Green Dulwich – Try Biodynamic Wine

by Greville Havenhand, who is a member of The Dulwich Wine Society

Green Dulwich? Well, in reality, those who like to be green and healthy; buy organic food and watch their carbon footprint. Unless you buy English wine – which I seem to be promoting a lot at present – most wine has had quite a journey and therefore has not had a good effect on the environment, not to mention all the Carbon Dioxide that’s a by-product of fermentation and all the tractors and machinery used in manufacture. All that having been said, you also want a wine of quality and taste. That is why I am an enthusiast for biodynamically produced wine.

What then is biodynamic viticulture? It has been described as organics with mystical knobs on. Those who have been watching “Monty’s Vineyard” on Television will have got some idea. In the First World War Germany developed a vast chemical industry. After the war it seemed a good idea to use it to produce chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It soon became apparent to some farmers that not only was this expensive but the crops did not taste so good and the soil appeared to be deteriorating. Then along came Rudolf Steiner.

Rudolf Steiner was a philosopher, playwright, architect, educator and mystic. Born in what is now Slovenia in 1861 he grew up among peasants. He went to the Technical Institute in Vienna. Travelling there by train he got talking to a herb gatherer and through this began to formulate his ideas that science without the spirit did not have the answers. He changed universities, studied philosophy and founded the system known as Anthroposophy. He also founded “Weleda,” a company making pharmaceuticals from natural products – it still exists today.

In a lecture to German farmers he outlined his biodynamic theories. Sowing, pruning, harvesting and all the other activities should be done in conjunction with the phases of the moon and planetary alignments. This is where you begin to be sceptical. The moon, well perhaps, one can measure the tidal effects of the moon in something as small as a cup of coffee, but the planets! This is not new. In 8,000 BC the Greek poet Hesiod wrote that wine should be made according to a sign from the sky:

Where Orion and the Dog Star move
Into the mid sky and Arcturus sees
The rosy fingered dawn”

(Arcturus was a bright star in the constellation Boötes.)

So far so barmy, but there is more. Part of the process involves the filling of cow horns with manure, burying them in the ground for a year, and then adding the resulting manure to de-ionised water, spinning it in a centrifuge and then spraying the crops with homeopathic dilutions of the liquid at the appropriate planetary time. (There is a calendar with root, leaf, flower and fruit days). Horn silicon is treated in a similar fashion. Plants such as Nettle, Dandelion, Horsetail and Valerian are used both as sprays and in composts. Special composts are central to this method of agriculture and they work. An American experiment showed that earthworms will migrate from conventional compost to bio-dynamic.

Steiner’s system was adopted by farmers, horticulturalists and then by winemakers.
No pesticides or herbicides are used. As far as possible tractors are not used and only natural yeasts are employed. Every stage of wine making is, where possible done in accordance with the biodynamic calendar. The wine industry took notice when a French soil scientist, Claude Bourgignonne, found that the soil in some of the Burgundy vineyards had less micro-bacterial activity than the Sahara desert. A wine revolution began.

Some of the great names in wine are now bio-dynamic. In Burgundy part of the great Domaine de Romanée-Conti has gone that way, as have Momaine Leroy and Domaine Leflaive. When one considers that wines from these domains sell for many hundreds of pounds a bottle perhaps there is something in it. In the Rhone the great houses of Gaston Huët and Coulée-de Serrant lead the way biodynamically. Equally well known is Chapoutier in the Rhone and elsewhere. Alsace is awash with biodynamic producers – Zind-Humbrecht, Josmeyer, Frick and many others. In New Zealand Millton Vineyards are pioneers, along with Felton Road and Serresin. There are a good many in Australia. My favourites are the wines from Vanya Cullens estate in Western Australia.

One small producer I particularly admire is the Montirius Domaine in the southern Rhone. Christine and Eric Saurel started it out of concern for their neighbours and when they found that homeopathy had treated their daughter’s illness far more effectively than conventional drugs. It was them that pointed out to me the microscopic cross sections of grapes showing that biodynamic grapes have a different cell structure than even organically grown ones.

The proof of the wine, though, is in the tasting. I have tasted many and presented many at tutored wine tastings. They almost all have a purity of taste and a refinement not easily found elsewhere. Some High Street merchants stock a few. “Green and Blue” in Lordship Lane is a good source. Specialists are “Vintage Roots” and “Vinceremos.”

Read Monty Waldin’s excellent book “Biodynamic Wines.”

Photo of Grapes: Thanks to Cooking up a Story on Flickr.com (CCL)