What is organic wine?

Unless you are a wine bore or buff, you don’t think much about what goes into your wineglass. It is pressed from grapes, fermented and bottled. But what, other than grape juice, does the average glass of wine contain?

The conventional product turns out to be a far from “natural”. It frequently contains traces of every herbicide, pesticide and fungicide with which the grapes have been sprayed. It also contains preservatives and other chemicals used in its manufacture. The cheaper the wine, the more likely it is to contain a whole cocktail of chemicals in addition to the basic grape juice.

It is these chemicals, particularly sulphur, in the wine, not the drink itself, which can give you that unpleasant morning-after feeling, even after just a couple of glasses.

Many people notice that more expensive wine doesn’t give them a headache. This might be because many top winemakers have always used organic wine growing methods, even though their wines are not certified organic. They believe that less intensive methods produce fewer, finer grapes and therefore better wine, which tastes more of its grape variety and the ground in which it is grown.

As people realise the benefits of drinking organic wine, which is after all optional and a pleasure rather than an intrinsic part of the diet, as well as a bit of a luxury; heavy hitters in the wine industry begin to be swayed by consumer choice as well as other considerations. Fetzer, the Californian winery, would make all their wines organic if they could source the grapes, but meanwhile markets organic wines under the Bonterra label. Their motivation is the superior quality of the organic product.

Sutter Home, in California, has worker safety at the top of their agenda, and smaller vineyards find reducing chemical inputs considerable lowers the cost of production. Even the internationally recognised giant Ernesto & Julio Gallo, is looking into sustainable farming practices as they notice the swing in the market towards organic.

Organic wine makers have reverted to ancient wisdom as described by the Roman historian Pliny 2,000 years ago: 'A vineyard with the single cross-bar is arranged in a straight row which is called a canterius. This is better for wine, as the vine so grown does not overshadow itself and is ripened by constant sunshine, and is more exposed to currents of air and so gets rid of the dew more quickly, also is easier for trimming and for harrowing the soil and all operations…' As Pliny points out, the main threat to grapes - apart from late frost about which little or nothing can be done, is damp and still air which leads to fungal infection in the form of two kinds of mildew, downy and powdery.

Organic wine growers must expose grapes manually to light and air, by de-leafing and shoot positioning, which creates a less favourable atmosphere for fungus to grow. The traditional remedies (copper for downy mildew and sulphur for powdery mildew combined to create copper sulphate) are allowed by the Soil Association,the UK’s chief organic certification body, in spite of being mildly toxic, because they are natural minerals.

Some vines are naturally mildew resistant, and these are often chosen by organic growers to reduce the chemical burden even further. Copper sulphate remains on the surface of the fruit. Organic vineyards cannot be harvested for 60 days after treatment, during which the minerals are largely washed off by the rain.

During the settling process after the grapes have been pressed, much of the residue falls to the bottom of the vats and is removed. Organic regulations permit 0.5g of copper per litre of wine.

By contrast, conventional vineyards are sprayed repeatedly with up to eight different systemic chemical fungicides until only 12 days before harvest, which penetrate the sap system of the plant and have been detected as residues in the finished wine.

In the 19th-century, native American vines were imported into Europe. With them came Phylloxera vastatrix, to which they had built up natural resistance. Not so their European counterparts, and the root-boring insect all but wiped out Europe’s vineyards between the 1860s and the 1890s. Planting resistant American or French-American hybrid rootstocks, and grafting the original European varieties onto them, allowed the renaissance of the European wine industry.

Today, conventional wine growers prevent insect infestation, by spraying repeatedly with pesticides throughout the growing season. There is evidence that French farmers have an increased risk of bladder cancer due to exposure to chemicals in vineyards. In California, pesticide use in vineyards is proportionately higher than in other crops leading to a range of illnesses for the workers, who have to have contact with the foliage, from birth defects in their children to cancers and at the very least dermatitis.

Brother and sister team Michel Ginoulhac and Veronique Raskin are pioneers of organic wine production. Their family has made wine for more than 200 years at their St. Chinian property Château Bousquette, in the South of France. In 1970 their grandfather, a retired medical professor, looked into ways of growing healthier vines, and began organic cultivation in 1972.

A few years later, the Organic Wine company was formed to import the wines to the US. Pesticide use in conventional vineyards is a problem worldwide, according to Ginoulhac, who is also a doctor. He blames the toxins left in the wine for the unwelcome headaches. It is not the minute amounts in each bottle which is the problem, it is the cumulative effect over time which makes them dangerous.

Ironically, organic growers have found that vines are not particularly attractive to insect pests. In the twenty years that organic wine grower Roy Cook has been making wine in the UK, he has only had to spray the Capsid bug which eats the leaves, once. He used pyrethium, a chrysanthemum based pesticide allowed by the Soil Association. This was because he had been told the problem could get much worse if he didn’t do anything about it.

Conventional vineyards have a bald look, because conventional wine production is intensive. Other plants are not allowed to compete with the valuable vines for the nutrients in the soil, so very large quantities of herbicides are used between the vines to keep the vineyard weed free. Minute traces of these herbicides, some of which have been shown to cause cancer in animal studies, remain in many wines tested.

For weed control in organic vineyards, a straw mulch is used. In the UK the straw can currently come from a conventional farm, although as more and more farms go organic, the Soil Association will gradually tighten the regulations so that only organic straw will be acceptable. Currently, there simply is not enough to meet demand.

Any weed in an organic vineyard also faces competition from green manure, different varieties of clovers and vetches grown between the rows of vines to fix nitrates naturally in the soil. Some of these plants are perennial, some grow through the winter and spring and are then ploughed in to provide nutrients in the soil. The only other permitted fertiliser in the UK is chicken manure pellets, which the Soil Association stipulates cannot come from battery chicken farms.

When it comes to making wine out of these carefully grown organic grapes, there are more stringent organic regulations, designed to produce the most natural wine possible. These regulations vary to take account of climactic differences. The main preservative used in most wines to prevent oxidation, which spoils the flavour, is sulphur dioxide. It suppresses the growth of wild yeasts and bacteria that sour grape juice into vinegar – wine yeasts have adapted themselves over millennia to tolerate the chemical.

Using sulphur is a very ancient practice, dating back possibly to the Romans. Some five per cent of the population are sensitive to sulphur, and can get headaches, swellings, cramps or flushed faces from wines that contain too much. In conventional wines there can be anything up to 250mg per litre; in organic wines in Europe the upper limit is 100mg, and they often contain much less. It is impossible to make a sulfit-free wine because sulfites are a natural byproduct of fermentation and are therefore naturally present in wines.

There are exciting developments in the US, where, where wineries such as the Organic Wine Works uses high tech equipment which excludes contact with air completely from the wine-making process. The wines contain no sulphur dioxide whatsoever, which greatly benefits people who are allergic to wine. The Organic Wine Works was the first winery to release 100% organically processed wines in the US.

The other permitted additions are sugar and acid to balance the wine. The quantities of both vary depending on the climate. Too much sun, and the grapes develop too much sugar, which creates bland wine with a high alcohol content. Too little sugar, and the wine will be unacceptably acidic. The organic way of boosting sugar levels is to add organic grape juice that has been boiled down to concentrate its sugars. Conventional wine can contain beet or cane sugar, sometimes in large quantities.

Tartaric acid, a natural component of grape juice, is the acid used. The sour juice of green grapes is the organic source of this. It is very important in organic wine production to make sure the grapes are very clean and mildew-free before they are pressed. This makes the purification of the wine much simpler. Organic wines do not use animal-derived products such as gelatine, isinglass (purfied fish collagen), egg white or casein, to remove the various sediments which appear as a result of fermentation. This means organic wines can be described as “vegetarian” or “vegan” wines. Only clean inert clay of a type called Bentonite is permitted. As the juice runs from the presses, the clay is added to clear the juice of sediment, which then settles at the bottom. Then the clear juice is put into another container to ferment. This prevents protein hazes six months later when the time comes to bottle the wine.

Before bottling, bacteria and other microbes are removed by passing the wine through ever finer filters. This virtually sterilizes the wine without the need for Pasteurisation, which can spoil the fresh flavour. The main aim of organic growing and making is to produce wine that more nearly matches what wine should be: pure fermented grape juice.