Uncork the Organic

Almost as much as by its varietal grape, a wine is identified by place. From Napa Valley to the Finger Lakes, from Bordeaux to Bourgogne, the taste of wine is said to reflect the region in which the grapes are grown. "We're up at the top end of a valley and around us is a forest," says Katrina Frey, winemaker, describing her family's organically-certified vineyards in the hills of Mendocino, California. "There are foxes, bears, mountain lions, birds all around us." Can we taste this wildness in Frey wine? If "wine is bottled poetry," as Robert Louis Stevenson said, why not? More importantly, when we choose Frey wines we know that this particular wildness is protected, because an organic farm helps sustain the ecology of its region.

"The greatest distinguishing factor between exceptional wines is soil. The earth is what gives a wine its character..." writes Alexis Lichine in The Wines of France. Yet conventional wine grape growing, with its emphasis on synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, is fast depleting this precious resource. "What conventional growing is doing is killing the soil," says Walter Petersen, owner of Four Chimneys winery in upstate New York, which uses organically-certified grapes, "and the plants are given pesticides to such an extent they lose their ability to self-defend." Grape rows become pesticide-dependent while major pests, such as the grape leafhopper, become pesticide-resistant. "You're ending up spraying for the sprays," says George Rose, public relations director at Fetzer Vineyards, a neighbor of Frey's which produces an organically-grown BonTerra line of wines. "After a while, a vineyard sprayed for spider mites actually becomes heavily infested, because sprays kill beneficial insects that are natural predators," explains Gladys Horiuchi, communications manager for The Wine Institute in San Francisco. In addition to polluting groundwater, synthetic chemicals can injure the health of everything from soil microorganisms to people who work in the fields and live in the surrounding community.

The good news: Organic wine is a growing trend. Gallo, the largest U.S. winemaker with 33% market share, currently has 2,700 of its 9,000 total acreage organically certified. When compared with foods such as table grapes, "It's easier to grow wine grapes organically, since you don't have the concern about cosmetic standards," says Jenny Broome at the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Wine crops and land certified by California Certified Organic Farms (CCOF) totaled 7,315 acres in 1995, a growth of nearly 1,150 acres over 1993, the next-highest year. While this represents only 2% of California's total 354,000 acres in wine grapes, George Rose says a "slow-motion revolution" to organic is underway.

The slow motion results, in part, from the three years required before a vineyard can be certified organic. Many growers are using more sustainable practices, such as IPM (integrated pest management rather than synthetic pesticides) and mechanical weed control rather than herbicides. Yet some aren't seeking organic certification because they want the option of using chemicals in an emergency, say, to save a crop. Michael Raymor at Robert Mondavi Wineries says that all their vineyards have been farmed sustainably for twenty years. However, neither Mondavi nor Gallo makes a certified organic wine. Some say it's because current organic standards make it difficult to guarantee quality in large production. "For this movement to grow we need to make it possible for the big players--Gallo, Mondavi--to go organic," says Veronique Raskin, owner of the Organic Wine Company in San Francisco, which sells French wines, including her own family's Chateau de la Bousquette. A co-founder of the Organic Grapes Into Wine Alliance (OGWA), Raskin has lobbied for national U.S. standards for organic wine that would permit sulfites, in the form of "naturally-occurring" sulfur dioxide, to be added in processing (see page three).

Pesticides of Wrath

California produces about 80% of domestic wines. In 1994, 27.5 million pounds of pesticides (and even more millions of pounds of unlabeled "inert" ingredients) were applied on California wine grape fields, according to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. These range from garlic and soybean oil to the ozone-destroying and acutely toxic fumigant methyl bromide, inhalation of which can cause immediate death. The list includes sulfur and glyphosate (Roundup™), which are, respectively, the first and third most frequently-reported causes of human illness in the state related to agricultural pesticide use. It includes captan and iprodione, probable human carcinogens according to the EPA, and simazine, a possible human carcinogen.

Brian Baker of CCOF describes the visual effect of wine grape fields after herbicide use as tantamount to "vines stuck in parking lots." Toxic to earthworms, beneficial insects and nitrogen-fixing bacteria, Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides commonly used in vineyards deplete the fertility of the soil, according to Caroline Cox, editor of Journal of Pesticide Reform at the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP). Roundup, made by Monsanto, has benefited from an intense public relations campaign claiming it's environmentally safe because it breaks down rapidly in the environment. However, NCAP reports that residues of glyphosate have been found in crops planted one year after treatment. Glyphosate is permitted for use near water.

The toxicity of many of these pesticides, such as methyl bromide, requires "no-reentry" periods of several hours to several days after application. "Most of the vineyards around here complain they can't find people to pick their grapes," says Richard Figiel of Silver Thread Vineyards in New York. "I definitely have found it easier to recruit pickers because my vineyard is organic--lack of chemical spraying is one factor."

Gentler Organics

Organic grape farmers use no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, although they can use naturally-occurring insecticides such as pyrethrins and rotenone. They are also permitted to treat grapes and leaves with sulfur and copper to inhibit mildew. While sulfur and copper can be toxic, they're considered "elemental"--natural rather than synthetic. But Tony Norskog, at Nevada County Wine Guild, has backed away from the use of copper for some of the reasons associated with other harsh pesticides. "I felt copper was hard on beneficial mites," Norskog says. Instead, he's been experimenting successfully with more effective sprayers, sulfur mixed with sugar, and a yeast that's competitive with mildew.

Mulches, cover crops and manure keep the soil healthy and biologically alive. "We see worms returning into the fields," says Bill Powers of Badger Mountain Vineyards in Kennewick, Washington. Instead of herbicides, organic farmers plant flowering cover crops such as honey lupen, yarrow and fennel, which attract nectar-feeding beneficial insects. Cover crops hold moisture, secure the soil against wind and soil erosion, act as "green manure" and "fix" nitrogen in the soil. Organic cultivation is also more labor-intensive. Weeds are primarily fought with tools such as the French plow, which cleans delicately between the vines.

For farmers, it's crucial that forsaking pesticides make economic as well as environmental sense. "I've had some growers tell me one of the hardest things to give up was herbicides, and that it turned out it saved them money," says Brian Baker of CCOF. However, Gerry White, Ph.D., a professor at Cornell University, says organic costs "considerably higher than conventional practices. Will there be a price premium? Will consumers be willing to pay?"

Actually, there already is a price premium in some places--Fetzer and Frog's Leap wineries pay it to growers. And, while long-term studies have yet to be done, the higher costs of the transition to organic may even out over time. "It's more expensive in the first three years, when you're making an investment in machinery--but after three to five years, it's less expensive. Pesticides cost a lot," Horiuchi says. Paul Dolan, winemaker at Fetzer, agrees. "In the fourth, fifth years, it starts to turn around--not a lot, but it's clearly cheaper." Also, the more pesticides growers use, the greater their potential cost for workers' compensation and other regulatory burdens. "Every year, the State of California is pulling more pesticides off the market," Tony Norskog says. "I think it's helping push more people towards organic."

In organic wine processing, vintners are generally restricted to non-synthetic clarifying agents and other substances, and must use hot water or steam to sterilize their equipment and tanks rather than the chemical cleansers used in conventional winemaking.

Should Added Sulfites Be Allowed in "Organic" Wine?

If one is allergic, there is good reason to avoid sulfites in everything from salad bars to dried fruit to wine. They can cause severe allergic reactions and trigger asthma attacks. Some people who are sensitive to conventional wines find that they can tolerate no-sulfites-added wines. There has been considerable controversy as to whether a wine can be defined as organic if sulfites are added during processing.

Sulfites occur naturally during wine fermentation, which releases the sulfur in the cell wall of every grape. In processing, sulfites are also added as a preservative, to keep the wine from turning to vinegar and, in the case of whites, from going brown. As of this writing, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) has recommended to the U.S. Department of Agriculture that the forthcoming federal definition of organic wine include added sulfites, but only in the form of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and in levels no greater than 100 parts per million (ppm). Both Veronique Raskin, of OGWA, and Bob Scowcroft, of Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), say that, without added sulfites, the risk would be greater and fewer vintners willing to make organic wine. This, they say, could discourage organic wine grape cultivation, as well.

"Wines are a lot more difficult to make without (added) sulfites--much more so than to grow grapes organically," says Katrina Frey. Nevertheless, Frey does not add sulfites, "because we want to make a truly organic product. And there's quite a huge demand." Despite the greater potential instability of the product, Frey's and Nevada County Wine Guild's no-sulfite-added wines have won medals in competition against sulfite-added specimens. In 1980, when Frey began, they made 2,000 cases of wine as compared with 32,000 cases last year.

"It's a processing aid...you can use them now, but winemakers should be looking at other stabilizers," says Bob Scowcroft. But Phil La Rocca, who doesn't add sulfites to his California wines, says, "I'm totally opposed. It's a synthetic, and it would throw off the whole definition of what organic is." The label "organic wine" should mean "no sulfites added," La Rocca and his colleagues say, while sulfite-added wine labels should be able to use "organic" only as in, "made from organically grown grapes." CCOF adheres to La Rocca's view. And the USDA has not finalized an organic wine definition yet.

If you are concerned about sulfites, read labels carefully. The Food and Drug Administration requires that a label declare "contains sulfites" if a wine (or other food product) contains more than 10 ppm. French organic standards allow 100 ppm in red, 120 ppm in white wines. (Conventional wines can contain anywhere from 80 to 350 parts per million.)

In Good Taste

Wine from organic grapes enhances the environment, but what about our palates? "Absolutely it tastes better," says Fetzer's Paul Dolan of organically-grown wine. "We've improved the quality of grapes in our vineyards because we spend more time in the vineyards, tending to the grapes and their needs." Jim Lapsley, Ph.D., a wine historian at University of California, Davis, says the reason is not the lack of chemicals per se, but the management required in organic farming. "The best manure is the master's eye," Dr. Lapsley says, citing Pliny the Elder on agriculture. All kinds of elements and myth, many of them hotly disputed, go into the reasons behind the taste of a vintage. Based on our own tastings at The Green Guide, we'd be willing to hazard that environmental soundness--that taste of wildness--enriches the bouquet of any organically-grown wine.