Basically with all the mildew problems, biodynamic and organic wineries do need to spray, or risk losing all the crop.
I wouldn’t exactly categorize this problem as horrific. Maybe unfortunate or disadvantageous.
The first time I met Jean Michel Comme, winemaker at Pontet Canet, and the force behind their Biodynamic regime, he told us about a vintage (I think it was the '06 or’07) where he was forced to spray for mildew. He lost the Biodynamic states, and a few years later, he remained incredibly emotional about it. And that was after he regained the biodynamic seal.
This was no easy decision for the owner, but for Jean Michel, it was a huge blow. The alternative is to lose a major portion of the crop, and Financially, there are many who cannot do that. I would call it pretty horrific.
If you were to buy crop insurance to protect from disaster, would the insurance company have a clause that requires you to take steps to protect your crops? I’m guessing the answer is yes.
Interesting question, but I suspect that you can tailor the policy to any way you want to do it. Premiums would be much higher if you insisted on practices which kept you to organic or biodynamic.
How are the “rules” different for organic vs. BD certification? I gather that spraying outside of the BD rules kicks you out of certification, and then you have to reestablish over some period of time? Is that also true for organic? Or do you just not get to label your product “organic” that year, but next year you can resume?
I’m going to agree with earlier comments that this fails to qualify as “horrific”. It’s a business ethics dilemma, for sure, and a difficult position for growers to be in; but to be blunt, I can’t get too worked up about it. I feel much worse about the problems they’ve had with frost and hail, which are out of their control. This they control.
I would defend horrific on the grounds of ethics versus the loss of an entire crop, and for some it will mean putting the winery at risk.
It is not “Sophie’s Choice” but I would put its on the “softer” side of horrific.
Hopefully someone else who has looked more closely at this can answer but what I know from second hand knowledge is that STANDARD crop insurance is for extreme natural events and not farming decisions. So it is useful for frost, hail, hurricane, etc. something where there is an easily identified environmental event that can be shown directly caused the damage. The conditions that lead to mildew would not be considered abnormal events.
Now if there is crop insurance that isn’t standard, that could be used to support specific farming practices I don’t know.
Alan, I don’t know how it works in Burgundy, but at least in California it apparently does take a few years to regain organic certification if you end up using methods that are not approved for organic farming to resolve a serious problem in the vineyard. I discussed this issue with one winemaker a few years ago who told me that it would probably take 4-5 years for a particular vineyard to be re-certified as organic.
This was how it was explained to me when I was in Burgundy this year with the added problem of it doesn’t even have to be your sprays that cause one to lose certification. The overspray and drift from the neighboring vines can be enough to lose certification. On the flip side, the farmer trying to stay organic and has a mildew problem puts his neighbors vines at risk. So as one winemaker stated, it’s why so many growers hate each other.
Since I place little value on any actual “certification”, and prefer to trust the grower to “do the right thing” - i.e., whatever he thinks is best for his vineyard, long term, I guess I find this all to be a bit of a manufactured crisis. If someone who makes his living growing grapes feels he needs to go to extreme lengths to save what he can, I really don’t have a problem with that.
In the States there are a bunch of OMRI listed products which can be used that do not affect certification.
Very well said.
I’m with Alan and the Lutte Raisonée approach.
+1 on this viewpoint.
We can all have our love of a way if farming but Mother Nature is the boss. We take a very minimalist approach to our vineyard management and focus on the least impactful methods of farming(green manuring, no til, no irrigation, choosing the least harmful and organic options for vineyard sprays) but when Mother Nature wields a big stick we do what we need/can to protect the harvest. That’s an obligation in my eyes. The fruit we work with is special and to lose of a dogmatic set of choices(no disrespect to biodynamics intended) is a failure on our part to farm correctly.
The article addresses (although not fully) a lot of the questions above…
dans la réglementation, l’utilisation d’une matière active de synthèse équivaut à un “manquement majeur” au cahier des charges - “in the regulation the use of an synthesised ingredient is the equivalent to a major deviation in the rule book of biodynamics”.
il lui faudra repartir en conversion pour trois ans à partir de 2017 - “He has to restart the process of conversion for three years staring in 2017”
beaucoup ne sont pas propriétaires de leur vigne mais en fermage, ce qui veut dire qu’ils doivent payer la location de leurs parcelles quoi qu’il arrive - “a lot of winemakers are not owners of the vines but they have a fermage contract, that is to say they must pay rent for their parcels regardless of what happens.”
My understanding (albeit the product of a very brief and relatively uninformed perspective) is that insurance covers natural events. Like all insurance policies any claim would trigger an investigation before the winemaker was awarded any reimbursement. Regardless of the outcome the current working capital of the winemaker would be at risk…as is evidenced in the quote from the article;
j’ai pris une décision de chef d’entreprise avec une exploitation de 20 hectares à faire tourner, six salaires à payer, les emprunts, les fermages - “I took the decision as the head of a business responsible for the operation of 20 hectares, six full time employees, bank loans and rent (of parcels) to pay”.
It is a terrible position to be in but not something any “CEO” isn’t familiar with after a few years of experience. “Vision” and convictions/philosophy are but at risk and ultimately something has to be compromised. In this case it is either the winemaker compromise his credibility as an employer, a bank client and a tenant of someone else’s land or he compromises his “label”. Choosing to preserve his label almost certainly curtails the sustainability of his business. The saying, “cutting off your nose to spite your face” comes to mind…
Time to send some Biodynamic! Brand mildew spray their way and problem solved.
Works best if used on a dark night before moonrise.
It was 2007. A few years later Alfred Tesseron told me that if they were in the same situation again, they wouldn’t have cracked.
Obviously their financial situation had changed - that’s very much not the case in the Côte de Beaune where many have sprayed for the first time in years - on the other hand, despite that, to make 10 barrels in 2016 instead of the ‘normal’ (what’s normal these days?) 100 barrels, i’m not sure if they have particularly benefited…
I completely agree, indeed, I wouldn’t categorise most of their efforts as extreme - they are much lower impact than the mandated (organic was wide spectrum!) insecticide that was used against flavesence dorée…