Beyond Organic Wine

Laura Brennan Bissell - INCONNU Wine Muse & Winemaking Musings

Laura Brennan Bissel is the owner of and winemaker for INCONNU.

She built her career, INCONNU, and a new project in the Columbia Gorge, by following her curiosity, her drive to find an occupation that allowed her to express her innate creativity, all while being guided by her love of wine.

As you’ll hear, Laura is beautifully articulate about some of the most important aspects of wine – its ability to inspire and encapsulate our love of life, and its sensual magic that somehow transcends the senses. But these aren’t romantic notion to her. They give wine its depth, and she’s quick to emphasize the respect and patience that great wine demands.  

If you have an artists soul, If you are a free spirit, if you learn by doing, and if you are driven to create something beautiful and good… then you will enjoy getting to know Laura. She’s as much Muse as winemaker, and you’ll find yourself equal parts inspired and enchanted.

Alice Anderson - Amevive, Ibarra-Young Vineyard, Regenerative Organic Viticulture & Natural Winemaking in Santa Barbara

My guest for this episode is Alice Anderson. Alice is the vigneron for Amevive winery, based in Santa Barbara County. Alice leases the Ibarra-Young vineyard in the Los Olivos district and farms it with regenerative organic and biodynamic viticulture in partnership with animals and the native flora and fauna. In this interview we really dig into the winegrowing and winemaking specifics of how to craft beautiful, natural wines, even in hot, crazy years like 2020. It’s clear that Alice’s brilliance is in her holistic perspective on both caring for vines and making wine, and her generosity of spirit and thoughtfulness come through in the way she approaches every aspect of her passion. Amevive is only on its second vintage, and its already clear we can expect great things to come from Alice.

https://www.amevivewine.com/

Sponsor:

https://centralaswine.com/

What Does "Organic" Mean?

There is a lot of confusion about the term "organic." These misunderstandings lead a lot of people to be incorrectly dismissive or critical of “organic” foods and practices. 

This is a short episode to clear up these misunderstandings about "organic." Adam Huss, host and creator of the Organic Wine Podcast, discusses exactly what Organic does NOT mean, and what it actually does mean. 

Nadine Brown - American Wine, American Politics, and Making Connections

Nadine Brown’s story is in many ways a classic American tale. Nadine is an immigrant. She came to the US to study and work, and when plans didn’t work out, she found herself applying for a job as a restaurant host in Washington DC. She had no previous restaurant experience and had every intention for it to be a temporary position. However, she fell in love with the hospitality industry. In restaurants she discovered her love of the energy and adrenaline of working the floor, and she discovered wine. It fascinated her and sparked her curiosity. Born in Jamaica, she grew up with coffee and rum and no exposure to wine, but once she found it she couldn’t let it go.

Through hard work, smarts, and determination – that good old American cliché - she learned, and trained, and worked her way up to become an award winning sommelier and wine director for Charlie Palmer Steakhouse – one of the premier restaurants for DC’s political and social elite. At Charlie Palmer she built a renowned cellar focused on American wines and served wine to people at the highest levels of politics, even a future president, all while meeting her husband in the kitchen and becoming the mother of two children. 

Now she is a proud board member of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan D.C. and the extremely well-named nonprofit the Veraison Project, which is dedicated to bringing more color to the wine industry through greater access to wine education, wine certifications, mentoring, and networking for people of color. She continues to be a mentor to many young professionals in the business, and she strives to encourage more women to join and stay in the industry.

@nadinewinebrown

https://www.theveraisonproject.com/

 

Sponsor:

https://centralaswine.com/

 

 

 

Dr. Andrew Smith of the Rodale Institute -The Future Is Organic

Dr. Andrew Smith is the COO and Chief Scientist for the Rodale Institute. The Rodale Institute the non-profit that was the birthplace of the organic movement. It has been the global leader at the forefront of the science behind organic agriculture. The Institute has conducted decades-long comparative studies on the results between organic farming versus conventional farming.

The Rodale Institute has amassed, and continues to accumulate, the science-based data that can answer some of the biggest questions facing our world today. Questions like: What kind of agriculture is the most productive during droughts? What kind of agriculture sequesters more carbon? What kind of agriculture produces the most nutritious food? And, can we feed earths billions of inhabitants without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides? Bonus question: Can we use marijuana as a vineyard cover crop?

In this interview with Dr. Drew Smith you’ll come to realize that the work he is doing at the Rodale Institute is about more than just improving agriculture around the planet… it’s about human survival. And there is hope!

https://rodaleinstitute.org/

https://regenorganic.org/

Sponsor:

https://centralaswine.com/

Sandra Taylor - Sustainability & The Business of Sustainable Wine

As a young US diplomat working in Switzerland, Sandra Taylor fell in love with wine while visiting the nearby Burgundy region of France.

Sandra is now CEO of Sustainable Business International, a consulting business that assists clients at various stages of environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice, primarily in the food and beverage sector. Sandra has studied wine extensively for many years – she completed the French Wine Scholars course in 2010 and is a graduate of the Wine MBA program at The Bordeaux School of Management/Kedge Business School in France.  She is a public speaker on wine internationally, a columnist with Wine Review Online and a member of the Magnum Club, a global organization of women wine producers, sommeliers, writers and critics.

Sandra has been a senior executive with Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle, where she led global corporate responsibility and sustainability in coffee supply chain, and with Eastman Kodak Company where she oversaw global public affairs and corporate citizenship. She continues to speak and teach globally about sustainability in wine, and has literally written the book about sustainability in the wine business… it’s called: The Business of Sustainable Wine (2017) – and, like Sandra, it is a wealth of vital information about sustainability.

We talk about many of the issues around sustainability, including how to define it as more than just a marketing buzzword, why wine is uniquely positioned to capture consumer attention and move all industry toward sustainability, how important it is for the wine industry to set an example of sustainability, how businesses can better communicate the importance of these values to consumers, and why sustainable practices ultimately result in more delicious wine.

Sandra is clearly a brilliant mind who loves wine and we barely scratch the surface of her extensive knowledge about sustainability in wine.  Enjoy!

https://discoversustainablewine.com/

http://www.sustainablebizintl.com/meet-our-founder/

Thanks for listening!

https://centralaswine.com/

Roni Ginach - Roni Selects, Importing Natural Wine

Roni Selects is a preeminent importer and distributor of natural wines, based in los angeles. And Roni Ginach is its founder. She was the former wine direct for the renowned restaurant Michael’s of Santa Monica until she was given the opportunity to help distribute wine for California’s Grandfather of Natural Wine – Tony Coturri. From there a new career was born.

Now Roni represents winemakers from France, Germany, Italy, The US and Georgia and more and – as you’ll hear – she balances her time between navigating the bureaucratic labyrinth required to move wine from one side of the world to the other, and visiting and relishing the beauty of the people and places where the wines are produced.

Along the way she is helping to shape industry awareness about the importance of natural, regenerative, organic wine growing and making practices to the quality and deliciousness of wine, as well as the need to eliminate some of the dogma around natural wine righteousness, and how natural wine can be a more inclusive segment of the industry.

Roni’s story highlights her love and appreciation for the amazing wines that are a result of a deep passion for farming grapes holistically, with care and respect for the earth – a kind of agriculture that is, unfortunately, still somewhat radical and even subversive. Enjoy!

https://www.roniselects.com/

https://www.lacruzdecomalwines.com/

https://centralaswine.com/

Pam Marrone - Creating Biological Pesticides From The Earth

Pamela Marrone is the Founder of Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc. and multiple other companies dedicated to finding, developing and distributing Biological Pesticides. Her companies have been responsible for several of the most widely used organic pesticides in the wine industry today, including: Serenade, Sonata, Regalia, Grandevo, and Venerate.

Pam is on the boards of several institutions, companies, and foundations and is called on to participate in agricultural think tanks to help solve some of the biggest problems in viticulture and agriculture as well because she has dedicated her life to developing and promoting alternatives to synthetic chemical pesticides. And she advises others who have started companies in this field.

Biologicals are naturally derived from the microbial life in the soil or from plant extracts. Most are allowed in organic viticulture and agriculture, yet they integrate so well into conventional programs that they are beginning to help transition conventional farmers to organic farming. Many of the chemicals Pam has helped develop over the years are now the standards for organic pesticides used across the wine industry.

This fascinating field of study is far behind where it could be, and that means there are exciting opportunities for discoveries and investment still to come. Pam is a fantastic spokesperson for biologicals, and makes a convincing case for their importance in an industry dominated by synthetic petro-chemicals.

I’m thrilled to be able to share Pam with you through this interview. She has been doing great work for a long time and has been helping to steer viticulture – and all agriculture – in the right direction. We barely scratch the surface of her knowledge and experience, so I hope this will inspire you to learn more. Enjoy!

Contact Pam: pammarrone@bioaglinkages.com

Learn more: www.marronebio.com

Ricky Taylor - Alta Marfa & How To Make the Impossible Possible in Texas

Ricky Taylor worked in an office in Houston Texas and one day decided to plant a regeneratively farmed vineyard 600 miles away on a mountainside in the middle of nowhere in far west Texas at over a mile high in elevation.

What Ricky and his partner, Katie, are doing with Alta Marfa – their vineyard and soon to be winery outside of Marfa, Texas - is something that essentially hasn’t been done before in Texas.

So to make it happen they have relied on the knowledge and assistance of a network of people that spans the continent, as well as a lot of hard work, hours on the road, and the belief that leaving the natural world intact is essential to making the highest quality wine.

The story of Alta Marfa is just beginning, but already it’s one that – like the Texas sky at night- shines with beauty and the sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

http://www.altamarfa.com/

 

Jeff Lowenfels - If You're Growing Grapes Chemically, You're Doing It Wrong

Among several other things, Jeff Lowenfels is the author of a trilogy of books that should be required reading for everyone on the planet, but especially those of us who work in wine. His books are titled:

Teaming with Microbes, Teaming with Nutrients, and Teaming with Fungi

Be warned – your mind is about to be blown. If you haven’t been exposed to the soil food web, it’s likely that everything you think you know about soil, and fertilizer, and growing plants is wrong.

This is the new Soil 101, and the science, as Jeff lays it out, is so compelling and fascinating that you will never again walk through a field, or forest, or vineyard without a sense of wonder and awe. And that glass of wine in your hand will become something even more precious, and perhaps metaphysical.

If you have ANY interest in producing, understanding, or drinking amazing wine, what you’re about to learn is the foundation for it all.

I don’t think I’m overstating it by saying that what Jeff has to teach us is revolutionary.

https://www.jefflowenfels.com/