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Organic Wine is the gateway to explore the entire wine industry - from soil to sommeliers - from a revolutionary perspective. Deep interviews discussing big ideas with some of the most important people on the cutting edge of the regenerative renaissance, about where wine comes from and where it is going.
Episodes
Monday Jul 31, 2023
Monday Jul 31, 2023
My guest for this episode is Deborah Parker Wong – the co-editor, with Pam Strayer, of Slow Wine USA.
Centralas, my winery, is honored to be listed in the Slow Wine guide. I say honored, because Slow Wine is unique in the entire realm of wine scoring or recommendation guides in that it takes into account the ecological context of the wine that they recommend.
All other wine scoring and recommendation guides reflect the problem that plagues wine in general – that is the problem of disconnection. When wine reviewers and guides give a 100 point score to a wine, what does that tell you about the way that the fruit was grown? What does it tell you about the way that winery conducts it business, treats its employees, manages its land, or interacts with its community? It tells you nothing about these things. Yet aren’t these things vitally important to the “greatness” of a wine? Can a wine be great if it tastes amazing yet poisons children in nearby schools? And I use this example of poisoning children because it is an actual example from both Napa and Bordeaux. Our disconnection from the context of wine is the only reason we revere 100 point scores that are based on the flavor of a wine, rather than think them ridiculous.
I tried to point this out at one point by creating the Ecological Wine Score, as a comprehensive, yet satirical take on giving a wine a score that is actually meaningful, and all that would have to be considered. You can see this at EcologicalWineScore.com
Slow Wine and the Slow Wine Snail of Approval reconnect wine to it context in a human community and living ecosystem, and Deborah walks us through how it does this. We talk about the Slow Wine Manifesto, which I’ll make available on the episode page at OrganicWinePodcast.com, and we talk about the research that is required to get behind some of the green façade that wineries rely on, and understand the complex practices that no one certification can capture. So much more goes into a wine than just its sensory evaluation or a biodynamic certification.
Just for fun we talk about Drops of God which we don’t spoil if you haven’t seen it, and we talk about how the common idea of wine – you know, the Euro-centric monoculture that has been spread around the globe through capitalist imperialism – is actually not going down so well among young folks. Crazy, right?
A big thanks to Deborah for this fun and engaging conversation, and for letting us know about Slow Wine.
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Monday Jul 24, 2023
Monday Jul 24, 2023
My guest for this episode is Dave Carr of Raging Cider and Mead, and he’s helping to redefine what cider can be and where it can come from. Dave makes cider in San Diego County… and for those of you unfamiliar with California, that’s south of me. We often look north for great cider cultures, and I’ll admit that’s why it took me so long to have Dave on the podcast, but it turns out there’s an old, very special, and pretty outstanding cider culture just over an hour south of Los Angeles… in fact, once you hear Dave’s description of growing cider here you may begin to see it as one of the BEST places to grow cider.
I don’t want to give too much away but you’re going to find out about a unique population of banana slugs, the rich apple and pear history of gold rush town Julian, CA where Dave is helping rebuild and regenerate old, historic and neglected orchards, a seedling pear name Screaming Weasel, a perry named Perry Feral, the Quest for the Palomar Giant, sweet meads, cysers, and pyments, Dave’s approach to orchard polyculture including cover cropping with collards, composting with mushrooms and mulching with spent mushroom substrate, alley cropping with asparagus, beans, and squash, as well as looking on the bright side of orchard pests and how to manage them.
In addition to renewing legacy orchards and farming his home orchard and other local orchards in a beyond organic way, Dave is caretaking old, historic orchards for a local tribe council that preserves land from development, and he’s trying to develop locally adapted seedling apples and pears to create a uniquely Southern California cider culture. You’ll hear about all this and more, and how you can taste his diverse array of natural, regional ciders, meads, and co-ferments at his taproom in San Marcos.
https://www.ragingcidermead.com/
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Monday Jul 17, 2023
Monday Jul 17, 2023
This is the second part of the special in-person, on-site conversation that I had in June of 2023 with Mike Biltonen of Know Your Roots. Please check out part 1 for Mike’s full bio, and for a fantastic episode about holistic orchard culture within a biodynamic context.
On this episode we leave Mike’s Apostrophe Orchard and enter the forest that surrounds it. We leave the realm of the known, the controlled, the cultivated, and enter the realm of questions, of curiosity, of the unexplored. The pace changes, the energy shifts, and the conversation evolves. I invite you to take this walk with us, but I have this suggestion: Don’t enter the forest. Become it.
The forest is the source of the orchard, the source of the vines and vineyard. It is also our source. Our bodies and lives, our cultures, grow out of nature, out of the wild. When I speak of developing a more ecological wine culture, I’m essentially talking about ecomimicry, biomimicry, or just emulating the forest ecosystem more closely with our cultures.
Along this walk we discover amazing wild vines and talk of wineforests and vitiforestry. We speak of the need for further research into plant communication and energetics. We observe the values that the forest manifests in its multiple diverse and interconnected forms, and how these differ from and could be better incorporated into our production-oriented farming. We ask how to embrace beauty in our viticulture and pomiculture, along with ecological integration and economic viability.
At a time when we now see the effect that the industrial food and beverage production system has, not just on what we eat and drink, but on the human psyche, and on gaia, Mike asks us to begin to consider the integration of secular and esoteric science. While he affirms the importance of data and statistics, he asks how we can marry those with our observations of nature that often give us better intuitive insights. Mike suggests that the more time we spend in nature, on our farms, in our vineyards and orchards, without the intentions of productivity and economic extraction, the better our observations become and the better our science becomes.
Enjoy!
https://knowyouroots.com/index.html
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Monday Jul 10, 2023
Monday Jul 10, 2023
My guest for this episode is Mike Biltonen.
Mike is the co-owner, with his wife, of Know Your Roots, an orchard and vineyard consultation and management business in the Northeast US. Mike has spent almost 40 years working with orchards, vineyards, and other specialty crops. He’s farmed in Virginia, Minnesota, Vermont, California, and New York. Over the past 20 years his passion for sustainable agriculture has evolved into a profound dedication to the principles and practices of ecologically focused, biodynamic agricultural. He serves as the president of the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics. For the last 15 years Mike has consulted for orchardists and farmers while also operating his own biodynamically enlivened orchard and mushroom operation in central New York. He keeps alive the legacy of his friend, the late Michael Phillips, and helps maintain Phillips’ Holistic Orchard Network.
This was a very special conversation for me for many reasons, not the least of which was because it was the first in-person interview I’ve done on location. Mike was gracious enough to spend a morning guiding me through his newly established Apostrophe Orchard. As we walk through the trees and other plants, Mike gives us an incredible tour of an orchard established and maintained ecologically with the principles and practices of biodynamics, and a permaculture perspective. You’ll hear the sounds of birds and orchard life all around us in the background as we talk. Since this happened within the context of the freeze event that left no fruit on the trees of Apostrophe Orchard, we discuss what the future of pomiculture and agriculture might look like from both a big perspective and a technical holistic orchard care perspective. The conversation culminates in a discussion of “high frequency beverages” and how human energy has a vital impact on the farm environment and its products.
And this is just part one! In part two, to be released soon, we leave the orchard and walk into the forest… and the conversation becomes influenced by things more ancient, primal, mystical, and even magical by the end… So stay tuned, and … Enjoy!
https://knowyouroots.com/index.html
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Sponsors:
Oom - recycled bottles for wine
Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.
Monday Jul 03, 2023
Monday Jul 03, 2023
My guest for this episode is Brent Mayeaux of Stagiaire Wines. Brent makes zero-zero wines with a lot of heart and hard work on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. This year Brent also organized and held the Wine From Here wine fair, with help from several other people of course. I’m very impressed with the humility that he embraces with the name of his winery: Stagiaire – the Apprentice. WE never really if we continue to seek and follow our curiosity and passion to make better wine. We will always have more to learn, and I love that Brent owns that with his brand. I also love Brent’s desire for and commitment to honesty and bringing the highest level of integrity with his wine making. And I of course value his promotion and support of making wine a local, farm-to-table experience.
Now this episode has a back story. We recorded an entire episode before this which I decided not to release. I thought I had done a disservice to you and to Brent by drawing him out about some of the discouraging and frustrating aspects of being a winemaker today in California, and elsewhere. However, in addition to those negative elements, there were some good and practically helpful things too, and tons of information and a fun conversation. So I’ve released this original conversation on patreon as “subscribers only” content. If you’d like to support this podcast and listen to that previous conversation, here's the link to our patreon channel where you can subscribe, and visit the "support" page at OrganicWinePodcast.com.
https://www.stagiairewine.com/
Support this episode by subscribing via patreon.
Sponsors:
Oom - recycled bottles for wine
Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.
Monday Jun 19, 2023
Monday Jun 19, 2023
My guest is Marcelo Castro Vera of Octágono, one of a few natural wines in Mexico and the only winery nationwide that ferments in clay vessels buried in the ground. They don't have electricity in the winery, so the whole winemaking process is done by hand. They add zero sulfites to their wine. They also produce artisanal mezcal. The agaves are cooked in earth pits using fallen wood, crushed with a stone tahona using spring water to extract sugars, fermented naturally with no yeast or additional sugars added in wooden vats, distilled in copper stills. They also produce beer, mead, cider, and distilled prickly pear alcohol.
I love Marcelo's thinking about how doing all the winemaking by hand creates jobs for more people, and that he sees this as the goal of the winery rather than getting rich. I hope you are inspired by him to think about what wine could become by eliminating some of the things we take for granted.
@octagonomx
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Sponsors:
Oom - recycled bottles for wine
Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.
Monday Jun 12, 2023
Monday Jun 12, 2023
My guest for this episode is Dan Durica, and when I asked him about what inspires the work he does, he essentially credited limitations for his inspirations. What if we couldn’t throw fossil fuels at our problems? What if we eliminated the easy solutions we’ve relied on for the past 80 years? What if you couldn’t use fossil fuels to make or sell your wine? No driving, no electricity, no chemical sprays and fertilizers or diesel farm equipment? Answering these what ifs would inevitably cause us to arrive at a very local wine culture in both scale and reach. Putting these limitations on ourselves would make us more resourceful, creative, ecological, and adaptive in our thinking.
Dan lives in a unique community called Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri where he also farms a no-spray, poly-culture vineyard built on the principles of permaculture. He also produces and hosts the Hardcore Sustainable Youtube channel where you’ll find a lot of helpful info about living and growing vines without fossil fuels and get to see what Dan is doing.
Dan also mentioned how far our understanding of what the best agriculture is has grown so much in the last twenty years that the idea of “organic” is kind of outdated. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve joked multiple times about changing the name of this podcast, and that may actually happen soon… when I have a spare minute to redo the entire online infrastructure that it relies on. So… for now it will stay the Organic Wine Podcast… but know that in my heart, and in everything it stands for, it is so much more.
After recording, Dan and I spoke a bit longer and he also proposed the idea that, historically, vineyard establishment has probably taken much longer than it does now. Vineyards were likely integrated into a local ecosystem over decades, rather than years, and thought of as an intergenerational project. Finding vines and other fruit that thrive without sprays can take years of selection, and even breeding. Building fertility and resilience into a vineyard takes years of ecosystem enhancement. I hope to be able to reach back out to Dan in a few years and see how the development of his vineyard has come along.
Also, we both talk about how the future we face will require us to stop thinking of ourselves as grape growers or apple growers or any single vineyard or orchard system managers, and start becoming polyculture farmers who grow a diversity of dozens of crops, and who build a business plan based on much less than 100% production. In California we have just lived through one of if not the wettest winters on record, and that’s following one of, if not the, driest years on record. The northeast US just had the awful combination of an unseasonably warm April followed by a multi-day freeze in May, which devastated the vineyards and orchards.
What Dan is doing, even though on a smaller scale, is an example of what is possible in even the most difficult growing conditions, when you approach wine with a different mindset.
https://www.dancingrabbit.org/
https://www.youtube.com/@HardcoreSustainable/videos
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Sponsors:
Oom - recycled bottles for wine
Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.
Tuesday May 30, 2023
Tuesday May 30, 2023
My guest for this episode is Xaime Niembro, of Vinos Barrigones. Vinos Barrigones translates to “Paunchy Wines” in English, though Google will translate it to “Pot-bellied wines.” And you’ll hear Xaime’s hilarious story of how the name Barrigon became the name for their wines and aesthetic.
Xaime is using his Vinos Barrigones to regenerate his family’s 6.5 hectare or 16 acre vineyard near Queretaro, Mexico. Queretaro is just a bit more than an hour north of Mexico City, and quality viticulture is possible here at this southern latitude because of the high elevation 1800 meters or close to 6000 feet above sea level. Of course that brings some unique challenges as well, and Xaime gives us a great explanation of how he makes wine with the climate to fit his culture and cuisine perfectly.
We also talk briefly about the ciders Xaime is making, and Mezcal, which is where Xaime got his start in fermented beverages. One of the insights Xaime offered that has made me appreciate Mezcal much more than I did was its possibility to express terroir. Unlike grain spirits, which are made with an annual crop, Mezcal is made from a perennial plant that lives in the soil for years – sometimes decades – before harvest. This new way of seeing and appreciating Mezcal has strangely affected my pallet, and I've found myself actually enjoying it for the first time. I have a decent bottle at home, of course, this is Los Angeles, but I’ve neglected it in my cabinet for years. After this interview I immediately poured a glass for myself … and loved every drop, and mezcal has been the only liquor I’ve ordered at a bar since. So there you go… a little mind pallet connection magic was made possible thanks to Xaime.
So a big thanks to Xaime for expanding my world, and for being the first Mexican wine producer on the podcast. There’s an old and vibrant and growing wine culture in Mexico, and I hope to share more producers with you soon.
https://vinosbarrigones.com/es/
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Sponsors:
Oom - recycled bottles for wine
Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.
Monday May 22, 2023
Monday May 22, 2023
This is a special episode. More than an episode, it’s a direct request to all of you listening right now. Here’s the request: let’s solve the glass bottle problem right now.
If you’ve been listening to this podcast recently, the name OOM should be familiar to you. They’re a sponsor of this podcast, and they are a company based here in my fair city that is tackling the bottle re-use challenge head on. They have begun collecting, de-labeling, cleaning and sanitizing wine bottles to re-sell. They’ve encountered some problems that they can’t solve on their own… they need you. Or really, we all need each other. As you listen to this conversation with OOM co-founder Amy Lee, you’ll see what I mean. Amy wants OOM to help eliminate single use packaging across all industries.
The scope of this conversation is mainly focused on California, but this is a conversation that needs to happen and is happening everywhere. The reason I wanted to get this conversation out to you is because any of us trying to do this anywhere will encounter the same problems, and sharing these problems and their potential solutions as a global community of winemakers and wine lovers will move all of these efforts forward toward solutions much more quickly.
The main issues come down to two things that all of us listening can help make happen: first, we need to use label materials that can be removed without chemical processes, and second, we need to agree on just a handful of standard bottle shapes and colors that we all use if we buy new glass.
Why do we need to do this? Why is this conversation not only important, but urgent? Because glass is far and away the biggest source of emissions for the wine industry, and re-using bottles can drastically reduce the emissions associated with producing and using new glass.
Also, most wine bottles do not get recycled in the US. Those of you listening in Europe do much better with your recycling, but in the US we recycle less than 31% of our wine bottles. And the bad news about recycling glass is that it produces a lot of emissions to heat glass to close to 3000 degrees Fahrenheit so that it can be re-molded.
My hope is that those of you listening now can choose to alter your bottle and label purchasing behavior immediately to begin to facilitate a transition to a re-use system. If you’re not a wine producer, tell your favorite producers about this opportunity. Let them know you’d like them to embrace these bottling choices and that you’d not only be okay with it, you’d love it. If you’re a wine maker, get everyone at your custom crush onto the same bottles and labels. Spread this podcast and this message to everyone you know in wine. Because it will take all of us, and we’ll need to work with the glass producers too.
I was at a local wine fair yesterday here in Los Angeles for natural wine producers. I think every producer and supporter there was philosophically receptive to this kind of change, but what was lacking was a moment in the center of that event where someone called everyone in attendance to attention and rallied us all together as community of like-minded individuals who have a lot of power to make that change happen, and appeal to us to take action to make this happen. This is that appeal.
And if you are hosting or organizing an event or know someone who is, please consider structuring that moment into your festival. Whether it’s to instigate action to create a bottle re-use program, or a three-minute appeal to make any other change happen that we desperately need to make, I’m beginning to feel like these festivals are missed opportunities to do something important.
We have linear systems in place right now. Linear systems can only exist if we assume the earth’s resources are infinite, if we assume that we can continue to take without giving back. We all know this assumption is tragically wrong – linear systems all have dead ends, and so it’s time to set up a new circular system based on the assumption that our world and its resources are precious and finite and require us to give back on the same level at which we take. This conversation is about how we start to do that.
Resources, bottle skus, and label specs for a re-use system at:
To help make this positive change happen, please join our patreon community.
Monday May 15, 2023
Monday May 15, 2023
Prepare to go on a magical, and at times hilarious, journey to a special place on earth.
Your guide on this journey is Jess Hopwood, and she has a lot of experience spoiling voyagers with amazing trips. She has been, among other things, a flight attendant on private jets, a butler on luxury yachts, and now runs Farm to Glass Wine Tours in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. The Okanagan is that special place on earth. The furthest north location on the planet with a hot Mediterranean climate, the Okanagan centers on a lake that runs 81 miles north to south and is surrounded by beautiful towns, towering mountains, Mediterranean blue lakes, and wine. I have to admit that I was woefully ignorant of this area, but it has jumped to the top of my list of wine regions to visit thanks to Jess.
Jess guides us through the climate, the scenery, the history, and some of the amazing people, farming, and wines that can be found in the Okanagan. This is by no means an exhaustive accounting of producers who are doing great farming and making amazing fermentations. The Okanagan is a large and diverse region with much more to be discovered, but I think you’ll be enchanted even by just this short day trip.
Jess visited me on a recent trip to LA and brought some unique wines from the Naramata sub-region of the Okanagan, and we discuss these wines and their producers, and the beauty of this place where vines grow on benchland cliffs over the lake, and the land was named for a famous smile. The Okanagan is at the forefront of organic, or better, agriculture, in Canada, and Jess focuses on small, local producers who do great farming. At the end of the day, before a final refreshing dip in the lake, Jess takes us on a quick trip up the Similkameen – a river valley with sheer mountain walls that flows into the Okanagan and is known as the organic capital of Canada.
https://farmtoglasswinetours.ca/
Support this episode by subscribing via patreon.
Sponsors:
Oom - recycled bottles for wine
Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.