Ideas and resources to help you be a more thoughtful wine consumer, maker, and lover.
Is "Sustainable Wine" Total B.S?
The answer to this question is complicated. There are two uses of “Sustainable Wine” that you might come across in the wine industry.
The first is just a marketing term which may or may notpoint to any real principles and practices in the winegrowing or winemakingprocess, and is basically meaningless. It’s a buzz word to capture theattention of environmentally conscientious consumers (like me). It’s total B.S.
Then there’s “certified sustainable.” This term can be used when a winery undergoes the certification process of the California Sustainable Winegrowers Alliance (CSWA). There isn’t an Oregon or Washington version of the CSWA, but they have other certifications that are similar, like LIVE certification. The use of the term “sustainable” when accompanied by this certification actually means something on a bottle of wine.
Certified Sustainable winegrowers have shown that they areengaged, to some degree, in practices deemed “sustainable” relating to BusinessStrategy, Viticulture, Soil Management, Vineyard Water Management, IntegratedPest Management, Wine Quality, Ecosystems Management, Energy Efficiency, WineryWater Conservation and Quality, Material Handling, Solid Waste Reduction andManagement, Environmentally Preferable Purchasing, Human Resources, Neighborsand Community, and Air Quality.
The gist of that list – if you didn’t fall asleep reading it– is that “Certified Sustainable” is a very good thing. It is looking ateverything that goes into producing a bottle of wine, including the quality oflife of the humans who do the work or live near the work, and setting standardswhere otherwise it would literally be the Wild West. You wouldn’t be too far off to associate itwith “Fair Trade” minus the import aspect.
But…
There is some fine print.
“CertifiedSustainable” sounds like it means something like “almost organic” while itallows, and actually prescribes, the use of Roundup (glyphosate) and othersystemic chemicals in the vineyard. (This is true for Oregon LIVEcertification as well, though minimal use is advised.) So there is a majorlymisleading understanding that is promoted, or at least capitalized on, by“Certified Sustainable.” If you haven’t already, please check out my postabout the dangers of glyphosate.
Also, it’s important to understand that “CertifiedSustainable,” while not Total B.S., is limited. A certification is only as goodas the metrics it measures, and its enforcement of them. Let’s take the exampleof the old joke: what do you call the person with the lowest passing grades inmedical school? A doctor.
Similarly, in sustainable certification each metric is“graded” on a three tier system. The tiers are Red, Yellow, and Green and canbe seen as a grade of F, C, or A respectively, to use this analogy. You canbecome certified sustainable with a majority Yellow tiers (C’s). But in neither the case of the doctor who iscaring for you, nor the wine you are drinking, should it necessarily inspireunquestioned confidence. And when you consider that you can use some prettyintense systemic synthetic chemicals in the vineyard and still get an “A”(green tier), you may feel even more cautious about Certified Sustainable.
I don’t want to diminish the good side of Certified Sustainable, though. It is a very good thing. But everything has its limits. To be an “Organic” winegrower, all you need to do is only use the products which have been certified for organic use. It doesn’t require you to be careful about water use, erosion, beneficial insects, natural habitat, or things like vineyard worker safety. Organic winegrowers can, and do, use pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. They just use ones that are “naturally derived,” but that does not always mean “non-toxic.”
Check out my post about the realities of Organic Viticulture.
Hey, but wait a minute! On the one hand you have “Certified Sustainable” which sets standards for nearly everything related to winegrowing except the use of synthetic systemic chemicals, and on the other hand you have “Certified Organic” which pays no attention to anything but the use of synthetic chemicals. What if you got both certifications?
The winegrowers who get certified as both Sustainable andOrganic are my heroes. Meeting the combined standards of both of thesecertifications ensures that the lacks of one are made up for by the strengthsof the other. To me this is the best wine pairing ever.
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To learn more about the requirements of certification by the California Sustainable Winegrowers Alliance, click here.
To learn more about LIVE certification, click here.
The Greatest Ecological Disaster Ever – The Extinction of the American Chestnut
The functional extinction of the American chestnut tree has been called the greatest ecological disaster to strike the world’s forests in all of history. At the beginning of the 20th century there were approximately 4 billion American chestnut trees covering over 200 million acres of woodlands in the eastern USA. By the 1940’s they had all but completely disappeared. A species that had survived every threat for 40 million years was wiped out in 40 years.
You likely haven’t heard about it though. That’s because the greatest human impact was the decimation of a culture of subsistence farmers in the Appalachians, a place and way of life that was mostly insulated from mainstream American culture.
But imagine a magical plant, that grew quickly and strongly and thrived in poor soils, that provided food and cash crops for you and your livestock, that provided wood for you to build your home and any household tools and furniture, that provided fire wood, that created bountiful forests teeming with wildlife, and that was so abundant that its forests were treated like a communal garden without boundaries or property lines.
Now also imagine that its wood made world class wine barrels.
The story of the American chestnut can be seen as one of the cautionary tales of globalization. Its extinction was caused by a fungal blight brought to America on Asian chestnut trees that had evolved a natural resistance to the fungus. If you know anything about the phylloxera epidemic that destroyed most of Europe’s grapevines in the late 1800’s, this story may sound similar. Imagine, though, if the phylloxera epidemic had not been stopped and all the vines in France had been killed along with the ways of life that grew out of the great winegrowing regions of Europe, and all the wine that we know and drink to this day had ceased to exist.
That’s what happened to the American chestnut and the cultures who relied upon it. There never was an eleventh hour rescue by grafting onto resistant rootstock, or by any other method of salvation. The tale of the American chestnut doesn’t have a happy ending… yet.
But that’s where those world class wine barrels made from American chestnut come in.
My wife and I went through fermentation and elevage in Pennsylvania, the heartland of the American chestnut. Through Centralas wine we are trying to bring about a happy ending for it. By using wine barrels made from reclaimed, fallen American chestnut wood, we hope to bring attention to this ecological tragedy and show the value this tree can have for the global wine industry.
The American chestnut really is magical. Despite the near total annihilation of the tree, its roots live on under the soil. Each year it sends up shoots, here and there throughout the forest, trying to live again. Those shoots may survive a year or two or even more, but the blight eventually kills them. The roots keep living, though, and trying.
We think the American chestnut tree could benefit from some attention. By making great wine in barrels made with American chestnut we hope to show the world that it is a viable and valuable alternative to oak for cooperage, and therefore worthy of the investment of the time and resources necessary to save it from extinction.
The wood we will use is sourced from American chestnut trees killed by the blight and found fallen in the Pennsylvania Appalachians. None of these precious trees were cut down for their wood. As of the posting of this article, our friend in PA has cut the fallen chestnut and we are allowing it to weather through at least two winters to leach out rough tannin and other strong flavors. Once ready, we'll be looking for a cooperage willing to work the wood into barrels.
To learn more about the American chestnut, and the efforts to resurrect it, visit the website of the American Chestnut Foundation.
To see a comparison of flavor profiles of European chestnut against various other oak species when used for wine barrels, search for the study titled, “Aromatic potential of Castanea sativa Mill. compared to Quercus species to be used in cooperage.”
Wine Ingredients - Do You Know What's In Your Wine?
If you’ve purchased and drunk wine from a grocery store, liquor store, or your local 7-11 any time in the past decade, you have consumed (almost without a doubt) something called Mega Purple.
The name Mega Purple conjures a large, fun-loving, violet-furred creature that has its own Saturday morning cartoon. But the real Mega Purple is a common additive in commercially mass-produced red wine that darkens and sweetens it , and is likely a big part of the current trend in big, dark red blends with gothic packaging and names like “Authentic Black” and “Midnight Crush” and other such nonsense that sound like the emissions of a BET Harlequin comingling.
Wait, “additive?” you ask. Isn’t wine just fermented grapes? Uh, nope.
Here's a link to the list of over 60 chemicals that can be added to wine without informing the consumer.
We can’t value organic, local food at the same time that we buy wine without knowing what’s been added to it.
There are many reasons to add things to fermenting grape juice to change the flavor of the resulting wine. In addition to the cultured yeasts and bacteria that are often added to ferment the juice you can add yeast food (which contains things like diammonium phosphate). And then there are special enzymes that help break down the skins to extract more color and flavor, and tannin extracts to give a stylistically desired texture. And of course there are sulfites (potassium meta bi-sulfite, for example), which are put in every wine except for organic or natural wines. There are fining ingredients like clay (bentonite) and egg whites (yes, egg whites). And then there are the really weird things, like Mega Purple (a concentrate made from Rubired, a teinturier grape*).
What if you come up with some great new wine additive but it's not on the list of 60+ approved wine additives (like MegaPurple)? No problem. Here's a link to the simple process for getting a new additive approved. The only problem? There's no simple process for making us consumers aware that a new additive has been approved... and added to our wine!
To be fair, a lot of the additives are pretty much harmless. But some are not. Copper sulfate for example is something often added to wine when it develops too much hydrogen sulfide (H2S).
H2S is the gas responsible for that rotten egg smell that you might have detected if you’ve ever encountered a ruptured sewage pipe… or rotten eggs… or an “off” wine. H2S is flammable and toxic and just gross, and most humans can smell it in very small quantities. Like under 10 parts per billion. And yeast produce it under certain circumstances. So you can see how it’s problematic for wine makers. No one wants to drink a wine that smells like sewage.
Copper sulfate is one way to deal with this problem because it bonds to H2S and then can be filtered out of the wine. The problem is that it’s also toxic. It’s a lesser of two evils. And when a million dollar batch of wine is at stake, it’s clear why you’d be willing to dabble in a little evil.
What’s not clear is why the FDA doesn’t require this information on a bottle of wine!
Ironically the two ingredients that are required to be listed on a wine label are the least surprising – alcohol and sulfites. Thanks! Could you also require that sinks be labeled to show that they dispense water? That would be equally informative.
There is no good reason that wine producers aren’t required to list ALL the ingredients that they add to their wine. There may be several bad reasons, I’ll admit. But I hope that mine will be one of many voices that lead to a change.
We want to know that our wine contains diammonium phosphate just as much as we want to know that our ice cream contains guar gum. It will lead us to research those ingredients and make better choices as consumers about what we want to put in our bodies, along with our alcohol and sulfites. It will expose wine producers who “cheat” nature with additives like MegaPurple. Some of us might not care, but others of us may realize that this is why there can be a “sameness” to many mass produced wines, and it may lead us to seek out producers who put as little into their wine as possible and still get great, interesting results.
Knowing what is in our wine won’t kill wine sales. But it might sting a little. And that’s because a change is needed. We can’t value organic, local food at the same time that we buy wine without knowing what’s been added to it.
To all wine producers: I’m calling you out. If you have nothing to hide, prove it. List every single ingredient that goes into your wine on every bottle that you sell.
* a teinturier grape is a grape whose both skin AND juice is red. Most grapes have clear-ish juice which reddens because of contact with the crushed skins.
The Truth About Organic Wine Exposed: Organic Wine is Great – Part 3/3
Previously, in Part 2 of The Truth About Organic Wine Exposed: Organic Wine is Great, I addressed the limitations of sulfur, the fact that some synthetic chemicals may be more effective means of dealing with vineyard problems, and the "harmlessness" of glyphosate and other conventionally used chemicals. If you haven't read it, catch up here.
The last two arguments against organic viticulture are a pretty tough 1-2 punch. Does it survive the round? Let's find out.
Argument Against Organic Viticulture #5
5. Organic viticulture doesn’t make the grapes/wine any more nutritious/healthy for you.
To be fair, this argument is made more about other kinds of agriculture. That is, a head of lettuce fertilized with ammonium nitrate (a common conventional ag fertilizer that supplies nitrogen) is going to have the same amount of vitamins and minerals as one fertilized with organic compost. The plant converts any nitrogen into its own plant-y-ness, regardless of the source.
This has been shown to be true repeatedly, and the same is true of grapes… Not that anyone is drinking wine for its vitamin and mineral content.
But this is a misleading argument for two big reasons:
First, soil health IS affected by using synthetic fertilizers versus organic fertilizers and composts. Initially the microbes in soil love the high dose of N-P-K (or whatever elements) from the synthetic fertilizer. They, along with the plant, will take a free meal any way they can get it. But the synthetic fertilizer does nothing to enrich the soil’s overall health and vitality. The soil doesn’t become a thriving micro-organism community, able to feed itself a healthy, regular diet. It’s more like a depression era bread line.
Conventional viticulture gives the soil a fish, while organic viticulture teaches the soil how to fish.
Does the science back this up? To be honest, it’s debatable. Any commercial agriculture, including viticulture, requires the growth of many more of a single species of plant than would ever occur in nature growing all together in the same plot of soil. So the soil must be replenished manually. Even an organic vineyard needs to be fertilized And, given the cheaper cost of synthetic versus organic fertilizer, or ease of application and therefore lower labor costs, a farmer or viticulturist will be motivated to spend less for the same, or arguably the same, results.
I empathize, and, in the realm of conventional viticulture, using synthetic fertilizers is probably the least troubling thing you can do. If that’s the only thing that pushes you into the conventional category, that's not too shabby. I wouldn’t do it in my own vineyard, but I’d taste your wine.
Second, and more importantly, conventional viticulture DOES result in some pretty unhealthy things ending up in the finished wine – like glyphosate. You may have heard about the recent test of different wines from California that found glyphosate in all of them (if you haven’t, just do a search).
Glyphosate and other herbicides aren’t even sprayed on the vines. They’re sprayed to kill weeds around the vines. But they persist in the soil for a very long time, and the vines take it in through their roots and send it to their grapes (there is a strong suggestion that glyphosate in particular lowers the quality of those grapes too). Glyphosate persists in soil for such a long time that even organic wines made from vineyards that were converted from conventional to organic in the last 20 years (perhaps longer) can still contain small amounts of it.
That’s not all. Grapes are not, generally, washed before being made into wine. So some amount of any synthetic pesticides that were sprayed ON the grapes during the growing season will end up in the finished wine, even if the vines haven’t taken them up through their roots (which they also surely have). So with conventional viticulture literal poisons end up on both the outside and the inside of the grapes that go into your wine.
(For a sampling of just a few of those poisons that get sprayed on wine grapes, see #1 above, and follow the links.)
Organic viticulture also uses sprays, and as I mentioned, some aren’t so great in terms of human and environmental health, especially if used injudiciously. But again, the number of allowed poisons is much lower in organic viticulture.
I’d rather drink wine made from a strange new hybrid grape that was able to be grown without synthetic chemicals, than drink a Pinot Noir grown with them.
The next argument is the last in this series, and I'll be honest - it's a pretty strong. It may be the case that organic viticulture only works in certain climates. But does that mean we shouldn't practice organic viticulture where it IS possible?
Argument Against Organic Viticulture #6
6. Organic viticulture doesn’t work East of the Mississippi.
This is a very strong argument, though not because it’s entirely true.
What is true is that organically growing vinifera and hybrid vines in climates zones other than Mediterranean is extremely labor intensive and, therefore, cost prohibitive. One organic wine grower from Virginia estimates that 30 minutes are spent on each vine every year. That’s a lot of labor when you consider an average vineyard has 600-900 vines per acre.
What is true is that the East Coast organic viticulturist must do everything right from the beginning. You must plant healthy, disease resistant varieties of vines, tend them meticulously and diligently, and still sometimes be prepared to lose a large part of your crop. In 2018 Virginia vineyards received over 100 inches of rain, during the growing season. That’s insane. Santa Barbara wine country received just under 25 inches of rain in the entirety of 2018, and that was more than the previous 12 years. No matter how meticulously you farm your organic vineyard, Nature always has the last laugh.
What is true is that prevention is sometimes the only tool the organic viticulturist has to avoid some of the worst things that can happen to a vineyard. Once you get certain diseases in the vineyard, there may be no organic treatments to get rid of them. An East Coast organic wine grower I spoke with decided to lose their organic certification because their vineyard became infected with black rot and they faced a choice of losing the entire vineyard and having to start from scratch, or spraying a conventional synthetic chemical like Pristine or Revus Top (both very hazardous) because there are no organic treatments for black rot other than prevention.
What’s also true is that those who are attempting to organically grow Cabernet, Pinot, Chardonnay and other European varieties on the East Coast of the USA, are also almost certainly spraying copper sulfate. It’s really the only effective organic treatment for the downey mildew that it rampant there, and it’s minimally effective at that.
So it’s not technically true that it’s impossible to grow wine grapes organically on the East Coast (or other similar climates), but it is largely so difficult and risky that you’d almost have to be an inveterate gambler with a penchant for Russian Roulette, not to mention a multi-millionaire, to want to engage in it.
We should be in awe that some wineries do grow organically on the East Coast, and we should support them in every way that we can. The fact that they are doing it and succeeding, despite everything, only strengthens the argument for organic viticulture on the West Coast.
Organic wine growers on the West Coast face most of the same viticultural pressures as those in the East, just to a far lesser extent. California, in particular, is pretty much the exact climate in which vinifera vines evolved. The existence of even one organic wine grower in Virginia means that a far greater number of vineyards could and should be organic in California (to date the number is something like 3%)… like, um, all of them.
Having said all that, the future of organic viticulture on the East Coast may depend on a shift in consumer tastes. The lay wine drinker will need to become bored with drinking only Cabernet, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir, and be willing to fall in love with native varieties of grapes, or one of the new disease-resistant hybrid grapes that are being developed at Cornell and the University of Minnesota.
Personally, I’d prefer to use my science to find an organic treatment for black rot, or the next North American version of Cabernet Sauvignon, bred to withstand every known vine blight, rather than using science to synthesize a new poison to kill those blights. I’d rather drink wine made with a strange new hybrid grape that was able to be grown without synthetic chemicals, than drink a Pinot Noir grown with them.
On the West Coast the future of organic viticulture and viticulture in general may depend on dry farming – only growing grapes where they can survive without irrigation. But that’s a subject for another article.
The values of organic viticulture transcend any temporary issues with its application.
Conclusion
My ideal vineyard is dry farmed and never has to be irrigated, and it’s made of vines that are self-resistant to all forms of pestilence so that it never has to be sprayed with anything. It is situated on soil that has just the right nutrients and drainage to provide what wine grapes need to be healthy and high quality. My role as the shepherd of that vineyard would be mainly to train the vines and manage the canopy for the best possible way to ripen the grapes, to manually control competitive vegetation (aka weeds), and to enrich the soil with organic composts that replenish what I would take away from the vineyard in the form of grapes.
While this is possible, we mostly don’t live in an ideal world. We still haven’t hybridized a delicious and completely no-spray grape variety. Arandell was thought to be one such hybrid, but remember the winery who had given up their certification due to a black rot infestation? They were growing Arandell. Arandell is really great, and mostly resistant to most blights… but every once in a while when it rains 100 inches you might need to spray it, and every other variety, with poison.
Compromises to our values are sometimes necessary in the real world where most of us don’t have a limitless supply of time and money, and we actually need to make a financial return on our crop of wine grapes this year to survive. And sometimes synthetic chemicals may be needed to save our vines.
On the other hand, the fact that there are currently no organic treatments for certain blights, like black rot, doesn’t mean there never will be any. Personally, I see these kinds of lacks in the organic arsenal as challenges for bright, caring, scientific minds to overcome, not as a reason to abandon and disregard organic viticulture. Because the values of organic viticulture transcend any temporary issues with its application.
The dichotomy I presented at the beginning of this article was not really about conventional versus organic viticulture, it was about values. Both organic and conventional viticulturists can share the same values, as it turns out. The question is whether you are guided by a desire to have as light a touch on the world as you can, and to leave it a little better than you found it, while still finding a way to make a living, or whether you are guided by the desire to make as much money as you can.
Organic viticulture really protects us from some of the darker sides of human nature. It puts a limit on the damage that we can do when we are guided by our venal, egotistic, short-sighted, and ignorant impulses. We know that we all have these impulses from time to time. Organic certification makes us accountable for them and helps ensure that we’ve taken steps to prevent them from getting into our wine.
I think that’s great.
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.
The Truth About Organic Wine Exposed: Organic Wine is Great - Part 1
I love to call B.S. I think a lot of us do. We don’t like being conned. There’s a pride in being the one who sees clearly through the snow job, or catches the charlatan in his charade.
That might be part of the motivation for several articles purporting to pull back the cover on the “scam” of organic wine grape viticulture. The term “organic” has been used so vociferously as a marketing mantra that we begin to sense it could be more marketing than substance. Our B.S. meter has registered a whiff of stank.
So these purported behind-the-scenes, insider exposés about the lack of a real benefit, or even the added harm, of growing wine grapes organically, cause us to champion those revelations with an I-knew-it! sense of confirmation bias.
The problem is that they’re wrong. Organic agriculture, including wine grape viticulture, is not a “scam,” is not “really bad for the environment,” and is a vital part of the answer to saving a global environment that has been literally saturated with poison in the name of conventional agriculture (including viticulture).
Those articles also have a point, though. “Organic” has been used as a marketing slogan to drive sales by associating it with all that is good and healthy, while vilifying “conventional” as being associated with all that is bad and unhealthy. By training consumers to rely on labels – the American way in so many ways, and the source of so much misinformation – the complicated truth about the spectrum of agricultural practices has been obscured and overly-simplified.
Over the course of several posts, I'm going to present the most common arguments against organic viticulture. I’ll also link to some articles that make these arguments so that you have the source material to read and assess for yourself and not take my word for it.
Because of course I have reason to be biased. I sell wine made from organically grown grapes, so naturally I want to promote anything that will benefit sales. I don’t deny that. So I’ll go to great lengths here to remove any possibility of B.S… starting with this transparency.
All caveats aside, I hope to lay out the case for organic wine that allows your reason and judgement to determine if it is or is not B.S.
Opposing World Views
To be an “Organic” winegrower, all you need to do is only use the products which have been certified for organic use. It doesn’t require you to be careful about water use, erosion, beneficial insects, natural habitat, or things like vineyard worker safety. Organic winegrowers can, and do, use pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. They just use ones that are “naturally derived.” But that does not always mean “non-toxic.” The plague is natural.
However, “organic” agriculture and what has become known as “conventional” agriculture – two terms that are equally meaningless except as labels – are not just two forms, or farms, of the same thing with different lists of allowable sprays and fertilizers. They have developed from two diametrically opposed world views.
Organic viticulture developed from a vision of human activity in the environment for the purpose of wine grape production as a form of stewardship of the health and balance of an entire ecosystem of which we are a small but potent part. Organic viticulture is a form of shepherding, of steering and promoting natural processes to achieve desired results with as light a touch as possible, trusting that these plants and vines in our care have evolved for millennia without our influence and have innate ability to care for themselves. We only need to foster the health and fertility of the total environment, and we will promote a system in which everything can live and thrive, including our grapes and the wine business that flows from them, long after we are gone.
This vision is highly suspicious of introducing new, experimental chemicals into the environment, and it considers a chemical to be “experimental” until hundreds of years of controlled, unbiased testing have proven its systemic safety.
Conventional viticulture, on the other hand, envisions a human versus nature dichotomy. It sees cash crops on the left of the spreadsheet and anything that competes with cash crops on the right of the spreadsheet with a red X through them. Those red X’s are achieved by any means necessary, experimental chemicals included, provided those means are cheap. Safety is only a secondary consideration of experimental chemicals, and the testing phase to “prove” that safety is whatever the FDA or EPA says.
Likewise, the growth of the cash crops and the achievement of the desirable characteristics in the fruit of those cash crops is achieved by any means necessary, again, provided they are primarily cheap means. The focus is almost solely on the cash crop, and the rest of the environment in which those cash crops exist be damned – unless, by chance, any of that environment is of cheap benefit to the cash crop.
In conventional viticulture a vineyard is merely a resource to be exploited and depleted as a financial investment, like a coal mine or an oil well. Work done to foster the health of the vineyard is motivated by a desire to protect and grow the investment of capital, not the environment. So if my vineyard shines at the expense of all the fish in the sea, that’s unfortunate, but I’m selling wine not fish.
Clearly I’ve painted a picture of the extremes of these perspectives. Organic farmers must care about profit, and some “conventional” farmers must surely care about the environment. I think the main point here is to understand the reason these two branches of agriculture split apart. Organic viticulture, and agriculture, is a reaction against what is sees as a narrow perspective on the farmer’s role in the total environment and the potential harm that can come from introducing experimental chemistry into our food system.
The problems begin when these two world views are mixed – when someone with a short-term profit mentality switches to organic viticulture. This is when the most valid criticisms are leveled against organic viticulture.
I was at Trader Joe’s the other day and found that Charles Shaw (of “Two-buck Chuck” fame) is producing “wine made with organic grapes” for 4 bucks. The bottle is plastered with the word “organic” in large bold font from top to bottom, front to back.
While I applaud any version of organic agriculture, I’m relatively sure “4-buck organic Chuck” was made strictly by eliminating the prohibited chemicals and heavily dosing with the allowed substances, more from a bottom line and marketing standpoint than from any vision of the total health of the earth.
So let’s approach organic viticulture from this worst case scenario, and talk about some of those more valid criticisms. I won’t pick on Charles Shaw, so let’s just talk about what any short-term profit organic grape wine farmer might do. What that profit-driven, organic-by-name-not-mindset grape wine grower does can set up the best arguments for the B.S. of organic viticulture:
Argument Against Organic Viticulture #1
1. Copper Sulfate is Highly Toxic (and so are other organically allowed substances).
Let’s start with the truth. Both organically allowed and conventionally allowed substances can be toxic, unhealthy for consumption, dangerous for pollinators, and detrimental to the environment. Checking the organic box does not mean that you don’t have to be responsible and thoughtful and selective. Being organic just ensures that you aren’t supporting an industry that develops and distributes synthetic chemicals, and everything that goes along with that.
I would argue that, generally, checking the organic box means that your viticulture is safer and healthier than conventional viticulture. But that isn’t necessarily true if you are motivated by profit at the expense of environmental responsibility.
For example, Copper Sulfate is allowed, currently, in organic viticulture. It is used as a spray on grapevines to prevent some of the more insidious forms of fungi that can infect vineyards. It also happens to be highly toxic to humans and other animals, builds up in the soil to toxic levels over time, and can poison water sources and decimate some aquatic life.
So, yeah, copper sulfate is not really the poster child for organic values. It’s more like the problem child that we tried to keep in the basement, but at some point the neighbors heard his wailing, and really he should be institutionalized (you know, he’s fond of torturing small creatures), but he keeps the basement so clean!
Why is it considered acceptable for organic viticulture? That’s a good question, and it may eventually lose that benefit.
The only, admittedly weak, defense of the use of copper sulfate is that both plants and animals use copper as an essential mineral in their growth and metabolism. So given very occasional and circumspect use, in small doses, it really isn’t any more harmful than being exposed to any other naturally occurring element. Like sunshine, a bit gives you some needed Vitamin D, a lot can give you skin cancer.
But this is where the crux of the distinction lies between real organic farmers and organic farmers who have a “conventional” mindset. Organic farmers who farm from organic values and not a marketing strategy are highly aware of the down side of copper sulfate and limit or eliminate its use in their vineyards, even though it is allowed by the letter of the organic law.
But if profit is your god, then as long as a substance – even a toxic one like copper sulfate – is on the “allowed” list, you’ll use it freely whenever the productivity of your cash crop is on the line, because it’s also relatively cheap. This applies to both organic and conventional farmers.
The same is true for other toxic organically allowed substances. The good news? The official list of synthetic substances allowed for use in organic crop production is relatively short, and makes sense. Things like hydrogen peroxide – which I wouldn’t drink straight from the bottle, but definitely feel safe having in my home and spilling on myself – are included. If you’d like to know how a substance becomes included on this “safe” list, here is the USDA’s explanation of the process.
It’s also important to keep in mind that, generally speaking, in addition to this list of synthetic substances allowed, organic agriculture allows any naturally occurring substance to be used. But uranium and small pox are naturally occurring, and we tend not to want those to be sprayed on our grapes. So there is a level of responsibility that must be taken, even within the realm of what is organically allowed, to adhere to the guiding organic values rather than the check-list of organic viticulture.
Unfortunately for consumers the only way to know if a winery uses copper sulfate, or any other not-so-great-but-allowed substance, in its organic vineyards is by doing research. You can visit wineries and speak to their vineyard managers. I actually encourage this because until producers know that consumers care, they won’t have a motivation to change. I especially encourage consumers to ask wineries if they spray with Roundup/glyphosate, or any of the plethora of other god-awful stuff that is commonly used in conventional viticulture.
But this kind of research is unrealistic for most of us. Unless a winery offers the information, you pretty much have to call them and ask them, and hope for an honest answer. The products used in the vineyard are required to be reported for organic certification, so you can ask the certifying agency (USDA, CCOF, OTCO, etc.) for those records for confirmation, but how many of us are going to do that?
That brings up an important distinction, though. Organic viticulture involves third-party certification that has oversight and requires the reporting of what is used in the vineyard. Conventional viticulture has no certification, and it is only regulated in the sense that the FDA and EPA must approve a chemical for agricultural use. What and how much you spray in your vineyard is between you and your accountant.
One of the strongest cases I can make for organic viticulture, though, is that given a farmer who doesn’t care for principles and only cares for what and how much is on the allowed list, if she used the organic list we would have healthier lives and a healthier environment. This isn’t necessarily true because everything in the organic bucket are less toxic (though most are), but because the organic bucket is much smaller.
The list of highly toxic, environmentally destructive substances allowed in conventional viticulture is as long as a vineyard row. For example, here’s a UC Davis list of treatments for a detrimental vine blight called phomopsis. There is one organic treatment – sulfur – and six conventional treatments.
Where we get into a conundrum is when you look at the UC Davis management guidelines for another viticultural blight, downey mildew. There are five conventional treatments, and zero organic ones.
So what are you to do if you’re an organic vineyard manager and your vines become infected by downey mildew, or black rot? That’s a great question that gets at the heart of difference between these perspectives on agriculture, and I’ll address it below. Hint: there’s no easy answer.
But the really eye-opening aspect is when you search and read the hazard statements of those suggested six “conventional” chemical treatments for phomopsis in vineyards. Kresoxim-Methyl is the first on the list, for example (I like the Pubchem website for this research). Check out the Laboratory Chemical Safety Summary Datasheet for it. Then do the same for the other conventionally allowed synthetic chemicals.
Why any of these six substances is allowed to be used in our environment is baffling. Can you imagine your child skipping through a vineyard that has been sprayed with any of them, stopping to taste a few grapes along the way? Can you imagine that without being horrified?
But what about that one organically allowed substance, Sulfur? Is that ok? Well, the Pubchem website lists that it is hazardous as an irritant.
My wife might say the same about me, at times, but I know she still loves me. But that isn’t the only concern that has been brought up about sulfur (or me).
To find out why the use of sulfur in organic vineyards is criticized, what's the big deal about glyphosate, and more... read Part 2.
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.