Good Grape Wine Company

February 12 2007

The Taste of Terroir – An attempt to make sense of Biodynamics Pt. I

The Law of Attraction says that you attract to your life a manifestation of what your thoughts are;  your latent dominant thoughts will find a way to become manifest reality.  That’s definitely true as one of my New Year’s resolutions was to learn more about Biodynamics.  Not two short weeks after I write that down and I find myself meeting up with a couple of guys that own a Chicago based distributor (profiled at this link on Good Grape) and they have a keen interest in Biodynamic wines.

Damien Casten, one of the co-founders, a student of wine with a subtle wit, has also written a fantastic primer on BioD that I’m going to share here in three parts.  It’s an accessible read and gives a nice overview into the world of biodynamics, including it’s origin. 

Damien is the President and Co-Founder of Candid Wines, a wine distribution and event company in Illinois that specializes in small production organic, sustainable and biodynamic wines from around the world.  Damien was bitten by the wine bug at Taillevent while living in Paris as a twenty-two year old.  At a meal where every bite was fantastic, a 1985 Hermitage La Chapelle paired with venison was out of this world.  That was a happy moment.
 
It took another few years for him to abandon the corporate world and go to cooking school, but the memory of that three star meal was strong.  After attending the New England Culinary Institute he went back to France and worked for two years in kitchens including the Michelin three starred Lucas Carton.  In his spare time he traded labor for wine and knowledge at one of Paris’ most remarkable wine shops and cooked with friends.  Today, Candid Wines is in its second year of operation and is proud to count among its clients and producers some of the world’s greatest wine-makers and chefs. 

Making Sense of Biodynamics

Two unidentified wines.  One is the color of pale straw with a tinge of green.  It is crisp and flinty with good acidity, a touch of petrol and great length.  It would be terrific with hot and spicy Thai food.  I suspect its German Riesling.  The second is the color of honey suggesting roundness and a creamy texture.  It has lower acidity and a floral, peach-like nose.  It smells and tastes like soft, pretty viognier from the northern Rhone.  This would go beautifully with roasted apricot, goat cheese, thyme and honey.  A bit of sea salt on the apricot and happy times are ahead.  Do I sound confident?  I was.  Unfortunately, tasting wine blind is like playing golf; every once and a while you nail one and for a moment you think “I’m can play this game”.  And then you shoot 105. 

Both wines are Alsatian rielsings.  They were made by the same producer using grapes from the same vineyard that are treated identically from vine to bottle.  How then can they be so different?  The answer is terroir.  The producer, Jean Schaetzel of Domaine Martin Schaetzel in Alsace, is obsessed with capturing the essence of the time and place in which his wines grow.  He wants you to taste the influence of the local ecosystem on each of his wines.  He wants your mouth and nose to tell you that Riesling grown on granite soil in the Kaefferkopf vineyard tastes flinty and crisp while Riesling grown on limestone is honeyed and round.  In this quest, Jean has, through his own trials, come to embrace much of the ‘super-organic’ method of farming called Biodynamics, even when he can not explain why it is effective.  The method has many critics who question its scientific foundation.  It also has a growing number of adherents, including some of the most renowned winegrowers in the world. 

Organics and Biodynamics – A Shared Philosophy

Grape growers the world over who have adopted organic and biodynamic farming methods share a set of common beliefs.  They seek sustainable methods that produce the highest quality grapes while inflicting the least possible harm on local and global environment.  Non-organic pesticides are out.  In are native grasses that protect topsoil and provide homes for beneficial insects that eat pests.  Excessive treatment of the vines is replaced by the use of compost, made from decomposed organic matter, and a belief that healthy, vibrant soil full of insects, worms and bacteria is the best defense available.  These are folks who are trying to leave the campsite cleaner than it was when they found it.
While they share a basic set of beliefs, proponents of biodynamics claim their methods go several steps farther:  Organic agriculture rightly wants to halt the devastation caused by humans; however, organic agriculture has no cure for the ailing Earth…Biodynamics is a science of life-forces, a recognition of the basic principles at work in nature, and an approach to agriculture which takes these principles into account to bring about balance and healing.

Biodynamics was born in Europe in response to the environmental damage associated with the introduction of chemical pesticides and heavy machinery in the early twentieth century.  New techniques increased potential output but some farms suffered from inconsistency.  In the 1920’s a group of German growers sought the advice of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian doctor, poet and philosopher who wanted to reconnect the physical and spiritual worlds that he felt were being separated by new technology.  His response was biodynamics, a method of farming built on three main principals; self-sustainability through biodiversity on farms, the use of “preparations” added to compost to restore health and vigor to soils, and the interconnectedness of terrestrial and cosmic energies. 

When pushed to the extreme, this philosophy implies complete self-sustainability with every need of the farm being met by products from the farm itself.  Furthermore, the most stringent form of biodynamics espouses a connection between the energy of the plant and the energy coming from the farthest reaches of the cosmos.  The timing of planting, harvesting, pruning, spraying and even bottling is dictated not just by the phases of the moon but by astrological calendars and perceived cosmic influences.
 
Pt. II will be posted tomorrow and focuses on concentrated areas of biodynamic practice and thought-leadership

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