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February 13 2007
By Damien Casten
Pt. II Organic and Biodynamic Enclaves
Farmers fleeing Hitler took Steiner’s methods with them founding Biodynamic Gardening Associations in England and California as early as 1938 and it further spread to Australia in the 1950’s. The approach was not widely applied in viticulture until the Frenchman Nicolas Joly of Coulee de Serrant in the Loire Valley halted the use of all pesticides in his Chenin Blanc vineyards and adopted biodynamics in the early 1980’s. Joly became a true believer and is still one of its most vocal proponents.
Biodynamics widest following is in France where it flourished in the late 1980’s. Burgundy, Alsace and the Loire valley are the three regions with the greatest concentration of converted farms. This makes some sense as the communities within these regions are often close knit and even share vineyard plots, as anyone who has tried to understand Burgundian labels can attest.. Where one grower has converted with success, others have often followed suit. France’s most famous biodynamic producers include Lalou Bize Leroy of Domaine Leroy in Burgundy, Alsatian Master of Wine Olivier Humbrecht of Zind-Humbrecht and Rhone based negociant Michel Chapoutier. At the iconic Domaine de la Romanée Conti, proprietor Aubert de Villiane is cautious when speaking of biodynamics. “DRC is organically farmed and has been for more than twenty years. People credit Steiner when they convert from traditional farming, but for me the real key is organics.” Still, de Villiane is curious. He farms a small parcel of vines as a test but for the moment is not convinced that the entire estate should be converted . For a more affordable taste of French Biodynamics, seek out the Muscadets of Guy Bossard at Domaine de l’Ecu in the Loire Valley. He produces a number of different wines from plots with different subsoils that retail around twenty dollars.
Many of the large, often corporately owned vineyards in Champagne and Bordeaux have been slow to adopt strict organic methods, much less biodynamics. The merlot based Pavie-Maquin of St. Emillion is perhaps the most famous of the Bordelais chateaux to experiment with biodynamics. Part of the problem in climates susceptible to mildew like Bordeaux is that biodynamics has no method of treating the disease, but focuses instead on prevention whereas there are effective inorganic sprays available. Risking an entire year’s crop to maintain biodynamic standards is difficult to imagine.
In the US, the pattern of concentrated areas of interest has been repeated. Master of Wine Jancis Robinson points out that Napa Valley has in the past few years begun “flirting” with organics and biodynamics but that the move is a slow one. In contrast, Oregon, with its smaller vineyards, favorable climate and statewide dedication to natural produce is one of the leading organic wine regions in the world. Nearly half of all vineyards in the state are certified organic. Robinson cites numerous wineries that have significantly improved quality levels in recent years after adopting sustainable practices. The uptake of biodynamics has been slower, but the 2002 conversion of Beaux-Freres, run by Michael Etzel and co-owned with his brother in law, Robert Parker is notable. Robinson says “the contrast between the 1998 and 2003 vintages from his Jackie Block…could hardly have been greater… (The biodynamic) 2003…was probably the finest Oregon Pinot Noir I tasted during a…visit there earlier this year.”
Famously, Northern California is a hotbed of organic farms feeding the revolution Alice Waters instigated at Chez Panisse. Vineyards have followed suit with organic and biodynamic methods catching on in the past fifteen years. Frey, Fetzer and a bit farther south, Benziger are recognized as leaders.
Fetzer Vineyards in Mendecino County extended organic methods from a test garden in the 1980’s across their property. They started Bonterra, an entirely organic vineyard in 1990 and just bottled their first biodynamic wine from Bonterra’s McNabb Ranch. Julian Miclette, a grower on McNabb ranch speaks clearly of the quantifiable and spiritual benefits. He cites a study comparing the pruning weight of vines farmed organically and biodynamically at Bonterra over seven years. Pruning weight is the relation of the weight of new wood produced by the vine each year to the weight of the fruit. It speaks to the vine’s ability to self regulate and produce just as much fruit as its health, root structure and environment will allow to ripen The biodynamic vines consistently produced the ideal pruning weight ratio, while the organic vines were close, but not spot on. For Julian this indicates the vines’ increased ability to “reliably produce a sustainable amount of balanced fruit”. Technical terms aside, Julian says “the whole trip of biodynamics is learning to be more observant as a farmer”. Echoing biodynamic growers across the world, he adds “the whole farm feels better since converting, it seems to make people happy and it attracts wild animals like boar that contribute to the overall health of the vines.” Alan York, one of the Bonterra study’s coauthors and perhaps the leading biodynamics expert in California focuses on biodynamics’ apparent ability to extract the most terroir from the terroir. Stressing the process, York says “the objective of biodynamics is authenticity, and (that) doesn’t equate to better.’’
Authors note: quotes with Julian Miclette taken from personal phone interview. Quotes from Alan York excerpted from UC Davis news article
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February 12 2007
The Law of Attraction says that you attract to your life a manifestation of what your thoughts are; your latent dominant thoughts will find a way to become manifest reality. That’s definitely true as one of my New Year’s resolutions was to learn more about Biodynamics. Not two short weeks after I write that down and I find myself meeting up with a couple of guys that own a Chicago based distributor (profiled at this link on Good Grape) and they have a keen interest in Biodynamic wines.
Damien Casten, one of the co-founders, a student of wine with a subtle wit, has also written a fantastic primer on BioD that I’m going to share here in three parts. It’s an accessible read and gives a nice overview into the world of biodynamics, including it’s origin.
Damien is the President and Co-Founder of Candid Wines, a wine distribution and event company in Illinois that specializes in small production organic, sustainable and biodynamic wines from around the world. Damien was bitten by the wine bug at Taillevent while living in Paris as a twenty-two year old. At a meal where every bite was fantastic, a 1985 Hermitage La Chapelle paired with venison was out of this world. That was a happy moment.
It took another few years for him to abandon the corporate world and go to cooking school, but the memory of that three star meal was strong. After attending the New England Culinary Institute he went back to France and worked for two years in kitchens including the Michelin three starred Lucas Carton. In his spare time he traded labor for wine and knowledge at one of Paris’ most remarkable wine shops and cooked with friends. Today, Candid Wines is in its second year of operation and is proud to count among its clients and producers some of the world’s greatest wine-makers and chefs.
Making Sense of Biodynamics
Two unidentified wines. One is the color of pale straw with a tinge of green. It is crisp and flinty with good acidity, a touch of petrol and great length. It would be terrific with hot and spicy Thai food. I suspect its German Riesling. The second is the color of honey suggesting roundness and a creamy texture. It has lower acidity and a floral, peach-like nose. It smells and tastes like soft, pretty viognier from the northern Rhone. This would go beautifully with roasted apricot, goat cheese, thyme and honey. A bit of sea salt on the apricot and happy times are ahead. Do I sound confident? I was. Unfortunately, tasting wine blind is like playing golf; every once and a while you nail one and for a moment you think “I’m can play this game”. And then you shoot 105.
Both wines are Alsatian rielsings. They were made by the same producer using grapes from the same vineyard that are treated identically from vine to bottle. How then can they be so different? The answer is terroir. The producer, Jean Schaetzel of Domaine Martin Schaetzel in Alsace, is obsessed with capturing the essence of the time and place in which his wines grow. He wants you to taste the influence of the local ecosystem on each of his wines. He wants your mouth and nose to tell you that Riesling grown on granite soil in the Kaefferkopf vineyard tastes flinty and crisp while Riesling grown on limestone is honeyed and round. In this quest, Jean has, through his own trials, come to embrace much of the ‘super-organic’ method of farming called Biodynamics, even when he can not explain why it is effective. The method has many critics who question its scientific foundation. It also has a growing number of adherents, including some of the most renowned winegrowers in the world.
Organics and Biodynamics – A Shared Philosophy
Grape growers the world over who have adopted organic and biodynamic farming methods share a set of common beliefs. They seek sustainable methods that produce the highest quality grapes while inflicting the least possible harm on local and global environment. Non-organic pesticides are out. In are native grasses that protect topsoil and provide homes for beneficial insects that eat pests. Excessive treatment of the vines is replaced by the use of compost, made from decomposed organic matter, and a belief that healthy, vibrant soil full of insects, worms and bacteria is the best defense available. These are folks who are trying to leave the campsite cleaner than it was when they found it.
While they share a basic set of beliefs, proponents of biodynamics claim their methods go several steps farther: Organic agriculture rightly wants to halt the devastation caused by humans; however, organic agriculture has no cure for the ailing Earth…Biodynamics is a science of life-forces, a recognition of the basic principles at work in nature, and an approach to agriculture which takes these principles into account to bring about balance and healing.
Biodynamics was born in Europe in response to the environmental damage associated with the introduction of chemical pesticides and heavy machinery in the early twentieth century. New techniques increased potential output but some farms suffered from inconsistency. In the 1920’s a group of German growers sought the advice of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian doctor, poet and philosopher who wanted to reconnect the physical and spiritual worlds that he felt were being separated by new technology. His response was biodynamics, a method of farming built on three main principals; self-sustainability through biodiversity on farms, the use of “preparations” added to compost to restore health and vigor to soils, and the interconnectedness of terrestrial and cosmic energies.
When pushed to the extreme, this philosophy implies complete self-sustainability with every need of the farm being met by products from the farm itself. Furthermore, the most stringent form of biodynamics espouses a connection between the energy of the plant and the energy coming from the farthest reaches of the cosmos. The timing of planting, harvesting, pruning, spraying and even bottling is dictated not just by the phases of the moon but by astrological calendars and perceived cosmic influences.
Pt. II will be posted tomorrow and focuses on concentrated areas of biodynamic practice and thought-leadership
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February 2 2007
We’re officially in the midst of football mania in Indianapolis.
I haven’t seen anything like it. In the ’99 – ’00 season the Pacers made it to the NBA Finals before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers; in ’02 the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team made it to the NCAA Championship game, every year we have the ‘Greatest Spectacle in Racing’ with the Indianapolis 500 and every few years we have the NCAA Final Four in Indianapolis. None of those events have contributed as much pure frenetic energy to Indianapolis as the Colts being in the Super Bowl.
I kind of feel like drinking some tiny bubbles and sipping on some champagne—a response that might be some sort of associational DNA coding to a celebration.
But, I don’t want to get the cart ahead of the horse (bad cliché choice, I know) just yet. There is some business to take care of—notably some food and drink to be imbibed before, during and after the game. Oh, and a game to win for the hometown Colts.
Just in case anybody was wondering, going to the grocery store is an exercise in peril akin to the rush at the store when a big storm comes and people maniacally buy 19 gallons of water and flashlights, just in case.
Except this time its grocery carts full of chips, beer and other football victuals. You know something weird is going on when the Guacamole flavored Doritos have been picked over.
It’s unfortunate that wine isn’t a better match for football fare. I’ll be drinking wine, though. I haven’t picked out the bottle(s) just yet, but I have a hunch it’ll be an inexpensive Riesling like the Jekel and probably a nice Zinfandel. Perhaps, I’ll pick up another bottle of the Kickin’ Ass Colts Cuvee—a wine now getting more than its fair share of promo on Good Grape.
Wine Spectator (WS) and the San Francisco Chronicle both weigh in with football food pairings. An informal tasting panel at WS tried non-vintage Champagne, White Wines (Riesling, Chardonnay and Sav. Blanc) and some hearty reds (Malbec, Cab blend, Shiraz blend, Crianza, Spain Shiraz). Overall winners, according to WS are Chardonnay’s and New World Reds.
At the Chronicle, they make the pairing a bit more tangible and neutral by offering both a beer and a wine pairing. The best pairing suggestion is for chili:
Wine: If your chili recipe is fairly mild, plenty of wines can cozy up to a simmering bowl. Bold wines and delicate wines do not blend well with chili. If you go red, keep the wine young and fruity with good acidity to match the acid in the tomatoes. An Italian-style Sangiovese works well. A somewhat sweeter Zinfandel, like some of the Zins produced in Sonoma, will stand up to the spice in the chili. Think contrasting flavors—spicy and sweet. If the chili is really hot, try a sweeter white wine.
And, At least the Miami and South Beach is getting broken in this week in advance of the South Beach Food & Wine Festival taking place February 22 – 25th. Some of the wine “personalities” that will be in attendance can be found here. Overall, they pale in pop culture stature to their food brethren. Peter Mondavi, while a nice guy for sure, can’t hold a candle to TV titan Al Roker in terms of mindshare.
Over at Wine Spectator, James Laube dropped an interesting factoid—it seems James, a graduate of Chapman College, and a Chicago native, was invited to a tryout for the Baltimore Colts way back when … he got some good natured cocktail party mileage out of intimating that he was drafted. While coy on his pick for the Super Bowl, my hunch is that the pull of a childhood in the Windy City means that Laube is pulling for the Bears.
My prediction for the game? #1, the wine will be very enjoyable. And, I’ll be very happy to win a friendly wager with Dr. Vino by a big Colts victory.
Colts 26 Bears 16
Super Bowl MVP: Colts Rookie Running Back Joseph Addai with 130 yards rushing and 2 touchdowns
Go Colts! And this will be the last Football related post (except for either a personal back-slap or a licking my wounds post for the result of the Dr. Vino wine/football entanglement).
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January 31 2007
The venerable Dr. Vino, or Tyler as his friends call him, had a post on his site on Wednesday morning that gives something of a primer on betting lines and the moneyline in the world of wagering. Dr. Vino’s post is a precursor to THE GAME.
THE GAME, of course, is Super Bowl XLI—the Indianapolis Colts vs. the Chicago Bears.
Of course, our hometown team here at Good Grape is the Colts and they are favored by a touchdown. Dr. Vino is, naturally, a Bears fan, a Chicago transplant living in New York, but still occasionally teaching in Chicago.
The gist of the deal with a moneyline is if your team is the underdog (just ‘dog to be hip with the slang) it lets you make a bet straight up and increase your potential winnings, as opposed to taking a betting line that gives you the benefit of a point spread.
So, for example, if Notre Dame is a 9 point underdog in the Sugar Bowl and you really think they are going to win, than a $100 dollar bet would pay off at $325. Pretty good. But, if they lose within nine points then you might wish you had the point spread because your bet is a loser. Not that I know anything about the moneyline or anything. I certainly don’t know anything about a winning moneyline, being a Notre Dame fan and all.
Tyler and I exchanged an email engineering, in the vein of the Governor’s from our respective states, a friendly little exchange.
Though, it will hardly be as glamorous as the food exchange that’s going to go down between Indiana’s Gov. Mitch Daniels (nicknamed “The Blade” by President Bush when he was Director of the Office of Management and Budget in ’01 – ’03 for his desire to cut social services, rankling Dems along the way) and Gov. Rod Blagojevich from Illinois. Gov. Daniels was wagered caramels and chocolates from Abbott’s Candy, organic cheeses from Traderspoint Creamery, a 15 bean soup pot from N.K. Hurst and shrimp cocktail from the legendary St. Elmo Steak House. Daniels, it should be noted, doesn’t appear to be using the corn pone Midwest hick drawl that won him office these days. Not that I keep track of such things. Blagojevich has staked his wager to Lou Malnatis’ deep dish pizza, Eli’s cheesecake and a some assorted treats from the Illinois Nut and Candy shop.
Incidentally and ironically, when the Colts beat the pants off the Baltimore Ravens, they used the facilities at the non profit that I volunteer at to cook up a bunch of crab cakes. So, these things really do get done beyond lip service.
And, it is going to get paid off for ol’ Jeffro, too. Because I don’t think the Colts are going to lose. This is Peyton’s year—Peyton with the laser rocket arm.
In the event that I do lose, I have offered Tyler the wine moneyline on the game. In lieu of points, I’ve offered to double the value of our exchange. I’ll send him at least $50 worth of wine in the event that the Colts lose and he’ll pick up the tab on a $25 bottle next time I’m in NYC if the Colts are victorious. I’ve offered a 2000 Franciscan Magnificat Meritage blend (a nice bottle in the $45 - $55 range) and a bottle of the Kickin’ Ass Colts Cuvee from Cherry Hill Winery in Oregon. I wrote about them a week or so ago in a post that can be found here.
Tyler is a good sport and one thing I can be certain of is his wine will be tasty in victory! Go Colts!
UPDATE: The interesting, though less material, portion of my prize offering is the Kickin’ Ass Colts Cuvee—something of an Indianapolis Colts specific vino made by an Indiana native at an Oregon winery. Dr. Vino, to his credit, went to some lengths to try and find something that was akin to a Bear. And, he’s gracious enough to not get me four bottles of Toasted Head with the bear on the label. But, even better for me, I get to pick something out from Crush Wine & Spirits that falls in line with the moneyline spirit. I trust his palate, so I may want to take a recommendation, but I’m also inclined to snatch up another bottle of the 2000 Tulocay Zinfandel to add to the two I bought last week from Crush and the one bottle that I’ve already polished off. It’s good stuff. And, to make matters more interesting, I do need to divulge that I grew up about an 1.5 hours away from Chicago and grew up a Bears fan. The Super Bowl Shuffle Bears are a fond memory, but I’m now a Chicago turncoat having converted to the Blue Nation years ago by virtue of zip code. Do the Blue. Make it Personal. Go Colts.
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January 17 2007
If we find a mentor in this life, a trusted confidant that can guide us in matters great and small, a careful, unjudging, unflinching, kind and generous sort who is well-versed in numerous subjects then we have found a great gift.
Robert Parker is my mentor. No, not just a mentor in wine, but a mentor in a number of subjects. You see, he is causing me to look beyond the glass and do research into fields I would have previously considered uninteresting—the fruits of southeast Asia, botany, toast of French origin, and other vast fecundities of modern life …
As some matter of happenstance, similar to finding Parker as my mentor, my wife and I recently took a jaunt over to Cincinnati, OH to go to an International supermarket—emphasis on “super” as this place, Jungle Jim’s, is about 10,000 square feet and has just about every imaginable international food you can imagine and thousands that you didn’t imagine.
It was at Jungle Jim’s that I found canned lychees in the Asian section—my first time ever seeing this elusive fruit. It was kind of like seeing Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster or a Unicorn. I’ve heard about Lychee’s so often, seen pictures even, but they existed only in mythology, never appearing in a tangible form. I was familiar with Lychee’s because of my mentor, Parker.
I’ve had this mild pet peeve for years with some of the descriptors used in tasting notes that use reference points that border on the absurd. The Wine Advocate, in particular, is educational to me not for the insight into producers and wines that deserve my attention, it’s educational because I have to figure out what the hell some of the notes Parker picks up are and where they come from.
Lychee’s (or “Litchi’s” as the US FDA refers to the fruit) is a fruit that is native to Southeast Asia and is grown very selectively and rarely in California, Florida and Hawaii. In my estimation, maybe, at the best, 10% of wine drinkers have ever enjoyed a lychee in order to use it as a reference point.
Ahem. I’m cracking that club.
When I expectantly opened the can I was somewhat disappointed. Lychee’s, in case you have never had one, look like oversized pearl onions with a texture that is similar. They taste, however, like pears … so this is what Parker is always referencing.
Mystery solved. Not that big of deal. Kind of like how frog legs taste like chicken. I might just say it has some pear notes and call it a day.
I had another epiphany, too. Parker, in addition to having one of the finest palates in modern wine history, also is something of a botanist. I mean, I understand the reference to pain grille—sure, if I’m a Francophile using a fancy word for toast makes some sense to me; same for camphor as a descriptor to describe some earthy sweetness. But, Parker described the Abreu Cabernet Sauvignon Thorevilos as having notes of Acacia Flowers.
Acacia Flowers, for the same uninitiated folks who have never had a Lychee, is, according to Wikipedia, a flowering shrub:
There are roughly 1300 species of Acacia worldwide, about 950 of them native to Australia, with the remainder spread around the dry tropical to warm-temperate regions of both hemispheres, including Africa, southern Asia, and the Americas.
Kudos to Parker for his depth of knowledge on all sorts of things scent related. Little did I know that Parker, in addition to educating me on wine, would also provide me a liberal arts education and mentorship delivered six times a year on parchment colored paper with black ink.
I’m still working on “forest floor,” however.
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