What Pesticides Are In My Wine?

Robin is organic pesticide against the rats that would eat our backyard Pinot Noir. What pesticides are in YOUR 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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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.
   
4. 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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