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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