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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 May 08, 2023
Monday May 08, 2023
After years of bartending and working in hospitality between operatic gigs, David took his first sommelier course with the Court of Master Sommeliers in 2010 and decided to make the career change. David was named one of Food & Wine’s Sommeliers of the Year in 2016, and passed his Master Sommelier exam later that year, making him the 149th American Master Sommelier and the 233rd in the world. He was awarded the StarChefs Rising Stars Restaurateur of the Year award in 2019. He has presented seminars for the Court of Master Sommeliers, GuildSomm, Vine Society, and numerous other educational organizations, as well as being a featured presenter at events such as the Aspen Food & Wine Classic, Pebble Beach Food & Wine, Nantucket Food & Wine, and many others. He is a sought-after wine judge for competitions both nationally and abroad.
Since going full-force into the hospitality field, he has worked in every aspect of the beverage industry: He has opened restaurants, wine bars, honky-tonks and retail shops, worked as a sales rep. and directed wine programs for distribution companies, and now farms a vineyard and makes wine with hybrid grapes in the mountains of his home state, Vermont, under the label Stella 14 with his partner Lauren.
https://www.stella14wines.com/
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Monday May 01, 2023
Monday May 01, 2023
My guest for this episode is Clark Smith. Clark has been making and studying wine since the 1970’s. He’s had a huge influence on the wine world through his wine consulting business, and in 2013 he published the book Postmodern Winemaking. Ten years later, that book is still groundbreaking.
Clark knows more than you do about the chemistry of winemaking. In addition to that, he’ll tell you he has a bit of an ego. He may say some things that rub you the wrong way. He may say some things that you find hard to believe. He may say some things that contradict everything you know. But he may also say some things that enlighten you and revolutionize your winemaking. There really isn’t a way to pigeon-hole him. Clark is candid, transparent, a bit of a pot-stirrer, and in pursuit of the most soulful wine he can make.
In the past he has been the whipping boy for the natural wine press, partly for his embrace of new technologies, and partly for his willingness to confront hype with science. Depending on your convictions, you can fault him or thank him for introducing reverse osmosis and micro-oxygenation to American wine, but you cannot fault him for concealing his use of techniques or technologies in his winemaking… which is more than I can say for some who claim to make natural wine. You may disagree with him, but make sure you understand him before you dismiss him.
We cover A LOT of ground in this conversation, including:
What wine really is – the googe-ness of wine
Minerality comes from living soil
Why brix has nothing to do with ripeness, and how determining ripeness takes a personal relationship with a vineyard
Why watering back must increases a wine's aromatic and color intensity
Why he makes his best wines without sulfites, and how everything that’s common knowledge about sulfites in wine is wrong
Why Brettanomyces is a hospital disease, and why a living wine with good structure beats it.
Wine Diamonds
White Wine making
Sweet Wine making
And Much more.
Buckle in… maybe grab a note pad… and
Enjoy!
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 Apr 24, 2023
Monday Apr 24, 2023
Drew Herman – Assume Superiority, Farm Scared, and Pretend Like You Know What You’re Doing While Killing Your Plants
Imagine if you were a thousand foot tall giant. How successful would you be at helping a 5 foot tall farmer collect her chickens eggs? Drew Herman is back for a second episode jam-packed with information and laughs. If you haven’t listened to the previous episode with Drew, I highly recommend checking it out first. It was episode # 74, published back in July of 2022 and was titled Microbial Democracy for a Healthy Vineyard and World. In this new episode, Drew discusses the game changing discovery of rhizophagy and what that means for the way we farm wine… and he manages to crack me up with memorable quips about once a minute. Drew wants to impress upon us how each new discovery about the soil microbiome and the way plants function with it shows how little we know. We discuss plants’ incredible genetic intelligence and the need to start assuming that they know vastly more than we do about how to take care of them.. We discuss recently discovered fallacies about fallowing and soil pH. We talk about the desperate need to reintroduce breeding new vines as standard practice in wine, and the stunning genetic potential in a seed, including a full arsenal of microbiology that actually teaches it how to grow. Given our deepening understanding of our ignorance, Drew beseeches us to stop blundering around with fertilization and pesticide programs, the impacts of which we really don’t understand. The vines we farm, as it turns out, are much better farmers than we are… and our efforts to help them usually just get in their way. Like a mushroom foraging expedition, there are non-sequitur delights scattered throughout this conversation all the way through to the end when Drew discusses the importance of voles and how to manage them in the vineyard. He also offers numerous free resources to deepen your knowledge and learn how much we have to learn.
Drew is vineyard manager at JK Carriere wines in Oregon, but I think his true gift may be in making deep soil science as fun as playing in the dirt… hopefully playing in the dirt sounds fun to you. If not… well, just think of something fun, and then associate that with Drew.
Enjoy!
Support this episode by subscribing via patreon.
Sponsors:
Centralas Wine - delicious, ecological wine
Catavino Tours - amazing, wine tours
Oom - recycled bottles for wine
Tuesday Apr 18, 2023
Tuesday Apr 18, 2023
When I think of Vermont, I think of slanted light and moody skies, wildflowers and rosy cheeks, small farms and big forests. And because of my guest for this episode, when I think of Vermont I also think of hardy vines and delicious wines. Deirdre Heekin is the person behind La Garagista and Domaine de la Foret, along with her husband Caleb, and what seems to be a continual stream of young winemakers who help and learn and have become the next generation of Vermont wine.
Deirdre is a restauranteur, vigneron, writer, photographer, mentor, gardener… and more, and that means we cover a lot of ground in this conversation. We talk about the magic of the forest and why grapevines are integral to the forest edge ecology that we aim to replicate with holistic, regenerative agriculture. We talk about Deirdre’s approach to farming Brianna, which involves not pruning it. She also shares some of the unique approaches she has developed for making cider and wine and co-ferments and other things that don’t have names, by gleaning from ancient techniques and by learning from nature and the opportunities it presents to work with it to create one-of-a-kind fermentations.
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 Apr 10, 2023
Monday Apr 10, 2023
My guest for this episode is Hans Peter Schmidt. He goes by Peter Schmidt, and he is a director and faculty member for the Ithaka Institute, an international network for carbon strategies and climate farming, and he farms and makes wine from the amazing Mythopia wine-ecosystem in Switzerland, which he also uses as a research vineyard for the Ithaka Institute. He’s also involved in other winegrowing projects around southern Europe, and has a pretty big reputation for his approach to wine.
In this interview we cover viticulture, winemaking, and the philosophy of wine. Peter may be the most non-interventionist – or natural or naturalistic – winemaker I’ve ever encountered. You may think him strange for some of the things he does with wine, and you may think him mad for some of the things he doesn't do. You’ll hear how these things are even possible. Hint: it has to do with mindset as much as ecology.
Peter makes wine in a way that, once you hear its simplicity, could revolutionize your own winemaking. If you end up making wine in the way that Peter does, Peter only requests that you send him a bottle to thank him for the idea… a sort of intellectual property royalty payment. I for sure at least want to try a batch of wine the way Peter makes – or really doesn’t make it.
Peter ends the conversation with a perspective, or really a meditation, or how wine fits into the human story. Like so much of this conversation, it merely scratches the surface and gives a glimpse of many beautiful things that we can begin to explore.
Enjoy!
https://www.mythopia.ch/mythopia/fe/de
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 Apr 03, 2023
Monday Apr 03, 2023
My guest for this episode is Virginia Samsel. Virginia is a unique kind of vineyard, or orchard, consultant. She provides energy work and consultation using a synthesis of biodynamics and reiki. She translates the the messages she receives from a site into helpful advice for the people who care for it, and that can help farmers build a spiritual connection to their land.
Much of this conversation is at and beyond the limits of our language to express. So it’s important to be open. You may not be able to go along with Virginia on everything, and that’s okay. I think you will find that she doesn’t subtract from anything you already know, and she can add some new ways of seeing and knowing your landscape.
She gives us some really important tips on how to begin to connect with the land and the things living in it. She talks about spending Non-transactional time with your vines and or trees. Developing a relationship with your site that includes being vulnerable and allowing it to get to know the other parts of you beyond just your farmer side. She offers ideas about how to relate to the land and develop it as more than just a production facility. She reminds us that tending our vineyards is synonymous with tending ourselves.
Ultimately, this interview is full of resources for turning this Anthropocene, or capitalocene, into an Ecocene of renewed connectivity.
Enjoy!
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 Mar 27, 2023
Monday Mar 27, 2023
One of the sponsors for this episode is actually the guest for this episode: Stephen Wilson of Vermont Vineyards. I met Stephen at the Vitinord Conference, where VT Vineyards was also a sponsor, and I admired him and his approach to viticulture enough to suggest that we have this conversation… and I guess the feeling was mutual because he simultaneously suggested sponsoring the podcast. The result is that you can go to VTVineyards.com/owp and hire Stephen to install a vineyard for you, and that vineyard installation will support this podcast.
If you’ve considered planting your own vineyard, or even just putting in a few vines for landscaping features, like over a pergola or fence, then you’ll find this conversation helpful. Since both Stephen and I plant vineyards in backyards or even larger landscapes – or front yards in my case – and since we do this in the very different contexts of Southern California and Vermont, we have a wide range of perspectives and approaches to compare and discuss. We don’t get highly technical, but we do get to some of the dirty details and realities of being a vineyard caretaker. So there’s some very valuable information for potential vineyard owners and some important ideas for everyone to consider. And both Stephen and I find tending vines to be very rewarding work on multiple levels. Stephen’s idea for VT Vineyards was born during the pandemic, and grew from a desire to heal and enrich other people’s lives with a reconnection to the natural world through vines.
Stephen and I talk about the Vermont wine scene, and we both want to acknowledge that we couldn’t talk about everyone. There are, and have been, many winegrowers who we didn’t mention by name who have done much important work for Vermont wine. Since this was not a conversation about the history of Vermont wine, we inevitably omitted lots of people who deserve mention and respect.
Enjoy, and Happy Spring!
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 Mar 20, 2023
Monday Mar 20, 2023
This episode is about making room for the unknown. Or the known, but unmeasurable. If making wine means more than botany and chemistry to you, if you find yourself so deep in the soil that you've started making mycorrhizal connections, if you've begun to notice that what we talk about when we talk about wine is connected to things that have nothing to do with wine... this episode is for you.
A big thanks to Chiara Shannon and Darek Trowbridge for candidly discussing these ideas. We’d really like to know what you think about this episode, so please email any comments, or questions to connect@organicwinepodcast.com. We only scratch the surface of this topic, but I think you’ll find some inspiring ideas including:
Darek’s proposal of Sacred Grade wine, quite a few books and resources to check out, a discussion of some of the as yet unmeasurable aspects of Biodynamics, with a really amazing story that Darek shares about the efficacy of the 501 preparation and how he made believers of his entire vineyard crew. And we talk in many ways about regeneration and rewilding, how these land-centered ideas are connected to and echoed inside us, as well as how our interior lives get reflected in how we care for our land and our vines.
https://www.oldworldwinery.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 Mar 13, 2023
Monday Mar 13, 2023
I’d like to introduce you to a source of inspiration for me personally, and my guest for this episode: Marreya Bailey. Marreya’s winery is Mad Marvlus, which, as she mentions, sounds like a super hero name. And maybe that’s appropriate. Marreya doesn’t really make wine with Mad Marvlus, she creates living embodiments of personality and spirit that you can drink. She calls them her creatures. Don’t expect just grapes, but any and every natural thing that produces sugar and flavor in her environment. Don’t expect traditional wine either, unless by traditional you mean the actual traditions from cultures around the globe that were practiced for millennia prior to this strange thing that has happened for the last fifty years.
Marreya is also the founding mother and co-partner of The Bathing Collective, which you’ll have to listen to find out what it is… and the future that it hopes to bring about.
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 Mar 06, 2023
Monday Mar 06, 2023
My guest for this episode is J Stephen Casscles, author of the book Grapes of the Hudson Valley, and grower of 106 varieties of hybrids and heritage wine grapes in the Hudson Valley.
If I were to boil this entire episode down into one message it would be to Treat hybrids like real grapes!
We talk all about the benefits and characteristics of these heritage and hybrid grapes. We talk about the added benefits of growing grapes on their own roots, rather than rootstock. We talk about why hybrids were banned in France. We talk about the benefits of the greater productivity of these grapes, the benefits of the disease resistance of these grapes. We talk about making wine from hybrids, and how they can immensely expand your palate of flavors to work with.
Stephen has a wealth of information to share and this interview is a non-stop firehose of wine knowledge.
https://www.hudsonvalleyheritagewines.com/
Sponsors:
Oom.earth & use referral code OWP in the contact form