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Organic Wine is the gateway to explore the entire wine industry - from soil to sommeliers - from a revolutionary ecological perspective. Deep interviews discussing big ideas with some of the most intriguing people on the cutting edge of the regenerative renaissance, about where wine comes from and where it is going.
Episodes
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
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
My guest for this episode is Ryan Opaz. His wine journey has led him to become a thoughtful wine business owner with deep ecological consciousness gained from decades of working at nearly every level of the wine industry. Besides being the founder and CEO of Catavino, with his wife and partner Gabriella he runs a natural and organic wine shop in Porto, Portugal, co-authored and was the photographer of the James Beard Award-nominated book Foot-Trodden: Portugal and the wines that time forgot. Previously he was also the photographer for the book The Amber Revolution, and a book about Porto’s Portugal’s Historic Bolhão Market. For his service to the Portugese wine industry he has also been inducted as a Knight of the Port Wine Brotherhood. Yes, this this is a conversation with not only a Knight, but a wine Knight.
One of the admirable qualities of Ryan that comes up in this interview is his desire to remind all of us in wine that answers to questions and solutions to problems aren’t universally applicable and timeless. That is, the issues we face are complex, context-dependent, and we would be wise to resist the impulse to simplify questions to single answers, or problems to single solutions, and even when we think we have found a way forward, we should continue to research and explore and be willing to find that we need to change our approach again next year.
We also talk a lot about emissions offsets. If you’ve been paying attention to the news about carbon offsets, from John Oliver to the Guardian, you’ll know that there are a lot of problems with offsets. In fact there are more than problems… there is a massive amount of deception and outright fraud. Ryan brings up some really interesting ideas about offsets that I think are important to consider, and his efforts to make his wine tourism company less wasteful and more ecologically positive have brought up some really good questions that I think we will all be wrestling with over the next decade or so. And I’m currently in discussion with a reputable company who provides offsets to do a future episode entirely devoted to the hard questions around these issues. So stay tuned.
The most important thing may not be that we seek ways to offset every ounce of carbon from our footprint, but that we begin to see that all of our choices and actions have ecological consequences, that there is a cost to everything we do, and if we aren’t paying for it, it’s likely that the earth or someone or something else is.
Full disclosure: Ryan’s company is a sponsor for the Organic Wine Podcast, and you can support this podcast by visiting CatavinoTours.com/OWP for organic wine podcast. I’m glad to have them for a sponsor, and I think this interview will help you see why.
Other Sponsors Include:
https://www.oom.earth/ Use referral code OWP
https://www.centralaswine.com/
And the most direct way you can support this podcast is:
https://www.patreon.com/organicwinepodcast
Thank you!
Monday Feb 20, 2023
Monday Feb 20, 2023
My guest for this episode is Hoss Hauksson, and he practices a form of viticulture in Switzerland that integrates elements of vitiforestry or a silvoculture polyculture, using a biodynamic approach, with the world’s smallest sheep and technologies like drone spraying and UV robots. His wine takes the idea of terroir literally, incorporating medicinal and aromatic herbs and trees as infusions in both the vineyard ecosystem and in his pinot noir.
In other words, I think I discovered my long lost soul twin.
Hoss is one of the only, if not the one and only, Icelandic winemakers on earth, (which means he’s probably related to Steve Matthiasson) and he tells us about his journey from wanting to be “the hero winemaker” to a focus on just becoming a good farmer.
Hoss’s holistic, ecological view of fostering a healthy farm ecosystem from which the best, most interesting wine can be made, leads us from some really important discussion about the soil microbiome through to expressing terroir by making a pet-nat infused with wormwood, hyssop, and yarrow. Along the way we find out the importance of promoting a fungal-dominant soil that recreates the forest floor from which vines evolved, how he uses different trees and herbs for different purposes in and around the vines, and how his adorable miniature sheep are vital to the entire ecosystem.
Fertile nuggets of information, rich with wisdom, are scattered everywhere through this interview like sheep poop in a vineyorchard. You’re in for a treat.
https://www.centralaswine.com/
Sponsor:
https://www.catavinotours.com/owp
Thursday Feb 16, 2023
Thursday Feb 16, 2023
This is a special episode in which I ask the question:
Why hasn’t the wine industry term “New World” gone the way of other problematic terms like “Oriental”?
For a while now, something about the use of the term “New World” has grated on me. As someone who lives and makes wine in one of the myriad parts of the world described by this term, I couldn’t help but notice how different are the cultures within this term and yet how homogenous is the “wine” culture.
This term began to bother me more and more. It makes most of the world of wine referential and derivative. It makes us imitators.
In truth, I think it makes us colonial subjects. Not of a political power, but of an idea: the global colonial monoculture known as “wine.”
I think it’s time we stop using the term “New World” (and “Old World” for that matter). I think it’s time we create a new world of wine.
I’m also thrilled to introduce you to a great new service that can significantly reduce the wine industry’s carbon footprint and waste: Oom. Oom provides clean reused bottles for the wine industry, and as a sponsor of this podcast, if you use the referral code “OWP” when you contact them for your bottle order, you can support the Organic Wine Podcast.
Contact Oom & Use referral code OWP
Support this podcast via Patreon.
Thank you for your support!
Monday Feb 13, 2023
Monday Feb 13, 2023
My guest for this episode is Haley Brown, the Executive Director of Wine Growers Nova Scotia, and this is a very special episode for multiple reasons. First, believe it or not, this is the first episode of the Organic Wine Podcast about a specific region and wine that is made outside the borders of the United States. I know those of you not from the US are probably thinking “It’s about time!” And you’re not wrong, but I have been really intentional about this focus. I think change always starts locally, and also there’s a lot I think we need to change in the US. But I’m really excited to crack that international seal with Nova Scotia because they are doing something unique and brilliant with Tidal Bay wine.
If this isn’t your first episode of the Organic Wine Podcast, you probably know that I want to bring an end to varietal labeling of wines. I stopped listing grape varieties on the wines I make with my winery Centralas as of the 2021 vintage, and I’ve been talking about the need to do away with our varietal obsession ever since. I think it turns wine into a commodity rather than a cultural process. It inhibits change and innovation, and it forces growers to conform to market trends rather than adapt to environmental conditions. And it has resulted in, as Haley mentions, 80% of the world’s wine being made from 20 varieties of grapes (all of which are a single species btw). Aside from the negative ecological effects of this global monoculture, it has also made wine incredibly boring (and then we wonder why sales are declining). But as the lone voice for how eliminating varietal labeling could benefit the entire wine industry, after a couple years of spreading this message I found that most people received this message with confusion at best, and at worst I was dismissed as that crazy guy from Los Angeles… which, you know, is fair to an extent. And as a self-critical kind of person, some pernicious doubts did begin to creep into my mind. But then, at the Vitinord conference in December, I discovered Tidal Bay.
Tidal Bay is the first and only appellation wine in North or South America. That is, it is a wine that is made, branded, and sold as a reflection of place and culture without reliance on varietal labelling. And honestly, for the first of something, I think the Nova Scotians did something that needs no refinement. The way they have conceived of and structured Tidal Bay is brilliant. It’s flexible, inclusive, rigorous, reflective of their unique culture, and ensures high quality. After you listen to this, let me know if you can think of any way to improve on this idea, or why it couldn’t be implemented in any region where there are growers willing to participate.
A big thanks to Haley for elucidating all of the details of Tidal Bay, and a big thanks to the Nova Scotian growers who have given us this incredible and successful example.
https://winesofnovascotia.ca/tidal-bay-nova-scotias-signature-wine/
https://www.centralaswine.com/
Sponsor:
https://www.catavinotours.com/owp
Support this podcast via Patreon:
Monday Feb 06, 2023
Monday Feb 06, 2023
Greg Jones is my guest for this episode. Greg is the CEO of Abacela winery in Oregon and is a world-renowned wine climatologist. For over thirty years his research has firmly linked weather and climate with grapevine growth, fruit chemistry, and wine characteristics in regions all around the globe. His work was also one of the first to tie climate change to fundamental biological phenomena in vines and the resulting influences on productivity and quality. His groundbreaking work has informed and influenced the wine industry across the globe, and we talk about what it means to apply the science of climate change to growing wine.
Oregon is unique in the wine world in that it is known to outsiders mostly for a single variety of grape – Pinot Noir. Abacela happens to be the first winery to plant Tempranillo in the pacific northwest, and Greg talks about how important it is to diversify and experiment, especially in response to the data of climate change. And he makes great points about the untapped genetic resources within just the single species of Vitis Vinifera.
You can see Greg’s presentation on Wine and climate change from the VitiNord coference at organicwinepodcast.com
https://www.climateofwine.com/
Sponsor:
https://www.catavinotours.com/owp
Support this podcast via Patreon:
Monday Jan 30, 2023
Monday Jan 30, 2023
My guest for this episode is Mike Appolo and he tells us all about how he is growing a no-spray vineyard in New Hampshire less than an hour from Boston.
Yes, I said “no spray.” You may have heard it’s impossible. You may smugly reject the possibility of success. But Mike is growing wine grapes in New England without sprays and has been for over a decade at his estate winery Appolo Vineyards. Appolo Vineyards was just this month named the New Hampshire’s First Winery in the Sustainable Craft Beverage Recognition Program. After listening to this interview I think you’ll agree that it’s a well deserved honor. Mike is growing winegrapes in a place where summers are hot and humid, winters can be brutal, and wild turkeys are one of the birds that regularly eat your grapes. It’s also a place of beautiful wines.
Listen closely to what Mike says, but also what’s behind what he says. There’s a something rock steady about Mike. He seems undaunted by the numerous challenges inherent in what he’s doing. I think this is guided in part by a humility and openness to learning, both from other vintners and from nature itself. Another part of this is valuing the legacy that he his building. It’s a legacy of valuing the health and life of his world over easy profit, and he’s showing that it’s not only possible, but delicious.
https://www.appolovineyards.com/
Sponsor:
https://www.catavinotours.com/owp
Support this podcast via Patreon:
Monday Jan 23, 2023
Monday Jan 23, 2023
My guests for this episode are Aaron and Holly Puhala, the owners of Vineyard Innovations in Ohio. Aaron & Holly met in school where they both studied chemical engineering… this chemical romance blossomed into a life where they breed new varieties of grapes that the world has never seen before. They’ve been at this for 20 years now, and have a handful of varieties to share with the world, as well as some really great ideas about how to make grape breeding a profitable venture for more people. But I want to let their own words, from their website, serve as the introduction to this conversation:
There is a quiet revolution happening in the world of wine. Growers everywhere are facing the realities of a changing climate and considering replacing their established wine grape varieties with others that are more suited to the challenges of modern viticulture. At the same time, consumers facing a sea of sameness are seeking out new and exciting wines crafted by artisans with a passionate focus on creating quality wines with authenticity of place. Perhaps never before has the table been set more perfectly for the emergence of new grape varieties that answer the needs and desires of both winegrower and consumer. At Vineyard Innovations we create new wine grape varieties having resistance to the extremes of climate and disease pressure that are perfectly suited to sustainable, organic and biodynamic viticultural practices. Exciting aroma and flavor combinations are paving the way for the emergence of iconic wines that will open the door to the exploration of new terroirs that today are unreachable!
Welcome to a New World of Wine!
https://www.vineyardinnovations.com/
Podcast website:
https://www.organicwinepodcast.com/
If you'd like to support this podcast, please subscribe on the Organic Wine Podcast Patreon page.
Thank you!
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