BioD is a good story. And like most good stories there probably is a little truth in it. With quite a bit of fiction. Also some good and some bad. Far too often the wines are strange, not interesting or just bad. Sometimes all three. So I guess the answer to the question is, yes occasionally. But usually not. It sure is used to sell wine that would otherwise not have a chance at being sold.
Iām almost positive there is a difference. I taste Palmer and Pontet Canet often. Latour less often, but on occasion and yearly at the property. I know those wines.
Perhaps 2-3 years I began asking myself the same question during my barrel tastings. I grow more convinced of it each year.
There is a difference in texture in all 3 wines. They are softer, gentler and more elegant. There is more grace in the wines. The fruit is clearly cleaner with a marked sense of purity that was not there previously.
The soils are different now as well. There is real life in the soils. There is more organic matter taking place. Put your hands in the soil and check it out! This year, I noticed the vineyards have taken on a cleaner more aromatic sensation.
These are simply my observations. But Iām thinking there is a difference in the environment that is having an impact in the wines.
Look at the tasting notes of 2018 Palmer and 2018 Pontet Canet. I think other tasters are starting to sense it as well. Although they are not sure why.
Organic is quite possibly a red herring here. For tomatoes the big difference is moving away from the factory farm seeds, cross bred for uniformity of size and color and durability for transport. Plus picking practices moving away from picking super green thousands of miles away to picking closer to ripeness at a closer by farm.
Off season tomatoes are still just as pithy and bland as they ever were. Organic or not.
Your analogy makes little sense, as nobody is picking grapes off season.
Biodynamics is hijacked Ayurvedic farming tradition. It is meant for farms with crop rotations and cattle to improve the soil condition to make a closed loop. Thatās it.
It was never intended for use in a monoculture, but this is where the highest profit margins in agriculture are to be found (it seems as viticulture is monoculture).
All the good that can be done biodynamically can be done organically, but it has less marketing punching power.
Personally I donāt care how people come to farm in a green, sustainable manner. So long as they get there.
Your post, Jeff, it reminds me of when I visited Bertrand Gautherot of VOUETTE et SORBEE last year. Heās firecely biodynamic and will give a passioned narrative about industrial farming. When we walked his plot above his house and the village of Buxierers Sur Arce, he did a soil comparison for me between his rows (bio) and that of his family members rows (industrial). A few photos below give visual to this comparison. What I do remember vividly are two things: the industrial farmed soil looked dead, had no rich or vivid smell to it, was gummy and looked spent/dead. His soil was beautiful, full of a rich, vibrant smell, was fluffy, it reflected to me a natural life and energy. There was for me using my senses a very distinct difference.
As I said in my earlier post, the answer to Markās question remains subjective, as much as point scores on wines. But, I will agree with you strongly and logically have to posit: wouldnāt the soil farmed by and cared for by Bertrand create something better, and perhaps taste better? For me, I have to think so.
PSāclick on the photos to make them larger.
Scott does make a good point, that just one thing is rarely changed.Usually itās a bunch of things,like heirloom varieties of tomatoes, lower yield and more TLC.
When I was a kid we grew raspberries, tomatoes, strawberries, corn, pears, apples,cherries, squash etcā¦and they were all pretty much wonderful. The raspberries were unbelievable ā¦and free!! My father worshipped DDT and malathione. Nothing organic around our house!
People who farm grapes organically usually make their wine differently too, so unless somebody does a controlled experiment we are never going to have an answer.
A great thread indeed - and one that is certain to create sides. There is no doubt that it is ābeneficialā to spend more time in the vineyard tending to the vines - it is ābetterā for the vines and most likely for the soil.
That said, does that process lead to ābetter tastingā wines? To me, the jury is still out. As someone pondered above, why donāt wineries do true A/B comparisons to taste the hypothesis? The main reason - they are convinced they are ādoing the right thingā. Tough to argue with - but tough to come to objective conclusions.
I think one other huge point here is the differentiation between sustainably farmed, organically farmed, biodynamically farmed vineyards. There are a huge number of vineyards out there, including larger ones, that are farming āsustainablyā and NOT using crazy chemicals to fight back insects, etc. In fact, many are using some of the same stuff that certified organic vineyards are doing. They are simply choosing not to be labeled ācertifiedā.
Itās amazing how the lined get drawn oftentimes - āindustrialā versus organize or biodynamic; āindustrialā yeast vs native yeast . . . Many things that are being painted as ābadā or āharmfulā or ānot naturalā are simply being labeled incorrectly IMHO. But YMMV . . .
Cheers.
Thank you all for an incredibly interesting discussion, especially the input from the winemakers.
I would love to see side by side experimentation, but because of the way certification is handled, I am pretty sure you cannot have biodynamically farmed vines next door to those that arenāt. You can do the experiments with non certified but still biodynamic vineyards, but it will be pointed out correctly that it is incredibly hard to keep spraying etc without it tainting the non sprayed vines.
To Jeffās point about Palmer and Pontet Canet, and Latour for that matter, I really donāt see massive or even subtle changes to the wines apart from Pontet Canet. It is obviously is making much better wines since the arrival of Jean Michel Comme, but with that amount of investment and care, and the relatively low level it started at, I would expect to see improvement.
I have followed Palmer since I first became interested in wine in the 1980s, and done more verticals with this chateau than any other. While I note a slightly more plushy wine, it has been a hallmark of the chateau ever since Thomas Duroux started working there. I would also add that given climate change and new definitions of physiological ripeness, most chateaux seem a little more plush.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, yes. Itās the horns
My first conversation with Nicholas Joli was long and interesting, finally ending when he decided to plant a menhir to focus the magnetic lines. It felt like an Asterix cartoon. Although a lot of it makes sense, it can get a little weird.
The Santa Cruz Mountains has a lot of powdery mildew pressure. Pretty much all the big players (including the vineyard managers who tend or consult with most of the small growers) are organic now. They manage it quite well. The only significant problems Iāve heard about were amateurs (who werenāt organic) quite a while ago. It only takes once to learn. Then they either pay to have it tended properly or rip it out. We have an excellent viticultural association thatās very helpful to the growers. The spray regimes are very sophisticated. Very few are dumb enough to go for certification, since this is PM central and you may need to break the rules a couple times a decade.
France has downy mildew, which is much more difficult to control. Thatās why itās claimed that copper sulfate is needed there, while it certainly isnāt here. I donāt know how true that claim is, but it sure has been a belief, even amongst the most virulent ānaturalā wine producers. Some have been moving away from it, but I donāt have a good picture. I doubt itās necessary to use regularly, but also think keeping it available as a last resort is advisable.
Off topic, or maybe not. A coincidence.
Cooked three pork chops last night for me, Sally and son Matt. It was an experiment I thought of before I saw this thread.
One chop from a local organic farmer doing heritage pork.
One chop from Vegetable Corner (more a butcher shop, despite the name). Ray sources from a mid-sized farm in upstate New York, not organic, not free-range, but humane, pigs raised with space for some roaming.
One chop from the supermarket. Think industrial Iowa.
Each chop a thick one-pounder. I cut them up after cooking, put one piece of each on each plate. Sally and Matt single blind, I knew which was which.
Differences smaller than I expected, but votes unanimous and clear: Local heritage best, New York second, industrial last.
Letās not go crazy here, or go militant, or go intolerant or go self-destructive. Wes Bartonās comment makes perfect sense. The French term, which I do not believe has any legal status, is āLutte Raisoneeā, or āreasonable fightā. Be as natural as possible, but donāt lose your harvest or kill your vines for Political Correctness. I work with a good handful of French growers who are organic, but are not certified, as the paperwork, cost and oversight are simply not worth it, or are actually unaffordable.
Dan Kravitz
Jeff and Frank are absolutely right - great photos, Frank!
This video was made four years ago but there are still soils which look like this in champagne:
The number of articles in the French press about the use of chemicals has increased and a French government report in April last year showed the link between sprays used on vineyards and Parkinsonās disease. Bordeaux is one of the worst offenders. The good news is that the use of chemicals is diminishing and many are now banned. The bad news is that huge numbers of bottles from older vintages are obviously full of chemical residues. Basically, it would seem to be common sense to avoid wines from āmiracleā vintages which in the past would have been failures, but until a pro has the guts to actually do a chemical analysis of them weāll never know.
To go back to Markās original question about taste - well, itās almost impossible to avoid BS since the same product hasnāt been made with and without chemicals, but common sense would dictate that better soils produce better wines.
There is a tendency here to talk about biodynamics as if it were synonymous with organic farming, which it is not. If you are biodynamic, you are also organic, but you are also engaged in mumbo jumbo, though no doubt mumbo jumbo some people fervently believe in. It is noted above that biodynamics frequently entails more attention to oneās vineyard conditions, but this is not a necessary consequence of it nor does not being biodynamic entail not paying close attention to oneās vineyard conditions.
Most people buy organic food for health and environmental reasons, I expect, but many do think the food tastes fresher and more intense. Grapes are food too and one might expect the same difference or lack of it in taste resulting from organic farming.
Just returned from Paris and did quite a bit of cruising the neighborhoods for interesting wine bars. I was surprised by how many are promoting there lists of bio and nature (organic) wines.
I think much of the same is happening here in London.
Jonathan is right about the confusion - I do it the whole time myself. I have no clear idea what the biodynamic doctrine is all about, except that it involves someone called Dr Steiner.
Philip - yes, in Paris theyāre all over the place. Organic, natural or biodynamic wines now account for over 25% of sales of the auction site I use. In the country as a whole, however, itās much less - around 4%.
I have serious doubts that burying a cow horn full of shit in the vineyard has anything to do with quality. Likewise, dancing naked at midnight around the Maypole on the Spring Solstice. The best justification for biodynamics I have heard was from Charles Massoud at Paumanok, who did not farm that way. He said, paraphrasing, biodynamics takes extra work. Anyone who cares enough about their vineyard to put in the extra work to do what they believe is a good job, be it biodynamics or building owl houses in the vineyard to keep out pests, has a big leg up on people who take the easy way out.
Jeff, thank you for your post and for your writings on Ch. Latour I quote below.
āCurrently, Chateau Latour is experimenting with biodynamic farming techniques and sustainable farming in some of their plots. In fact, the number of hectares bio dynamically farmed has been steadily increased over the past few years.
As of 2013, 24 hectares were being farmed using biodynamic techniques while 7 hectares are organically farmed. Starting in 2008, Chateau Latour began using horses to churn the soils in select parcels of vines. Currently 7 horses are used to work the Enclos vineyard. Sustainable farming is stressed at Chateau Latour.
In fact, to traverse the vineyards, workers often use mountain bikes, to avoid polluting the soils. Starting with the 2015 vintage, the entire Enclos vineyard is farmed using 100% organic techniques and 50% of the vines are being farmed using biodynamic techniques.ā
As of this year, Ch Latour is certified organic. Letās see if they stop expanding biodynamic percentageā¦
I believe Latourās 2013 purchase of Araujo which was certified biodynamic in 2002 is an indicator of what they believe and where they are headed. Check out the Araujo tasting notes on Cellar Tracker since 2001.
Please check out Ch. Latour tastings notes on Cellar Tracker since instituting biodynamic practices.
I think this minimal research may be a partial answer to the OPās question, yes!
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