I wonder if we’ll ever know DRC’s choices in 2016?
Difficult to compare Tesseron to Dureuil-Janthial. Pontet Canet can absorb a negative year thanks to the shear size of Tesseron’s larger business (Cognac, California) whereas Dureuil-Janthial is (presumably) limited to the income of his domaine in Burgundy. It’s analogous to comparing one of the Big 5 accounting firms to your local family accountant. If the first one loses all of their clients in your city, big whoop, they have clients paying premium for their services all over the world. If the second one loses all of their clients in your city, their income dries up and they fail.
I’d say it’s a hyperbolic choice.
Would anyone here not buy a wine because it’s not labeled as ‘organic’ or ‘biodynamic’?
we could start a poll, but it’s the last thing I ever care about.
Exactly. That’s why most don’t bother with certification. It’s mostly marketing to a niche, anyway, and there’s still a major stigma on organic wine with the broader population of wine buyers. (ie. Undrinkable crap that some damn dirty hippies made.)
Exactly. Are the rules in Europe so different that they can’t use some of the same naturally derived products? We certainly have powdery mildew pressure here, which can be addressed with proper canopy management and a good organic spray strategy.
My French isn’t that great so I didn’t pick up that this is about Powder which doesn’t makes sense to me. When I was in Burgundy (and Chablis) this summer, I didn’t see any Powder, but I did see Downy in multiple vineyards, some cases were really bad. In my experience with my hobby vineyard in Maryland, Powder is easily controlled with organic sprays but Downy is not and even conventional sprays are not sufficient in all conditions.
The debate about organic vs biodynamic vs conventional viticulture often centers around labels but does not address the important issue of toxicity. A lot of people believe, mistakenly, that organic products are not treated with pesticides and that biodynamic have an added benefit of following some nature friendly protocol. Of course organic and biodynamic viticulture use pesticides, except that they prefer elemental products such as sulfur and copper. By the way arsenic, used as a pesticide is also elemental, even tough it could kill you. But what about toxicity? It is true that there are organic products to combat downy mildew. The most effective ones are copper based. Copper is a heavy metal and as such it is highly toxic to humans and to earthworms that are vital in creating free Nitrogen when they consume organic matter in the soil. That is the best way to fertilize a vineyard.
We choose not to be organic for that reason, as there are synthetic products that are far less toxic than copper. Organic viticulture is feasible if the area in which the vines are growing is not susceptible to downy mildew. But if that fungus exists it is foolish to use copper just to say the farm s organic.
Nice new title
Only speaking to what I know, so if DM is that much more difficult to control then we’re beyond my pay grade.
As to what Charles said, yes there’s a difference between what one might sensically think of as organic and how some bureaucracy or organization chooses to define it. That’s another reason to not bother to be certified. Stupid restrictions and harmful practices allowed. I brought copper sulphate into the old natural wine debates on here since it’s standard practice to use on “natural” wines in France, and it’s so harmful to soil health. It’s the antithesis of natural.
I brought copper sulphate into the old natural wine debates on here since it’s standard practice to use on “natural” wines in France, and it’s so harmful to soil health. It’s the antithesis of natural.
And it’s elemental so it never, never degrades. It only builds up levels over time, so those who say they only use a minimal amount are fooling themselves.