S in for Sustainable
This is the one I’m personally rooting for, and that’s purely a disclaimer (see how honest I am?). “Sustainable” means you can Keep It Going. It’s a common-sense principle that calls for producing wine (or vegetables, or cheese or, for that matter, houses and cars) in a manner than conserves natural resources and supports the health of the environment over the long term.

When we moved onto our ranch in 1971 it had grapes growing, planted in 1905. The guy we bought it from showed us how to farm it, using the same techniques his dad had used.  Guess what? In 1905 they didn’t have pesticides or chemicals to farm with. Or tractors. And today, those vines are still producing stunning, award-winning, world-class wines after 102 years. I’d say that’s sustainable.

The principles of sustainability apply in the cellar too. It means using green energy, recycling at every level and conserving water. Sustainable winemaking means cellaring with a minimum of unnatural manipulation, additives and waste. Also important: a sustainable cellar keeps a “closed loop” —wastes like grape skins and seeds go back to the vineyards whence they came to promote soil health, with as few outside amendments as possible.

In California, the principles of sustainability are applied and monitored according to the self-regulating California Code of Sustainable Agriculture. Every year the grape growers and winemakers of each county meet to take a rigorous self-assessment test. The results of the tests are shared, allowing everyone to compare their performance with that of their neighbors, and to track their own progress year over year. Each county is also compared against other counties in the state. This system promotes responsibility in a grass-roots fashion, as opposed to other systems that rely on top-down regulation, and often seem to have rather arbitrary rules dictated by authorities not directly involved in the industry.

N is for Natural
This is the newest category, and the most loosely defined. In fact, “natural” has no legal definition in the wine world; a contrast to the food world, where the standards for “natural” labeling are regulated by the FDA. Wine can skirt many of the rules that food has to follow because it is regulated by the TTB (formerly the BATF), which is a division of the Treasury department and cares mainly about taxes.

Natural wine is defined, in rough terms, very similarly to organic wine (the next category). It is understood these wines a) contain no additives and b) were made without using “artificial” processes. The problem is that nobody has defined the terms “additive” and “artificial.” What’s more, nobody is looking over anyone’s shoulder. So I could easily slap “natural” on my label and merrily cook up chemical concoctions all day long with zero fear of legal ramifications.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m a huge proponent of making wines naturally, and we strive to do so at our winery, Hook & Ladder, by using natural or native yeasts, harvesting grapes in a manner that reduces the need for artificial processing and making wines by hand in small batches.

But many who want to claim the “natural” name for marketing purposes also want to have it both ways. They want to say they don’t use any artificial processes, but then they allow that it’s perfectly okay to artificially refrigerate wines during fermentation. At the same time, they wouldn’t dream of fining a wine with isinglass (naturally derived from fish bladders), or settling solids from juice with bentonite, a naturally occurring mined clay. How is a consumer supposed to sort through all that?

My feeling is that until “natural” has a real definition that growers and winemaker agree on, any such designation on the bottle is meaningless. And that’s a real shame, because there are many winemakers doing a great job in this emerging category.

O is for Organic
Okay, finally, a clearly defined category. This one is firmly regulated by the USDA, and wines that are organic will have the USDA Certified Organic seal. They will start with organically grown grapes and will be made organically in the cellar. And since Organic is a massive and growing category in supermarkets, there are probably a gazillion USDA Certified Organic wines on the shelf, right? Wrong. Out of the 100,000 plus available wines worldwide for the trade and consumers to choose from, there are less than 1000 organic options.

Out of the 100,000 plus available wines worldwide for the trade and consumers to choose from, there are less than 1000 organic options. That’s right, less than one percent (<1.0%) are USDA Certified Organic. Producing USDA certified organic wine is a tough task indeed. It’s pretty straightforward to grow organic grapes and get certified. No pesticides or herbicides, no non-organic fertilization. You are allowed to irrigate, and you can also bring in organic fertilizer from other regions (which is not a good practice for ultra-premium wine, in my opinion). In any case, follow these rules, and after a couple of years, bang! Your grapes are organic!

Now, you take those grapes into the cellar and—uh oh, the trouble begins. To meet the US standards for organic wine, the naturally occurring antioxidant sulfur dioxide (SO2) can’t exceed a level of 10 parts per million.  This is silly for a few reasons. First, sulphur dioxide is in no way “artificial” or “an additive”; it is a naturally occurring antioxidant which results from fermentation and helps naturally preserve the wine. So what is the damned problem? Second, the 10-per-million limit is completely arbitrary. Finally, organic wines from Europe are allowed 50 parts per million, which is way more than you’ll find in most commercially produced premium wines in the US.

In other words, if the USDA adopted Europe’s standards for SO2 content in organic wine, my guess is that almost half of the American wine now on supermarket shelves could be Certified Organic within two years (the time it takes to certify the grapes themselves). To further complicate matters, European wines meeting European organic standards are, in fact, labeled organic for sale in the U.S. Again, how is the consumer supposed to sort that out?
 
Right now you can buy wines made from organic grapes without the USDA certification that say “Organically Grown,” and that’s a step in the right direction. But the cellaring procedures suffer from the same problem as natural wines; they are not regulated, and anyone can claim that they are making wines in an organic fashion with the exception of the SO2 limit—whether or not it’s true.

B is for Biodynamic
Like organic, biodynamic is a super-regulated category. But contrary to popular conceptions, biodynamic does not mean “super-organic.” Way back in the early 1900’s a deep thinker named Rudolph Steiner was hired by the French government to solve their agricultural ills. He saw that farmers had become disconnected from the land by tractors and chemicals, and came up with natural compounds that allowed farmers to kick the chemical habit. These compounds remain the most controversial component of biodynamics today, simply because they haven’t been scientifically proven. Steiner also established and a lunar calendar-based program of crop management. This element of Steiner’s method is less controversial, since the moon is known to effect plant growth cycles, and lunar planting was traditional long before Steiner’s time.

In the cellar, procedures also follow a lunar calendar, and are similar in many ways to those used in organic winemaking. But biodynamic wines are not bound by the same regulations as organic wine in regard to SO2. This makes biodynamics a more attractive option in terms of compliance, wine preservation and marketing. Anecdotal evidence seems to show that these methods yield healthier plants, tastier fruit and more naturally balanced wines. The drawback is the unfortunate connotation of hippie-trippy howl-at-the-moon voodoo weirdness that biodynamics seems to carry. If it can shake that smear with a few good double-blind, peer-reviewed, multi-year studies, I think it can go mainstream.

Created for Barbara Adams Beyond Wonderful by
Wine Expert, Michael De Loach.