Decanter World Wine Awards
I recently spent a week exploring the Rhône valley with fifteen wine consumers whose backgrounds differed widely.
After a cold, wet winter and a very warm spring, the rangy, ridge-like hill of Hermitage and the broad, stony terraces under Sablet and Séguret beckoned enticingly. Fresh leaves swayed in the luminous air; the inflorescences, like soft green hand-grenades, looked ready to explode into flower and fruit. A recurrent topic among our party was biodynamics, not least because one of the highlights of the week was a visit to Europe’s largest biodynamic wine enterprise, that of Chapoutier.
Other producers we visited (like Domaine Cristia in Châteauneuf) had come close to biodynamics but backed away, because of the practical difficulties involved in confining particular activities to root days or flowers days. It’s hardly an option for co-operatives, while most of the rest of the producers we visited contented themselves with a minimum of conventional treatments.
Reactions to this subject always vary widely. Those with a scientific background often find it irritating, and bite their lips when producers rhapsodise about the memory of stones, about planetary forces streaming earthwards, or about the virtues of ‘dynamisation’.
I have some sympathy with their scepticism, since the theoretical assertions of biodynamics (including those of Rudolf Steiner himself in the Koberwitz lectures published as Agriculture) strain credulity beyond breaking point.
Efforts to find some kind of scientific validation for the genuine improvements brought by biodynamic practices (like Ehrenfried Pfeiffer’s much-touted ‘sensitive crystallisations’) have all the intellectual rigour of an episode of Teletubbies. The recipes for the Steinerist preparations seem aleatory, and the biodynamic calendar itself as picturesque as any tabloid horoscope.
Yet great wines are produced in this way, and where practical taste trials comparing conventional and biodynamic approaches have been undertaken by producers contemplating the switch, the results make a strong case for biodynamics. How, then, do you explain it?
Biodynamics, it seems to me, is the wine-maker’s equivalent of magical realism in fiction. This literary technique (notably practiced by Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez) meshes the mundane and the ordinary with fantastic, unreal events and occurrences whose truths are principally poetic rather than literal.
The logic and language of biodynamics, too, is a poetic one, and its success has as much to do with the motivation, inspiration and focus of the vine-tenders as it does to do with cations, chelates and mycorrhizal fungi. It commands physical engagement, and bases that engagement on a radical chemical restraint which in turn imposes further physical engagement. It provides a value system with moral overtones, and it bonds the vine-tender not simply to his or her world but to his or her universe, too. The concept of terroir meshes felicitously with biodynamic ideals.
If there is a scientific basis for the success of biodynamics, it must surely be linked to the benefits of great compost, of hard physical work in the vines, and of close scrutiny paid to the health of both vines and the broader vineyard environment. The ideals of the balanced farm circuit, of biodiverse vineyards and rich microbial life in the soil should be universal ones; they imply, of course, the rejection of the artificial external inputs which characterise chemical agriculture. It is, in fact, common sense – provided you can afford it. The magical realism makes it fun.
Have your say!
Mike Rijken
June 24 17:30
When working for 13 years on Beaucastel as PR manager, I told the people alredy in 1990.
You should not make a biological wine , but a logical wine. Just use common sense. If the theory can help you and the physical circumstances are right, why not. If you want to plough the fields by the bio dynmc calander , but it is too wet for the tractor or the horse,you can't do it and it is just bad luck.
Erica Landin
June 03 11:08
Andrew, it's an interesting topic. I'm a scientist by schooling, but have noticed that I am more at ease in Biodynamic vineyards. The ones I have visited seem to be in such a wonderful balance with nature, and more often than not the winemakers vibrate with the same energy as their vineyards and the wines. Kooky when disected as a theory, many biodynamic wines still seem to resonate with something within me that looks for more in wine than just flavor and alcohol. And didn't our ancestors work their farms according to the lunar and stellar calendars? They sure did.
Did you visit Domaine Duseigneur on your trip? If not, I can recommend it. Bernard Duseigneur was an investment banker until the year 2000, when he finally gave in to his calling and went back to work the family vineyard with his brother Frederic (who is a soft, radiant man who really is in tune with his vines. You just want to hug him when he talks about it). Bernard knows his paycheck has been cut to a fraction after the career change, but said to me "the wine is reward in itself - it brings people together, where money pulls them apart". Their philosophy and dedication is wonderful, as are their wines. I particularly like Antarès, but can also commend the Mas Louise (organic, sourced grapes) for providing a great côtes du Rhone under 10€. The 2010 will be my house wine when it is released. Go see them if you haven't already!
Best wishes from Stockholm!
Will Hancock
May 10 11:45
Interesting piece here from Jefford. However, if what he says were true, then equally great wines would be produced via simple, organic methods. Didn't one of the famous French growers do a test with biodynamics vs organic on the same terroir? To my recollection, BD came out way ahead....
Jonathan Healey
May 09 17:31
Biodynamic farming rituals make more sense as metaphors for Steiner’s spiritual vision than as horticultural precepts. Practicing them is really more about manifesting faith in his vision than winemaking. What’s most important with esoteric practices, like Chinese medicine or palm-reading, is the intuition of the individual practitioner, or winemaker.
http://jonathanhealey.blogspot.com/2011/05/pass-cup-of-crimson-wonder.html