Ep 518: Biodynamic, Organic, Sustainable, Regenerative Wine (and more) -- the Update
Wine for Normal People
Wine for Normal People
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
These categories of "better for the earth" wines are technical, tricky, and ever-evolving, so I it was time to do an update!
In this show, I do best to break it all down in as simple a way as possible…I cover:
- Biodynamics
- Organics
- Sustainable farming
- Regenerative agriculture
- And quickly, the loose ends – vegan wine, natural wine
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Biodynamic
I discuss the main principles of biodynamic agriculture – that the farm is a single, self-sustaining organism and the farmer must encourage and guide the vines, as well as protect the soil so provides nourishment for the vines. The main certification for biodynamics is DEMETER.
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Organic
Organic farming is how farming was always done until the industrial revolution. The new iteration grew out of the biodynamic movement in the 1920s. This method took off in the 1970s and 80s, especially in Europe.
Different countries have different definitions of organic…
- European Union Organic Products/”Bio” in France: Organic wine prohibits most synthetic chemicals or GMOs and uses only certified organic oenological products in the cellar, including organic yeast. Sulfites are regulated.
- United States. This is a program developed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). There are prohibitions on the vineyard and the winery, and added sulfites are prohibited. Because of this last prohibition, certified organic vineyards go in and out of the organic certificatio
- To make it more flexible, they added the “Made with Organic Grapes” stipulation, which is looser
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Regenerative Organic Agriculture
Although relatively new, this is likely the future of better for the earth initiatives. Regenerative starts out with the principles of organic but then adds a few other things. Watch this space…
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Sustainable Winegrowing
This is the most popular way to do better for the earth viticulture but it’s squishy. Sustainable is a catchall term that has MANY definitions. Examples of certifications:
France…
HVE: The French Ministry of Agriculture developed the Haute Valeur Environementale
Others...
Vignerons Engages
Viticulture Durable en Champagne
Terra Vitis
California: Certified California Sustainable Winegrowing
I end with a quick tour of Natural wine and Vegan wines
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Wine for Normal People, the Podcasts for People who like Wine for Normal People, |
| 0:10.0 | the podcast for people who like wine, but not the snobbery that goes with it. |
| 0:13.2 | I'm your host Elizabeth Schneider author of the Wine for Normal People Book and |
| 0:19.3 | certified wine dork. This podcast is sponsored by Wine Access, my exclusive sponsor. If you're not currently a member of the |
| 0:28.7 | Wine Access Wine for Normal People Wine Club, you can join the club today and get $25 off your first two shipments by |
| 0:36.2 | visiting wine access.com slash normal. If you're thinking about it, now is the time to join we have an amazing shipment coming |
| 0:44.2 | up and two more great ones for the end of the year join today wine access |
| 0:48.3 | dot com slash normal and listen in the middle to show for more details on this |
| 0:51.7 | limited time offer. |
| 0:54.1 | So last week was a re-release of the show with Jason Haas from Tulles Creek and it was around |
| 1:00.9 | regenerative agriculture and a bunch of other things that have to do with the holistic |
| 1:06.4 | health of a vineyard and of a farm and all that kind of stuff. |
| 1:10.6 | And I was thinking about that and then at the same time I am currently working on a |
| 1:17.5 | project where I am uploading all of the podcast on to Patreon because originally I had done it through a third party |
| 1:25.8 | and it's not working out as well as I had hoped so we're going to actually have all |
| 1:29.6 | the podcast live on patron it'll be searchable it'll be a lot easier, so when you join |
| 1:33.1 | Patreon you can just go in and listen right away because all of the old |
| 1:37.7 | episodes of the podcast are now only available to patrons. You have to be a |
| 1:41.6 | patron in order to gain access to them and now |
| 1:43.9 | they will actually just live on patrons. You don't have to do anything you just |
| 1:46.8 | have to search and they're categorized and all this kind of stuff so it's great. |
| 1:49.6 | But one of the things that I noticed is that it has been a really freaking long time since I have |
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