Beyond Organic Wine

The First Principle of Regenerative Viticulture

Behind the ecological devastation caused by conventional, industrial viticulture and agriculture in general are ideas of disconnection and individualism, which lead to extraction and parasitism. These won't be solved by focusing on soil health. We need to rebuild our belonging to the community of life. Gratitude is a great place to start to reconnect with our dependence on our community.

The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address

Beyond Organic Wine Reading Recs

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Beyond Organic Wine

The Lost Art & Science of Natural Wine - Daniel Callan, Slamdance Koöperatieve

My guest for this episode is Daniel Callan, the cellar man behind Slamdance Koöperatieve. Daniel pointed out to me recently that I've been too focused on winegrowing. I had to agree, and Daniel’s suggestion was that we talk about how the past of winemaking may actually be its future. Because, essentially, all wines made throughout history until sometime around the start of the 20^th century, were natural wines, and were made without additives nor fossil fuel powered, high-tech wineries and wine factories. Daniel is a student of the history of winemaking in general, but in California specifically. He believes everything we’re trying now has already been tried and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We can learn from those who came before… we just have to read some books that we can find at the library. He even looks to the old vines as a kind of genetic library for what does well in his region, and makes wine from varieties that mostly don’t exist elsewhere in any scalable quantity. This is a refreshingly technical winemaking episode that follows Daniel’s process for making his wine in detail from harvest to bottling, as well as a look at how we can find answers to the challenges of climate change and a post-industrial world by looking to the past.

@slamdancekooperatievewines

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Beyond Organic Wine

Hybrid Grapes In California - The Future of Wine with Adam Tolmach of The Ojai Vineyard

This episode features a conversation with Adam Tolmach of Ojai Vineyards, and it’s located not too far from Los Angeles in distance. Adam Tolmach lost his estate vineyard a couple decades ago to a vine disease that is endemic to Southern California. This disease has become a serious problem for anywhere in North America that has mild enough winters… and that area is steadily creeping north. This vine disease is known as Pierce's Disease, it is spread by insects… specifically sharpshooters, and as Adam suggests, it was the cause of the death of tens of thousands of acres of vineyards in Southern California, and likely contributed to the contraction of the wine industry here and its move to Northern California by the end of the 19^th century.  

There are currently only two options for preventing your vineyard from succumbing to Pierce's Disease if you live in an area that has it, which is pretty much the entire Southern United States: you can either spray aggressively with knock-down insecticides – the intense, kill-on-contact kind – OR you can plant varieties of grapes that have inherent resistance to the disease… and those varieties of grapes are the kind that contain the genetics of the native vines that evolved with the disease. In other words, you need hybrids. There are no vinifera varieties that are resistant to Pierce's Disease.

So, in 2017, Adam resurrected his estate vineyard by planting a selection of modern hybrid grapes that were bred here in California specifically to be resistant to Pierce's Disease. There are so many really incredible discussion points that come up in this conversation, but I wanted to give some further context to this.

Nothing illustrates the truth that hybrids are the future of wine more than this disease. With climate change, the range of this disease is continually spreading further north. It is on the doorstep of 90% of the winemaking in the US, and it knocking louder every year. It was recently found in Humbolt County, which is almost to California’s northern border. It is a zero tolerance disease… as Adam says, one bite from an insect that carries the disease can kill that vine within about 3 years. So the choices are pretty stark about what you can do to deal with it: either A) cling to vinifera and nuke your vineyards with really awful chemical insecticides continually, essentially creating a dead zone around your vines, or B) adapt and embrace change and build a wine culture ecologically on a greater diversity of varieties.

As I began researching for this conversation with Adam Tolmach, I discovered that there are quite a few vineyards who have planted small amounts of the resistant varieties that Adam grows. Even Caymus in Napa Valley. Nobody is really publicizing it yet, but hybrids are being integrated quietly, almost surreptitiously into our wine culture here. We’re in the don’t ask, don’t tell phase with regard to hybrids in California. Someday soon, we’re just going to have to grow up and embrace them as equals. And I’m really grateful to Adam for being one of the folks who’s willing to champion them.

https://ojaivineyard.com/

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Beyond Organic Wine

Mallorca Indigenous Grape Varieties For Climate Change Resilience with Tomeu Llabrés

My guest for this episode grows and makes wine on one of the most popular island vacation spots in the Mediterranean Sea: Mallorca. His name is Tomeu Llabrés, and his winery is C’an Verdura. You might be surprised to find out how much of an impact Mallorca has had on the world. You might be less surprised to find that the local, indigenous varieties of grapes that Tomeu works with out-perform on several measures the Cabernet and other “trendy” grapes that were brought to Mallorca just a few decades ago to cater to tourists. We’ll get to know the Mallorcan grapes better, and find some solutions to making cool wines in a hotter world.

https://vinscanverdura.com/

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Beyond Organic Wine

How To Make Ecological Wine - Beyond Death In The Vineyard

After spending the year learning some of the limits of regenerative wine, and reporting those in the Death in the Vineyard mini-series, I wanted to spend some time exploring what regenerative wine could be. This is a stand-alone episode, but it also functions as an epilogue to the Death In The Vineyard series. 

The most important lesson I learned this year is that it is impossible to grow or make wine “regeneratively,” or even to grow organically or biodynamically in a meaningful way, or to make “natural” wine in any way that isn’t green-washing, unless you start with an ecological foundation. But what does that mean?

What does an ecological approach to winegrowing and wine making look like?

This episode looks at two brilliant and unique approaches to growing and making an ecological wine business. It is meant to excite and tempt and titillate you about how we could have a very different experience with wine. This episode is an invitation. I invite you to cultivate your imagination for what's possible, to think constructively of alternative perspectives on winegrowing, to recreate your understanding of what it means to be regenerative. I invite you into a new vision for wine.

This episode and the others in this series took a lot of work to produce. If you'd like to support or sponsor them financially, this would be incredibly helpful to enabling me to continue to do this kind of investigating and reporting. 

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Beyond Organic Wine

James Sligh, Ariana Ross - What We Talk About When We Talk About Wine

This episode is a conversation I got to have with Ariana Ross and James Sligh. Ariana you may remember from an earlier episode in which I talked to her about her treatise, Wine’s Way To Art, and James is the creator of and educator at The Children’s Atlas of Wine. This conversation is about what we talk about when we talk about wine, and it includes philosophy, history, politics, social justice, art criticism, and of course agriculture. You may learn some juicy historical tidbits that upend your understanding of what is classic or traditional in regards to wine, or some wines, and which wines get left out of these ideas and why. Rather than arriving at a consensus of ideas, I think we helped each other see the unanswered questions in each of our ideas, and we came away with a more expansive understanding of, at least, wine. And I hope you do too.

https://childrensatlasofwine.com/

@childrensatlasofwine

https://www.whoisariana.com/

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Beyond Organic Wine

Cooler Wines For A Hotter World, with Steve Matthiasson

My guest for this episode is Steve Matthiasson. This is the second time I’ve interviewed Steve, so I highly recommend listening to the first episode from about three years ago if you haven’t. Steve is the eponymous dude behind Matthiasson Wines, and maybe dude is the wrong title for Steve. He might be more of a punk rebel organic evangelist operating from inside the Cabernet Curtain in the heart of Napa Valley. Surprisingly for this podcast, you’re going to hear praise for James Suckling AND The Mondavi Family, and a hopeful outlook for classical wines in California despite climate change. But much more importantly, and less surprisingly, you’re going to hear numerous incredibly helpful technical vitiultural insights into how to farm grapes organically to make fresh, vibrant wines in an increasingly hotter world. Once again, I recommend getting out your notepad and pencil for this one.

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Beyond Organic Wine

Death In The Vineyard, Part 3 - Our Shadow Story

How do we reconcile the need to take life in order to grow life and survive? 

What are the consequences of not growing wine ecologically, first?

What does a vole infestation tell us about the human story?

What role does death have in our winegrowing?

Should regenerative viticulture, regenerative wine growing, attempt to reduce the amount of killing necessary to produce wine?

This episode and the others in this series took a lot of work to produce. If you'd like to support or sponsor them financially, this would be incredibly helpful to enabling me to continue to do this kind of investigating and reporting. 

You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon.

Or by donating or taking action at:

Beyond Organic Wine

Death In The Vineyard, Part 2 - The Angels' Share & The Ecology of Fear

Do humans have a vole infestation or do voles have a human infestation? This and other questions from this episode may haunt your dreams and have you wondering if maybe "regenerative winegrowing" is an oxymoron. 

The big question of Part 2 of the Death In The Vineyard mini-series is "What are the regenerative solutions to all the things that want to eat our wine crops?"

In trying to answer this question Part 2 looks at the cultural assumptions, language, beliefs, and prejudices that inform the way we currently see and relate to all of the lives that feed on our vines and trees. 

Get ready to take a wrecking ball to your ideas about Integrated Pest Management, not to mention your assumptions about snakes. 

Additionally, you'll get a list of practical tactics for preventing or stopping vole infestations or other plagues of rodents. 

Don't listen to this episode unless you're ready to be a global leader in regenerative winegrowing and regenerative agriculture in general. 

This episode and the others in this series took a lot of work to produce. If you'd like to support or sponsor them financially, this would be incredibly helpful to enabling me to continue to do this kind of investigating and reporting. 

You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon.

Or by donating or taking action at:

Beyond Organic Wine

Madson Wines - Beyond Organic in the Santa Cruz Mountains

In this episode I get to talk to Abbey Chrystal, Ken Swegles & Cole Thomas of Madson Wines and Rhizos and Skyline Viticulture and a few other ventures.

If you haven’t heard of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, you’re about to be introduced to a wine region unlike any other. I didn’t realize how special it was until Abbey, Ken, and Cole began describing it, and they may know it better than anyone else because between them they farm, make wine, and sell wine from up to over 50 vineyards around the AVA and have initiated transitions to better than organic farming on many area vineyards.

The Madson Wines website says, “As a standard, all of the vineyards that we work with have been converted to 100% organic practices. We use only ecologically based pest controls and biological fertilizers including animal waste and nitrogen fixing cover crops to help regulate and maintain the health of soil microbes. Many of our vineyards were not organic prior to our adoption; we find that motivating vineyard owners to adopt organics is more rewarding than merely searching for growers who already understand its value. However, organic agriculture does not encompass all of the solutions for responsible agriculture. We must explore beyond the organic system to maintain and improve our surrounding ecosystems and communities.” It then goes on to talk about their goal to practice regenerative viticulture in an effort to help their farming evolve with the changing climate and mitigate the effects of climate change. 

In addition to these very admirable farming values, these guys are kind, generous, and compassionate people with lots to share. 

https://www.madsonwines.com/

https://www.rhizosconsulting.com/+

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Beyond Organic Wine