable” “natural” “clean” and any number of claims about the “specialness” of vineyards is overwhelming. We are overwhelmed with the number of choices and the responsibility to make good ones, and we feel powerless to make better choices.
In fact, this stream of marketing BS seems to be intentionally disempowering by concealing real information that could be used to make valuable judgements about drinking wine responsibly.
Wine producers make it extremely difficult to find out what kind of viticulture they practice, what they spray on their vines, and what they add to their wines… usually because they have something to hide.
It has become easier for us to believe that our wine choices don’t matter in any bigger sense… that they’re purely a matter of taste.
We started Centralas because we refuse to believe that wine drinkers are shallow, mindless consumers.
We believe that you can make the world a better place by the kind of wine you choose to buy.
You likely care about the environment. Our connection to it and to each other has never been more obvious than in 2020, faced with fires and heat events that exceed any that have come before, in the context of a global pandemic. Yet most wine is still produced with chemicals known to cause imbalance and destruction of the environment, and then sold as a “natural” product.
It’s unacceptable that the majority of our wine choices today force us to support chemical agriculture that destroys the world and opaque production practices that turn wine into a mystery “wine beverage.”
We know too much now to pretend like our consumptions choices don’t matter.
Centralas wine is only ever made with grapes grown without synthetic chemical sprays or fertilizers (usually certified organic practices or better), and eliminates marketing buzzwords through winemaking transparency, so that you have an easy choice to drink delicious wine while feeling great about supporting a healthier world.
Yes, this is a shameless plug, and that's my point. We clearly tell you the vital information that all wine producers should be shamelessly willing to tell you:
A. How exactly were the grapes grown, and
B. What exactly did you add during winemaking.
That's really all we need to know. The rest is B.S.
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Buy Good Wine Without Supporting BS Here
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Was 2020 A Good Vintage In California?
2020 Harvest is still ongoing, so it may be premature to speak of the quality of the vintage. But the truth is that we can say already that it has mostly been a bummer of a vintage. Does that mean all the 2020 wines will suck, though? Absolutely not.
How is that possible?
Vintage rating systems - you know, those scores given (based on a 100 point scale) to a wine region by various popular wine media companies - are for the most part utter B.S.
It's generally foolish to speak generally about anything.
Yes, the 2020 vintage across California was plagued by, well, a global plague to begin with. This affected the availability vineyard workers and the ability to have them do necessary work at the right time. It also affected a paradigm shift in the way wine is marketed and sold, and a massive reallocation of resources. Some wineries found themselves entering the harvest season with very different financial outlooks than ever before.
On top of the COVID pandemic, 2020 had some crazy weather. A roller coaster of spring temperatures and multiple record-breaking heat waves in August added up to vines and grapes that didn't quite know if they were coming or going... to hell.
Oh, and don't forget the fires. I flew from Los Angeles to Santa Rosa in late August (wearing a mask, of course) and could see only smoke below me the entire flight. Most of those fires are sill burning as of this writing. The grapes in some areas have been in a slow-smoker for over a month and might be better used for barbeque than wine at this point.
So, yeah, the 2020 vintage had some "challenges" as wine salespeople like to say.
But then I look at how the Centralas harvest went, and I couldn't be happier. We picked at 6 different times, and got beautiful, balanced grapes each time. We picked on the earlier side - before the crazy heat spike over the end of August - for half of our grapes, and had great acid and lower sugar for our fresh rosés and Pinot Noir. Then picked again after the crazy heat spike and found that while sugars had increased a bit, the acid had somehow not changed much.
This couldn't have been better for what we wanted for our wines. We're vinifying the grape picks separately to see the difference, but it's likely we'll blend the various picks of the same grapes together to get wines with energy, depth, and great balance. For us, the young wines already hold a promise of greatness that is very exciting.
Of course it helps that we are harvesting from mainly a beautiful, extremely well cared for, organic vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills. I don't think it has anything to do with the Santa Rita Hills, however. I've seen grapes from other vineyards in the SRH AVA, and they have been quite ugly in comparison.
Again, this shows that it's impossible to generalize even about a vintage for a single AVA.
When you pick, and from what vineyards you pick, has a huge influence on the wine made from the vintage.
Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't wish 2020 on us again. And you may experience more raisin and stewed fruit (and smoke) flavors in a lot of California wine from 2020. But for some producers this may be their best vintage yet.
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How Is Biodynamic Wine Made?
How Is Our Biodynamic Wine Made?
You may have some suspicions that biodynamic wine is made differently from other wines, and you’re right.
We select the biodynamic vineyards from which we will source grapes by divination during a moonlit ceremony. We then employ the services of a shaman to bless the vineyard. The shaman sages each vine individually, and dusts them with the pollen of the Belladonna flower (this both helps the vines resist infection, and improves wine flavor).
During flowering we feed nectar laced with LSD to a team of thousands of butterflies and release them into the vineyard to fondle the grape flowers and aid in pollination. The visuals are also pretty spectacular (I'm talking about the vineyard full of butterflies).
As the grapes grow, we turn the vineyard into a day care facility for children. We fill the vineyard with newborn lambs and their mothers, and parents bring their children to cuddle the sheep and play games in the vines all day during the growing season (this way the vines are fertilized by the sheep and the sound of children’s laughter). Naps are taken in the shade of the vines, and snack time is mostly grapes – thus keeping yields low.
At night, when day care is over and the children have gone home, we welcome lovers to use the vineyard for trysts. Many a secret kiss, and even a conception or two, takes place among the vines under the starlit skies of summer. Since the grapes are the vines’ reproductive cycle, we find the lovers’ pheromones and hormones enhances the vibrant, lusty energy of the resulting wine.
The day of harvest is predetermined by the universe. There is only one day each year when the grapes may be picked at the perfect moment, and this day is fated. Both Wendy and I have extensively studied astrology, astronomy, cosmology, and cosmography to decipher this date from the ancient star chart in the sky in communion with the vines.
We have picked on the correct day for the vineyard every time. In fact we’ve learned that if you are in tune with the biodynamic energies of the cosmos, it is impossible to pick on the wrong day.
On that day trumpets are blown at the darkest moment of the pre-dawn night, as a sort of Reveille crossed with a royal arrival, to arouse the vines. Dozens of strolling musicians serenade the vineyard as we begin to pick the grapes in the dark. At dawn, prayers of thanks are offered to the vines, the earth, and the rising sun, as each cluster of grapes is lifted into the first light of day (like Simba in the Lion King), then laid gently in baskets woven from the previous year’s pruned canes.
A parade begins as the last of the clusters is picked, and with much hubbub, cheering, music making, and general merriment, the grapes are carried to the winery at the head of the procession. By the time we reach the winery, the entire town has joined in, and a party breaks out as Wendy and I invoke the spirits of Bacchus, Dionysus, and of course Demeter, drop the grapes into crystal grottoes we discovered at the center of the magical vortex we chose for the winery site, and cast the seven spells that transmute the grapes into wine. We then seal the chambers with a wax made with our own blood until the enchantment has had time to achieve perfection (usually several months), at which point we bottle the biodynamic wine and offer it to you.
And that’s pretty much it.
Of course none of this is really true. But don’t you think it should be?
The truth about biodynamic wine is just as magical, though.
Taste it and see.
HUSSY – our barrel-aged, biodynamic rosé – will be available for you to purchase starting this Saturday! 9/18/2020
If you like deliciously oaked Chardonnay, HUSSY is the rosé for you. It has effusive tropical aromas of guava, toasted coconut, and vanilla, and tastes of tart raspberries simmered in cream. It’s refreshing and rich at the same time – an all-season rosé that we think will age and continue to evolve beautifully for years to come.
We going to offer a special discount to those on our email list, so join now if you aren't on the list already:
How Wine Can Beat Climate Change
One of the biggest problems of how the current wine industry is structured is its lack of adaptability.
The wine industry is slow to adapt to technological shifts. It is slow to adapt to changes in taste from generation to generation. This lack of adaptability has hurt the wine industry in recent years as it has failed to anticipate and respond to new millennial consumers’ desires.
But the biggest adaptability failure of wine is one that has not yet been seen as a failure: the unwillingness to adapt the grapes we grow in order to keep up with the continually changing pressures of disease, fungal infections, and climate changes.
We have been cloning the same variety of grapes for the last couple hundred years as if they are sacrosanct. Meanwhile, in the time since those handful of sacred vinifera varieties were selected, fungi, viruses, and insects have changed and adapted hundreds and thousands of times over, and the world has begun to undergo major climatic shifts.
Some of these problems of the wine industry’s adaptability are endemic to the pace of the vines themselves. Vines must be planted and grown for at least 3 years before their grapes can be harvested and used for wine, which may not be ready to drink for another 2 years after that.
Because of the long lead time of vineyard planting and winemaking, the wine industry always seems to be in a position of reacting, rather than responding. Fads in tastes can change by the time it takes a new wine to be made.
But many of these problems of adaptability are the wine industry’s own making. We’ve bought into our own marketing so deeply that we’ve failed to consider a world where Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, or any other known vinifera variety, are not what the consumer asks for.
We’ve built a wine world that is dominated by the promotion and consumption of a handful of outdated grape varieties. But what happens when those varieties are no longer viable?
You may think I’m crazy to suggest that, but it has happened before to other crops. When industries become too reliant on a single variety of anything, all it takes is the right combination of disease or climatic factors to wipe out an entire local or even global supply. Look at the Irish potato famine, or look at the banana industry.
The good news is that there’s a simple solution. It’s not an easy solution, though, and it will take many years. But once effected, the wine industry should be future proof.
The solution is this: instead of grape varieties, the wine industry, specifically the New World wine industry, needs to start (or go back to) promoting the idea of regional wine identities, or wine types based on style rather than grape variety.
The truth is that this is how and why Bordeaux is Bordeaux. Not until the grapes from Bordeaux were exported to the New World did anyone care about Cabernet Sauvignon. We exported the grape, but we failed to export the best part of Bordeaux – it’s adaptability.
Even now, Bordeaux is experimenting with new grape varieties that will be better suited to the future climate of the region, and they are adapting, or considering adapting, their regulations to permit higher and higher percentages of those new grapes.
It won't be long before we will be drinking Bordeaux that contains no Cabernet Sauvignon, Franc, Merlot, Malbec, or Petite Verdot, and does contain grapes that we've never heard of before 2020.
Those of us on the inside of the wine industry forget that only we know or care that Chianti is made with Sangiovese, or Barolo with Nebbiolo, even Burgundy with Pinot Noir or Chardonnay.
Instead of importing the best aspects of these regions – the idea of regionally distinctive wines - we imported the Euro-evocative but change-prohibitive names of the grape varieties.
To be able to adapt, the New World wine industry needs to get consumers asking for “Napa Red” rather than “Napa Cab.”
In addition to regional over varietal identities, producers need to lean into stylistic designations.
If you build your brand on Pinot Noir you have a lot less flexibility to adapt to problems than if you build it on Light, Elegant Red.
Look at the recent successes of red blends and rosés in the marketplace. Consumers of these wines are often drinking varieties of grapes they’ve never heard of, and they love them.
Consumers only care about Sauvignon Blanc because we’ve trained them to. Consumers want a crisp, aromatic white preeminently. We’ve made the mistake of telling them it has to be Sauvignon Blanc, and now that’s what we have to give them.
But the future of wine must embrace the ability to adapt – to climate change and the new insect, fungal, and disease threats it brings.
To do that we need to reframe our marketing and abandon the strict adherence to vinifera varieties (which is mostly a form of Euro-chauvinism anyway) and start letting our grapes and our wine names adapt to local and stylistic expressions.
What Makes Great Wine?
I'm going to tell you a story:
Once upon a time there was girl named Rose and a boy named Jack and they were floating at night on a door in the icy North Atlantic Ocean. Rose said to Jack, "I'll never let go," and then she let go, and he froze to death and drowned, while she was picked up by a rescue boat and lived happily ever after.
The end.
(Oh, and by the way, prior to their time floating together in the icy North Atlantic Ocean, Rose and Jack used to be on a really big ship.)
Yes, this is the worst telling of the story of Titanic ever.
Why is that? Because without all the build up and back story about who they were, how they got on the ship, why they were on the ship, what their dreams were, how they met, the pressures that were on the captain of the Titanic, the history-making voyage, the embedded class structure that was reflected in the building of the Titanic itself, the terrible accident and the ensuing sinking of the ship and each passenger's fight for survival - that is, without context - the final scenes of Titanic are meaningless.
Unfortunately the way I've butchered the story of Titanic - by telling the ending as the story - is most often how we assess greatness in wine.
When it comes to wine, we think it's perfectly okay to blind-taste a panel of all the 2018 Pinot Noirs from Oregon, for example, and rate them on a 100 point scale, and determine which ones are great, and which are not.
This has been the norm in wine greatness evaluation for decades.
Oh, and by the way, those wines got to your glass, or the critic's glass, after years of growth and production.
Without the context of how a wine was grown and made, any assessment of its greatness is as meaningless as watching the last fifteen minutes of Titanic.
Greatness, in wines, cannot be reduced to the experience of their flavor.
In a recent NY Times article, Eric Asimov alludes to the insufficiency of the standard reductive form of greatness analysis. He observes, "Without context, bottles are rated on a universal scale of what makes a wine good, which is weighted toward the ability to age and evolve, to express complex aromas and flavors, to convey the character of the place in which the grapes were grown and the culture of the people who made the wine, to evoke contemplation."
If you'll notice, his list of elements for which a wine's greatness is "rated" are all sensory - that is, things you would taste in the glass. His point in this article is that the occasion in which a wine is drunk must also be considered as part of the evaluation.
This is an important insight as well, and looks at the present and future of the experience of a wine in a glass, but I think the most important context of wine is its past.
Madeline Puckette does a great job, in cooperation with Carlo Mondavi, of describing the importance of looking back at the context of the history of a wine to determine its greatness. In her Wine Folly article, she delineates the important factors of terroir, including climate, soil, and flora.
I love that she included flora as one of the important factors of a wine's greatness. To me this is an acknowledgment of a wine's connection to the health and biodiversity of its total environment. She even includes the soil microbiome as part of this flora, which if anyone is paying attention, could actually be revolutionary. She's asserted that the fungi, yeast, and bacteria in a vineyard environment contribute to a wine's greatness.
Puckette also breaks down the important factors of vintage that contribute to a wine's greatness (or lack thereof). These factors include the viticulture and the harvest. Most interesting is her diagram and discussion of viticulture. She presents a scale or spectrum of sustainability, with Conventional viticulture on one end, Organic viticulture just off center, and Permaculture near the other end of the spectrum opposite conventional.
I couldn't agree more with her portrayal of this "spectrum of sustainability," and I haven't seen anyone else talk about a wine's greatness with the inclusion of permaculture as a consideration. I think that's very cool.
But I also think that viticulture extends far beyond the scope of a vintage. It takes soil and plants years to recover from the ravages of conventional viticulture, regain vibrancy and biodiversity, and flourish again with natural health.
Puckette stops one step short of saying where on that spectrum of viticulture a wine must fall to be considered great. I would go one step further.
IMHYFO (In my humble yet fervent opinion), the minimum requirement for greatness in wine is that the grapes were farmed organically.
Here's an analogy for you. Let's say we were evaluating the "greatness" of two smart phones. After analysis, we determine that smart phone A has more superior technology than smart phone B. But then we research and find out that smart phone A (with the better tech) was built by child labor in sweat shops with hazardous working conditions, while smart phone B (with inferior tech) was built by salaried adults with benefits in a safe and clean work environment. And let's say they both cost the same. Which smart phone is "greater"?
At the very least, I think we'd want to re-frame the discussion from an evaluation of "greatness" to an evaluation of specific aspects of the phone. Phone A cannot be considered "great" in its totality, because exploitation of children is part of its make-up - and most of us would not consider that great. But likewise Phone B cannot be considered "great" because, despite its stellar employee treatment, there are examples out there (A) of superior tech.
So let's stop thinking about the sensory components of a wine as the sole determining factor of its greatness. Let's stop assessing wine in blind tastings without any reference to how it was produced.
I don't care how good a wine tastes, if I know it was grown conventionally and heavily manipulated in the winery, I literally don't want to swallow it.
And I think the desire to swallow it should be considered a prerequisite for greatness in wine.
Centralas wines are always made with, at minimum, organically grown grapes. Don't miss out on our very limited wines... join our email list for priority access:
Bottling Our First Wine - Syren 2019, Organically Grown Pinot Noir
Yesterday was a momentous day that we're still processing. Below is a highlight video of bottling Centralas's first wine - our 2019 Syren. This organically grown Pinot Noir from a single block on the crest of the Santa Rita Hills is why we were lured into winemaking in the first place.
Years ago, before the movie Sideways had changed Santa Barbara wine country forever, I tasted a Santa Rita Hills single block Pinot Noir of the same single clone that Syren is made from. It was the most sublime sensual pleasure I had ever experienced in liquid form.
That was the Syren's call that lured me to my destruction.
And what a beautiful destruction it has been.
I hope your senses - and your soul - are as ensnared by Syren, as mine were over 16 years ago.
i, nomad
Los Angeles is full of nomadic spirits who know that the world is small and precious, and we are all part of the same tribe. The earth doesn't belong to us; we belong to the earth.
i, nomad features a Monarch butterfly on the label. The Monarch embodies the spirit of having a light touch on the earth and spreading beauty wherever you go.
i, nomad is the first of Centralas Wine's negociant labels. Our goal with i, nomad is to provide a single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon of uniquely high quality, for under $20. Amazing wine shouldn't be something that only millionaires can afford.
We discovered a very special, mature vineyard in Mendocino County and wanted to share the wine from it. The vineyard is farmed only with the organically allowed inputs of sulfur, gypsum and fish emulsion (see the Pesticide Use Report, linked below), but it is not certified organic. It grows on a windy mountain-top, just above the fog line, which reduces mildew and pest pressure significantly. The vineyard is so densely planted that it can only be tended by hand - the vineyard doesn't even own a tractor. The vineyard is never tilled.
The wine making is low-intervention. Ripe Cabernet grapes are allowed to go through native fermentation, then aged in mostly neutral French oak (18% new) for three years. Only sulfites and a small amount of acidulated water were added during winemaking.
The result is a single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon that is distinctive, age-able, classically Californian, and packs way more deliciousness than something this inexpensive has any right to.
We're thrilled to have found this wine so that we could share it with you.
Here is the Pesticide Use Report from the Mendocino County public records:
We include this report because the i, nomad vineyard is not certified organic, though it could be. We go to every length to verify that only organically allowed substances were used in any non-certified vineyard that we use, and we are as transparent with all of this info as we can be. Here’s our article about why you must be extra careful about organic claims that are not certified. We have only deleted information that would identify the vineyard or that is irrelevant to consumers. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to connect with us.
With i, nomad we embrace a global perspective and a shared connection to everyone who feels a sense of curiosity and the pull of the unknown. As we're passing through, let's emulate the Monarch and contribute beauty and have a light a touch on our journeys.
Interested in the label artwork?
The beautiful painting of the Monarch butterfly on the front label of i, nomad was done by 10 year old Ava Barrios. Ava was studying impressionist art and did this painting as a study of the technique. Prodigy? We'll let you decide.
A huge thanks to Ava for allowing us to use her painting for i, nomad. It inspires us, and we hope it inspires you too.
"Organic" But Not Certified
I was recently looking online for grapes for the 2020 harvest. I found some, on a popular wine industry site, listed under an "organic" keyword search, but when I contacted to ask for more info they sent me the below graphic, with this email:
"I know farmers at xxxxx aim to use as many organic implements as possible throughout the growing season as the owners live on the property with their children."
Example of a conventional vineyard treatment that was called "organic" but clearly is not.
It's a nice graphic, but clearly lists pesticides - such as Luna Experience, Quintec, and Flint - which are not OMRI listed for organic use. If you use even one of them you cannot say the grapes are "organic." That's black and white. They used at least three.
So why did this Santa Barbara winegrower advertise grapes for sale under the keyword "organic?" When I let them know I wouldn't be interested in their grapes since they clearly weren't organic, and asked why the grapes were advertised as such, their answer was basically, "Ok, thanks!"
In other words, they knowingly misrepresented their viticulture. They overstated. They lied.
The sad truth is that usually, when a winegrower or wine salesperson says that they are "practicing organic" in their vineyards - but doesn't back it up with certification - they are lying.
Technically a vineyard cannot be organic unless it is certified, because the term "organic" is legally protected and cannot be applied to agricultural practices or products without certification.
This protects us consumers from the willy-nilly use of "organic" as a marketing ruse by unscrupulous winegrowers. Without legal enforcement the term would become basically meaningless. This is a big problem with the terms "natural" and "sustainable."
Also, what is often overlooked is that "organic" isn't simply about eliminating conventional pesticides. You must also only fertilize with organic fertilizer. (Miracle Gro is not organic.) You can see in the graphic that this vineyard's fertilization schedule gives no indication that it is organic.
As an aside, I don't worry as much about conventional fertilizers as I do about pesticides, even though I think composts and other organic fertilizers are better solutions to soil health, especially long term. However, if you use conventional fertilizers, you definitely can't say you're "organic."
To their credit, they immediately provided me with the above info after my initial inquiry. But still.
"Organic But Not Certified"
On the one extreme, there are wineries who knowingly make false organic claims for the marketing advantage.
In the middle are those who farm "mostly" according to organic regulations, but sometimes use conventional chemicals "if they need to." Or perhaps they use only organically allowed pesticides but then use conventional fertilizers.
And then there are the tasting room attendants and sales people who may be clueless or careless with the term or who misunderstand what it means and conflate it with "sustainable" or just "carbon based" (as in chemistry).
But not everyone is lying. Organic certification takes three years, regular paperwork, and some small cost for certification fees each year. If you're a smaller winery in a non-prime region, being able to market your vineyard legally as "organic" may not be worth the hassle even if you actually farm your grapes that way.
You can, of course, choose to farm according to organic regulations, or even better, yet not get certified.
At our home in Los Angeles, Wendy and I have been gardening and tending grape vines and fruit trees according to organic regulations for 8 years. When we give away our excess produce or homemade wine, we tell people that it was "organically grown."
We certainly aren't certified, and technically can't call our homebrew "organic." But it's a lot easier to tell a neighbor, "This homemade wine is organic," rather than "The grapes for this wine were grown without any synthetic chemical inputs according to the same regulations used in organic farming."
Explaining the legal distinction between something that is actually organic, because it was certified, and something that was grown exactly the same way but without certification, can be a mouthful. Heck, I'm writing an entire article about it here. So at times saying you grew something "organically" is just a kind of shorthand, even if you know it's not technically correct.
It's one thing when you're talking about giving away homemade wine, however, and something very different when you're using this "shorthand" to sell grapes or wine from a commercial vineyard. I understand why it's done, and that it can be done with integrity. But (and I'm speaking here about what I'd condone not what is strictly legal) in wine commerce the term "organic" should only ever be applied to non-certified vineyards when two fully informed and understanding parties are communicating directly, and should be clarified as "not certified." The term "organic" should never be used publicly in print or video if certification is not involved.
Further, if you're going to claim that you "practice organic viticulture without certification," you should offer proof by presenting records of pesticide and fertilizer use for each vintage claimed to be farmed "organically."
How Do I Know If Organic Claims Are True?
In the absence of any evidence to support a claim of "organic but not certified" you should assume the claim is false.
If someone cares about the claims they are making of their grapes or wine, they should go out of their way to prove the truth of them.
Wineries know it's difficult to verify the truth of these claims. So if a winery doesn't offer an easy way to verify them, then they are likely relying on the law of inertia, or customer apathy, to prevent any deep dives into the truth of their claims.
I say this as someone who sources wine from both certified organic or biodynamic vineyards and some vineyards that do actually follow organic viticulture practices completely, yet choose not to be certified. If I'm looking for grapes and come across a vineyard that claims to be "practicing organic but not certified," here's what I do to verify whether or not they are actually following organic regulations:
Look at their Pesticide Use Report - "PUR" (California)
Every wine grape grower in California must report every pesticide they use in their vineyards throughout the year, each year. There are online records of pesticide use for every year dating back to 1974. You can read my article about getting a winegrower's PUR here.
Ask direct questions of the winegrower
Often the easiest way to quickly get to the truth of "organic" claims is to talk with the vineyard owner and ask them direct questions about what they fertilize with and what pesticides they use. Ask for a list of everything they use, and ask for their PUR. Ask them why they aren't certified. Ask them how they maintain vineyard health and prevent disease and fungus issues.
Assess the winegrower's openness to provide information
When asked, does the winegrower immediately offer clear, documented information? Do they express values that align with their claims? Can they give specific details about their vineyard's viticulture? Do they have a good explanation as to why they are not certified? Are they willing to provide lists, reports, and other documentation to show what they use in the vineyard?
Visit the vineyard
Arrange for a vineyard tour. Look for visual clues about what was used in the vineyard - things like empty pesticide or fertilizer containers, compost piles, or other signs of holistic approaches to viticulture. Things like un-plowed/un-tilled vineyard rows, sheep or chickens (used for winter cover crop control, as well as fertilizer), owl/raptor nesting boxes, and careful canopy management can be indications of values that align with organic viticulture practices. Ask all of the same questions again.
You Gotta Have Faith - Skeptically
Do all the pieces of information align? Does the winegrower seem like they are keeping anything from you? Ultimately you'll have to make a judgement call.
If a winegrower wants to be dishonest, they can. If they don't want to report that they used a conventional chemical, they can just omit it from their PUR. It can be difficult for the state regulating agencies to discover and penalize the omission. This is true even in certified organic vineyards.
So be skeptical. Verify any "organic but not certified" claims as best you can. Trust only after evaluating for yourself.
Fortunately, the stakes aren't often high enough for a winegrower to try to get away with full-blown deception. Sure it can at times be easier to sell your grapes if people think they were grown organically. And sometimes you can charge a bit more for them. But so far these advantages aren't extreme enough to warrant outright corruption.
If the market changes, we'll see.
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What Pesticides Are In My Wine?
I'm looking into the future of wine, and what I see is more and more transparency. "Honesty" is really more accurate. Wine producers will soon be required to tell us what ingredients they add to grapes to make wine.
(I've been calling for this for years.... see my articles HERE and HERE.)
But the honesty must go further. I'm calling for all wine producers to be required to tell us what ingredients are added to their vineyards as well.
I see a future with two lists required on every bottle of wine:
- Ingredients added during winemaking, AND
- Ingredients added during winegrowing
What winegrowers spray in their vineyards is even more important than what they add to the wine in the winery.
The additives that are allowed during wine making may be unnatural or unnecessary, but they are mostly non-toxic in small quantities (mostly).
The chemicals that get added to vineyards - the residues of which remain on the grapes when they are harvested and made into wine - are often toxic, extremely hazardous to health, and sometimes carcinogenic, as well as being unnatural and unnecessary.
The effects of winemaking additives are mostly localized, while the effects of those chemicals that wine producers spray in vineyards have global environmental and human health impacts.
Doesn't it make sense, then, that we wine drinkers who ingest those chemical residues in the wine we purchase, should be made fully aware of the kind of things we are supporting and consuming?
It does to me.
How You Can Find Out What Pesticides Were Sprayed On Your Wine
Sometimes I'm really proud of the State of California. We're global leaders in setting and enforcing carbon emissions standards. We banned chlorpyrifos - the brain-damage-causing pesticide - even though the US federal goverment continues to allow its use. And we require every agricultural grower to register every pesticide they use every year.
It's true. In California we have records of every pesticide used on every crop dating back to 1974. And they are all public records.
So if you want to know what ingredients were added during the growing of your California wine, you can look it up!
How do you look up what pesticides were sprayed on your favorite wine? There are several options:
- Search the statewide database at the California Department of Pesticide Regulation.
This amazing public service has so many incredible resources it would be pointless to try to summarize. But as a wine drinker interested in knowing what pesticides were sprayed on your wine, you will want to get a Pesticide Use Report (PUR). You need a "Grower ID" number, because growers are not listed by name. To get that Grower ID number you'll basically have to ask the winery for it. - Ask the winery for their Pesticide Use Report (PUR) for the past few years.
Save yourself the trouble of searching a huge database of public records and just ask your favorite winery for their PUR. Since it is public record, they should provide it for you. If they don't... well, maybe they use things they aren't too proud of. - Request the Pesticide Use Report (PUR) using the public records request for the specific county where the winery is located.
The advantage to this method is that the county will have the name of the vineyard or winegrower as part of the records. You will have to seek out the public records request portal on the county website, or contact the appropriate county government official.
You can find appropriate county contacts for requesting PURs here. - Here's the PUR for Santa Barbara County.
Since Santa Barbara is where Centralas sources most of its grapes, I wanted you to have easy access to at least the Santa Barbara County Pesticide Use Records. If you like data, it's pretty fascinating to see all of this info. If you like wine, it's pretty revelatory to see what pesticides your favorite wine producers use. (As of 2020, Centralas wines come from Spear Vineyards - certified organic - and Martian Ranch & Vineyards - certified biodynamic.)
Please note - The pesticides listed in the reports, both organic and conventional, often have strange or misleading names. "Sulfur powder" or "Micronized sulfur" are about the only obvious (organic) pesticides. The rest you have to search online.
Until "Ingredients added during winegrowing" becomes a requirement for wine bottle labels, in California we have the ability to find out for ourselves. It takes a bit more effort, but I truly think it's worth it.
My challenge to all wine producers: put your PURs on your website. Make them easily available to consumers. Show us you have nothing to hide.
Oh wait, that's right... you probably do have something to hide.
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Why We Don't Make Wine At Home Anymore
Making wine at home is hard. But someday you’ll be able to look back at all your hard work and take pride in your accomplishments. Or not.
Our advice? Skip all the time and money it takes to make your own wine and just buy some amazing, organically grown, hand-crafted Centralas wine instead. Your taste buds will thank you.
Skip the homemade disaster. Join our email list to be the first to get access to our delicious, organically grown, and professionally hand-crafted wine.
Convert Your Yard Into A Vineyard
Doesn’t this look like more fun than a yard?
I have 20 Pinot Noir vines growing in my front yard. Actually, instead of my front yard.
[UPDATE: There are now 14 Syrah vines, and 1 Sangiovese vine due to my viticultural learning curve.]
When I bought my home, it had a front yard full of grass that was kept alive by a sprinkler system and regular watering. The problem with grass is that you can’t drink it. Well, okay, you can. And I’m not saying wheatgrass juice is disgusting, I’m just saying it triggers an uncontrollable gag reflex in me.
The point is that your typical lawn is not meant for, nor would it be very good for consumption. Yet it tends to take up a lot of land. Sometimes acres. When I bought my house it became a mystery why someone would spend so much money buying land, and then spend more money to water and upkeep a lawn, usually by running some gas-burning lawn mower. A lawn is something that only takes from your wallet and the environment and never gives anything back.
Maybe because I value the earth, maybe because I see real estate as an investment that should produce returns, maybe because after renting landless apartments for years all I wanted was a patch of dirt to grow something edible on, to know where my food came from, to decrease the carbon footprint from importing and shipping, to not conform to some wasteful standard of property usage that came from a tradition of thoughtless suburbanizing, for the health of myself and the world, and for sure with inspiration from people like Ron Finley and Julie Bass… for so many reasons I see so much more potential in a yard than a yawn, I mean lawn.
So I ripped out my grass and put in a vineyard. And not just any vineyard. These vines are the clone descendants of Grand Cru vines from around Vosne Romanee… the mothership and ground zero for all things Pinot Noir. The crazy thing? You can easily get some for your front yard too.
If you haven’t heard of Foundation Plant Services then you haven’t heard of the Library of Congress for grapes. FPS is, to my knowledge, the largest living library of grapevines in the world. There’s nothing like it. They catalog and cultivate samples of every variety of known grape that they can get their hands on, and some that they can’t. When I die I hope to go to FPS, not heaven.
AND…. AND…. you can buy pretty much any of the vines in the library!! And they can ship them to you! (I know that’s a lot of exclamation points, but FPS is totally deserving.) And you can grow them right there in your front yard where all that useless grass is wasting space.
What could happen if you and your neighbors started growing grapes instead of grass? Imagine a neighborhood wine co-op where grapes and wine are shared and exchanged and tasted. Imagine your suburb becoming an AVA. Imagine your world transformed into a garden.
Okay, before I fully begin channeling John Lennon, let me just wrap this up by saying that future posts will give the how-to, step-by-step for growing and making wine from your front yard.
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Editorial note: I wrote this post several years ago for my former blog, PinotNow.com. I have since had to rip out all but two of the original Pinot Noir vines (viticultural learning curve), and I replaced them with Syrah and some Sangiovese. Also, I've since read some studies that give good evidence that lawns are actually a carbon sink on the whole, so I'm not as "anti-grass" as I once was. I still prefer a vineyard to a lawn, and in Los Angeles I'm conserving a lot of precious water by dry-farming vines rather than regularly watering grass. But grass can be a cover crop if it wants to be.
The Necessity Of Wine Ingredients Labeling
In his recent article arguing against wine ingredient labeling, Adam Lee is on the wrong side of history and, unfortunately, logic.
Hi, my name is Adam Leigh Huss. I’m a small winery owner and winemaker. I'm also fond of anyone with my name or its homophones, and I think Adam Lee argues from a good place – that of protecting the small winery. But his arguments against wine ingredients labeling are short-sighted and fallacious.
I would even take it further. I think wine should be required to list the chemicals that are sprayed on the vineyard or vineyards from which the wine is produced. But let’s come back to that.
Lee argues that various state labeling laws make it onerous for small wineries to adapt to a potential 50 variations in label laws. He brings up Connecticut, which charges $200 per label. Other examples include topless women on labels and orange juice formulas.
What any of this has to do with truthfully stating what a winemaker has added to the raw material of grapes is hard to see. The logic is nearly nonsensical.
What those of us who want ingredients on labels are asking for is simply this: tell us everything you added while making the wine.
We don’t care if it gets eaten by yeast, or already exists in the raw must, or gets broken down into other substances. We want to know what you did to manipulate and adulterate the wine.
Did you add water? We want to know. Did you add sugar? We don’t care that it’s now alcohol. We want to know that you chose to add it. Did you add tartaric? Don’t care that it already existed in the grapes. We want to know. Did you add Velcorin? Don’t care that it’s now other chemicals. We definitely want to know. Diammonium Phosphate? We don’t care that the yeast ate it. We want to know that you added it.
The actual compounds that make up “wine” are myriad. We aren’t asking for a listing of the chemical analysis of what is in the bottle. We want to know what you added. That’s what’s behind the desire for ingredients labeling: a desire to know the values and story behind the winemaking.
Every bottle should list “Ingredients added during winemaking” which will at least include “grapes.” Whatever else is listed besides “grapes” tells us something about the winemaking philosophy of the winemaker.
But grapes don’t come into the winery naked. They arrive coated with the residues of whatever was sprayed on them during the growing season, and containing whatever sprays the vines took in from the soil. What sprays were used in the vineyard also tells a story, and it may be the most important story we can tell about wine.
This is why I also recommend a vineyard ingredients list. Would it need to include “owl pellets” or “gopher poop?” No. That’s like listing “iron” as a wine ingredient. Human intervention wasn’t responsible for it.
“Ingredients added during wine growing” might be a good title for this list of ingredients.
Did you add Glyphosate? I want to know, and I definitely would opt not to buy your wine solely based on that one “winegrowing ingredient.” Did you add ammonium nitrate or worm castings? It definitely makes a difference to me, and I think it says a lot about you. Did you spray with sulphur and stylet oil, or chlorpyrifos and norflurazon? It absolutely matters.
The vineyard is where the real skeletons of the wine industry are kept. Sure, industrial winemaking has its ugly side, and labeling every bottle with “Ingredients added during winemaking” would immediately reveal a significant portion of that. But for far too long information about what happens in the vineyard has been kept from consumers. The vineyard is where the deep, dark, bee-killing, toxic-runoff-producing, cancer-causing secrets of the wine industry have been kept.
Here’s the great thing: winemakers can voluntarily list all ingredients added already. If you have nothing to hide, why don’t you?
I just went through 4 COLA approvals with the TTB. You can apply for COLA approval for a wine label in about 5 minutes online (not including account set-up). And it can take less than a week to get the application approved if all your info is in order.
That’s it. Done. Pretty simple and fast. Including ingredients lists! And it’s completely free. That’s the main label approval process that winemakers have to endure. Somehow it doesn’t seem like a burden to small wineries to me.
So let’s not pick on Ridge for listing more ingredients than they really need to when they’re also listing everything they should. And let’s stop making outlier-case arguments against ingredients labeling, or playing stupid about what ingredients count as ingredients.
Bring on the federally regulated requirement to list all ingredients added during winemaking. And while we’re at it, let’s also bring on the federally regulated requirement to list all ingredients added during winegrowing.
Then, sure, knowing how much shit [sic] many wine producers put in both the vineyard and the wine, I can see why they’d need a QR code to link to a place that has a lot more room for ingredients than a wine bottle label.
- Adam Leigh Huss
Does Organic Wine Taste Better?
Sure, I like the idea of organic wine, but at the end of the day I spend my money on wine for a delicious experience not to save the world. If organic wine doesn't taste as good as, or better than, conventionally grown wine, then asking me to drink it is like asking me to take my medicine... without a spoonful of sugar.
So... does organically grown wine taste better than conventionally grown wine?
Defining "Taste"
There is nothing objective about how a wine tastes to you when you drink it. So answering the question of whether organic wine tastes better must start with a caveat.
When you drink wine, how you drink wine, and what you are doing and thinking when you drink wine all affect the flavor of that wine. Context is everything when it comes to the taste of wine.
Did you just brush your teeth, or eat a hamburger? Are you outside on a beach, or in a musty cellar? Did you just win the lottery, or get in a fight with your spouse? Wine will taste differently depending on a huge number of variables that make up the context of drinking wine IRL.
Wine is influenced by and bound to context. Attempts to make judgments about wine separate from context are like looking at a 1 inch color sample and trying to envision what your house will look like fully painted.
With context as a caveat for taste, things get interesting...
The Power of Positive Thinking
More than one extensive study has shown that there are plenty of wines available for $15 that taste just as good, for most tasters, as $50 wines. However, those same studies show that this is only true when the drinkers don't know the price of the wine. When wine drinkers know that a wine is more expensive, they are more likely to prefer the taste of it over the less expensive wine.
The point is that the context of what you think about the value of a wine directly influences how you experience its taste.
If we apply this to organically grown wine, then how you value the fact that a wine is grown organically will affect how it tastes to you. Does knowing that you are supporting a healthier environment, and therefore healthier lives for you and your kids, make you feel better? If so, then an organically grown wine will actually taste better to you than a wine that is otherwise identical but grown conventionally.
Okay, you say, I get that tasting wine is subjective. But are there any real objective differences between organic wine and conventional wine that make a difference in the taste?
As it turn out, yes there are.
Biodiversity = Wine Complexity
Conventional viticulture says, "I will eliminate anything that competes with my cash crop." That results in an industrial form of mono-culture in which vineyards are sprayed with chemicals meant to kill everything except grapes.
Organic viticulture says, "I want to promote a diverse ecosystem so that the vineyard can thrive by natural balance." That results in promoting all kinds of life - plant, animal, insect. Organic viticulture increases competition rather than killing it, allowing the predator and prey relationship in nature to control itself.
The increased biodiversity in organic vineyards results in richer soil microbiomes. (Who would have thought that not spraying toxic chemicals on the ground would promote life? Crazy!) This "living dirt" enables a better availability and transfer of minerals and nutrients to the vines, resulting in healthier vines and - importantly - more interesting grapes.
Of course winemaking styles and techniques will greatly affect a wine. But all things being equal, when the grapes from these more nutrient-rich soils in organic vineyards are are made into wine, the wine has a greater amount of more diverse minerals and flavor compounds. That is, organically grown wine can be more complex... and more delicious!
So, yes, organic wine can taste better objectively. But also, the more you know about the benefits of organic viticulture, the better organic wine will taste subjectively. That's a double whammy of organic wine deliciousness.
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Most Wine Is Like Fast Food
8 companies own 60% of the American wine market (Gallo accounts for 25%). Because of that, when you walk down an aisle of wine at a grocery store or liquor store in most parts of the USA, most of what you see on the shelves is produced by a huge corporation.
The wines made by these corporations, with very few exceptions, are the wine equivalent of fast food. More "wine beverages" than wine, really, they are produced by industrial processes, with many chemical additives - more food science than winemaking.
You can make delicious french fries with organic potatoes, oil, and salt. But MacDonalds french fries are made with (from their website): "Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [wheat And Milk Derivatives]*), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (maintain Color), Salt. *natural Beef Flavor Contains Hydrolyzed Wheat And Hydrolyzed Milk As Starting Ingredients."
A list of ingredients on an average wine bottle would look similar. There are over 60 substances allowed to be added to wine. Unfortunately, wine producers aren't required to list anything on the label other than sulfites.
Don't get me started on the kind of viticulture practiced in the vineyards of most of these mass-produced, industrial wines. People must wear hazmat suits to apply the chemicals that are used in those vineyards. After spraying, no one is allowed to enter the vineyard for a period of hours or days because of the danger it would pose to their health. The spraying must be stopped half an hour before sunset to avoid killing bats. And right now I'm talking about some of the milder chemicals that are used.
The problem is that while most people understand that even though fast food tastes good, they shouldn't eat it every day. As tasty as it is, it's not healthy for you or the world. But almost no one feels that way about wine. Most wine drinkers only care about how a wine tastes.
If I can buy a $10 bottle of wine that tastes as good as a $40 bottle, why should I pay that extra $30? I'm getting everything I want for $30 less... if all I want is something that tastes good.
The case that has been made about fast food also needs to be made about "fast food wine" - that is, though it may taste good, it doesn't ultimately make you feel good.
Sure fast food is cheap - in every sense of the word. The same is true of industrial wine. Understanding this is the beginning of making wine better.
First, we need to demand that wine producers be required to put ingredients lists on bottles. Until we see what is added to wines, we'll have no way to compare who is making real wine versus industrial wine beverages.
Second, we need to understand that wine grown organically and made naturally gives you something more than just deliciousness. It makes you feel good too.
When you know the truth about most of the wines in stores now, you'll realize that's something they can't offer.