Beyond Organic Wine

Brook Williams - Owning Biodynamic Vineyards

Brook Williams used to be an accountant, and yet he still made the seemingly crazy decision to get into the wine business as a biodyanmic grape farmer/ vineyard owner. How did he justify such a potentially economically risky decision to the accounting part of his brain? His answer to this will give anyone with a dream of owning a vineyard some practical financial ideas about how to make vineyard ownership make sense. 

Brook and his family own three vineyards in the Santa Barabara and San Luis Obispo Counties of California, and make wine under the brand "J. Dirt," a nickname his daughter gave him. Before jumping into owning three family-run biodynamic vineyards, Brook's experience with wine had been as an account and general manager for several very large, very conventional wineries. We talk about how and why he made the transition, and the knowledge he has learned along the way to convince him of the benefits of biodynamic viticulture.

https://jdirtwines.com/

 

Doug Swim - Amy Atwood Selections, Natural Wine Distribution, & Agricultural Artists

Doug Swim is the California Sales Manager for Amy Atwood Selections, one of the premier distributors of natural wine in California. The portfolio that Doug supervises includes the most well-known names in the New California wine movement, and we discuss what it's like to work with and be part of this new, crazy thing that's happening here in California and in Los Angeles specifically. This is an insider's look at the LA wine industry, as well as a discussion about the heart and soul that inspires it. 

Doug uses the term "agricultural artists" at one point to describe the passionate producers of natural wine. This term points to the creative vision, as well as the connection to the earth, that may be key reasons so many people have fallen in love with natural wine. 

This ain't your daddy's juice!

http://www.amyatwood.com/

https://historicvineyardsociety.org/

 

Abe Schoener - Los Angeles River Wine Co. & The Scholium Project

Abe Schoener has been a disrupter and part of the avant garde of the new school of California wine for so long he’s old school new school. Since 2000 he has been the mind behind The Scholium Project – his winery/philosophical pursuit of a natural, vineyard-specific wine experience. Recently he has moved his base of operations to downtown Los Angeles, and is beginning to make wines from unique old vineyards in Southern California under the auspices of the Los Angeles River Wine Company. Some of the vineyards Abe is working with predate prohibition, and have been untouched by human hands since the 1950’s or 60’s.

In our conversation, Abe digs into how he has begun to carefully care for these special vineyards and make wine from them, and what these wines taste like now and promise to taste like in the future. We also talk about Abe’s non-dogmatic perspective on being in the Natural Wine category, and his desire to make wine a unique experience rather than a something defined by grape variety.

Abe’s temporary winery location is outdoors in downtown LA industrial zone, and we had the great fortune of recording this podcast while someone was jackhammering nearby throughout the entire interview. So, please bear with the authentic audio background texture. Other than that, it’s a fantastic interview that I hope you’ll get as much out of as I did.

Chloe Miranda - Los Angeles Sommelier

Chloe Miranda is the sommelier at Birdie Gs Restaurant in Santa Monica, California. Birdie G’s is one of our favorite restaurants, not just because the food and wine is amazing, but also because they use a significant percentage of organically grown ingredients and feature many wines grown organically (or better).

Chloe is my favorite sommelier. She’s a consummate and egoless professional, asks good questions before trying to suggest a wine, offered us tastes of multiple wines so that we could sample before committing, and generally put us at ease with the entire wine selection process. When Chloe is our host, We always end up drinking more wine than we thought we would, which I think would make Chole’s bosses happy too.

The other thing I like about Chloe is that she’s self-taught and has not gone through the traditional certification process to get to become a sommelier. In this interview she discusses some of the pros and cons of taking this path, and how she continues to educate herself about wine. We also talk about some of the market trends with regard to organic wine, and some of Chloe’s perspectives that help make her successful as a sommelier.

Matt Clark - Grape Breeder, University of Minnesota

Matt Clark is an assistant professor of horticulture and enology at the University of Minnesota. He heads up the U of M participation in VitisGen2, a multi-institutional grape breeding collaboration that has a goal to breed new resistant grape varieties that taste delicious and can be grown with far less pesticide use than standard European grapes. Matt is at the cutting edge of the academic efforts that may result in the next great truly American wine from actual American grapes.

The relevance of the ideas that Matt addresses cannot be overstated. The current wine industry around the world is built on a handful of varieties of the same species of grape. These varieties have not changed for hundreds of years while the viruses, fungi, and insects that prey upon those grapevines have continued to evolve and adapt. Some day – and that day is rapidly approaching – there will be a reckoning. New virus and fungal pressures will eventually overcome our ability to successfully grow these out-dated varieties without massive amounts of crutches – chemical or otherwise.

The main hurdle to allowing grapes – and therefore wine – to adapt, is consumer perception created by pervasively marketed ideas of the supremacy of European varieties. In this conversation we talk about what Matt and other scientists are doing to create the future of wine, and I hope that it will help open your eyes to the immense potential and many options that are becoming available for grape growers and wine lovers if we expand our pallets and begin to embrace the change that is necessary to advance wine.  Enjoy!

Andy Brennan - Uncultivated Apple Cider, Aaron Burr Cidery

Andy Brennan is the owner of Aaron Burr Cidery in New York, and he's the author of Uncultivated - a book about making cider and a cider business from wild, foraged apples. 

Real apple cider is one of America's finest wines, and Andy is one of the finest cider makers in America. In this interview we explore his philosophies and strategies for navigating the modern world with an perspective that is inspired by the timeless cycles of the apple tree. 

Rudy Marchesi - Biodynamics, Demeter, & Montinore Estate

Rudy Marchesi is the chairman of the board of directors for Demeter USA, the national Biodynamic certifying organization for all biodynamic agriculture. Rudy is also a managing partner for Montinore Estate. Montinore is based in the Willamette valley in Oregon, and is one of the largest biodynamic wineries in the nation, growing classic Oregon Pinot Noir, as well as some Italian varieties that are not common at all in Oregon.

In this interview, Rudy gives us a great overview of the history and benefits of practicing biodynamic vinticulture. Those benefits extend to the biology and economics of growing wine, but also to the taste of the resulting wine. He talks about practicing biodynamics at both a micro-vineyard, as well as at a large estate like Montinore. We also touch on what it means to have your vineyards vs your winery certified, how biodynamic certification compares to organic certification, and how Demeter incorporates new scientific knowledge into its regulations.

If you have heard about biodynamics or drank a biodynamic wine, and wondered what it entails, or if you think you know about it and have your doubts, this interview may be just the thing for you. A big thanks to Rudy for taking the time to layout an articulate and well-argued case for biodynamics. And thank you for listening… enjoy!

Mimi Casteel - Regenerative Viticulture & The Future of Agriculture

Mimi Casteel is Imbibe Magazine’s 2020 Wine Person of the Year. She’s the vigneron for Hope Well, a certified organic vineyard and a winery in Oregon that she farms regeneratively with animals and birds and all kinds of flora and fauna with no tilling and no fences. Please do yourself a favor and find Mimi’s YouTube video about glyphosate. It’s a master class on soil and vine microbiology, and the devastating effect RoundUp has had on our food and wine. You can find it in a blog post I did.

Also, check out any article or interview you can find online about Mimi. She’s one of the truly brilliant scientific minds working at the cutting edge of regenerative viticulture and agriculture in general. She thinks deeply about so many of the issues facing the wine industry, agriculture, and society at large, and Everything she talks about is full of big, important ideas that could shape the future of our world for the better.

This interview is no different. We skip the backstory and dive right into the big ideas that are occupying Mimi’s mind these days involving experimenting with a sulf-sustaining community. We talk about the need for there to be more integration between rural and urban worlds, the ways that she farms and solves problems at Hope Well, the need to integrate and involve vineyard workers in all aspects of winemaking and the wine world, and so much more. As with anyone on the cutting edge, many of Mimi’s ideas are controversial and even incendiary. I hope you are incensed, intriqued, and inspired by this interview with one of the great minds of our time.

Karl Hambsch - Owner of Virginia's Only Organic Winery

Karl Hambsch is the owner of the only certified organic winery in Virginia - Loving Cup Vineyards & Winery, outside of Charlottesville - and one of less than a handful of organic wineries on the entire East Coast of the US. 

Karl has been able to grow wine organically in Virginia because of a lot of hard, and careful, work. He has trialed over 50 varieties of grapes over the past dozen years to find varieties that have the characteristics and natural disease resistance to withstand the onslaught of fungi, mildews, pests and infections that are rampant in the hot, humid growing season of the Mid-Atlantic region.

Because of his commitment to organic viticulture, Karl has had to basically replicate the process of natural selection in the Loving Cup vineyard for delicious grapes that are disease and pest resistant. This is a process that would normally take millennia, and resulted in the dominant European (Vitis vinifera) varieties we know today. At Loving Cup, Karl continues this process to find the most expressive grapes best adapted to his terroir, a process that will result in the grapes that future generations will come to know and love.  

Karl's approach to growing wine is not for the faint-hearted, but it provides hope and an amazing example of the potential viability of organic viticulture everywhere. If he can do it in Virginia, then winegrowers in California have no excuse not to practice organic viticulture.

In this in-depth interview, Karl explains his specific methods of grape variety selection for organic cultivation, his four-pronged approach to  making organic viticulture work - ideas that could and should translate to any grape-growing region in the world. We also discuss the immense challenges of growing grapes in Virginia, the fascinating possibilities that arise from growing hybrid varieties, PIWI grapes, the realities of having both your vineyards and your winery organically certified, and much more. 

What Is Organic Wine & Who Is Adam Huss?

How can wine help connect us to the solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing the world today? How can the wine industry change to make this possible? And who is Adam Huss, and why has he started the Organic Wine Podcast to answer these questions?