Ever feel overwhelmed by all the talk of natural, organic, or Biodynamic? You are not alone! It can be very confusing.

As you wander the aisles at your local market and now even in clothing stores, more and more emphasis is being placed on these terms…But what do they mean and what’s the difference? Well, in some cases, there are actually government regulations and standards that decide if an item can be called one thing or the other. We’ll try to explain below…

100% Organic foods and beverages carry the U.S. Department of  Agriculture (USDA) organic seal (the certifying agency must be listed). In the case of wine, it indicates the wine is made from 100% organically grown ingredients and has been monitored throughout its entire production process. Wine can contain only  naturally occurring sulfites (or sulfur dioxide, an antimicrobial substance) in  less than 100 parts per million (ppm).

Organic foods and beverages also carry the USDA organic seal. In wine, it indicates the wine contains 95% organically grown ingredients (the other 5% need not be organic). Likewise,  the certifying agency must be listed and the wine  has the same sulfite requirements as 100% organic.

Wine Made from Organic Grapes or Made with Organic Ingredients means the wine contains a minimum of 70% organic ingredients.  It can have artificial sulfites added, but it may not contain more than 100 ppm.  These bottles will not carry the USDA organic seal.

Biodynamic  is based on the precise practice and observation to create balance in nature, a concept originated by Rudolf Steiner. So, biodynamic wine is not only 100%  organic, in addition, the grower has gone beyond to try to bring the farming  process more closely in tune with nature. For instance, biodynamic wine growers may make their own compost and/or  watch the stars and planets to time what they do. In the US, Demeter certifies farms, wineries, and wines as Biodynamic.

For wines lovers, there is good news! Great tasting organic wines are becoming widely available in United States.

In Biodynamics, Certifications, Jeff's Blog | Tagged with biodynamic, organic

Starting November 1st we’ll be launching a fun, tasty, educational, wine buying club that features one ConsciousWinery per month. What’s special about a ConsciousWinery? They follow ConsciousWine’s 4 Principles: 100% organically grown grapes, sustainably (or holistically farmed), creating vital products that rock! All wineries on consciouswine.com have been ‘vetted’ in person to meet these principles. Our focus on the website and in CW’s Winery of the Month Club will be primarily wines & wineries from the West Coast of the United States.

What’s special about CW’s Winery of the Month Club?

Lots! Club Members receive a Winery of the Month 2-bottle pack either monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly. You choose how often you want to receive a pack at time of sign up. You can change this at any time. The pack ranges in price from $50-$70 plus shipping, handling & taxes (where applicable). Shortly after each month’s packs are shipped, Club Members receive an e-mail which includes 3 main features:

1. The date, time and link to attend a Club Member Only Webinar where Jeff Weissler (aka The ConsciousWineGuy) will taste the 2 wines in the pack, introduce the ‘Winery of the Month’, share wine & food pairing ideas, take questions, and probably embarrass himself a little. The webinar will be 30 minutes in length. You can taste along at home or just gather some ideas for when you do enjoy the wines. A separate e-mail will be sent to all Club Members on the details of being part of the on-line event. If you don’t attend the actual event, it will live on YouTube & ConsciousWine’s Facebook Page.

2. A list of all the wines presently available from ConsciousWine’s Winery of the Month. If you choose to place an additional order (12 bottle minimum with mix & match allowed) within the calendar month that the winery is highlighted, you will receive a special 20% discount off the normal retail prices!!!

3. A short introduction to CW’s Winery of the Month, and links to both information on the winery & the wines in the club shipment.

 Additional Club Member Features & Benefits:

1. The Menu & The Wine List Video Series–6 videos created to help you with pairing wine & food while dining out.

2. Discounts on all ConsciousWine Dinner’s, Events & Tours!

3. You’ll be entered in a monthly drawing for a 1 hour consultation with Jeff Weissler (aka The ConsciousWineGuy) on anything wine.

4. If you’re traveling to West Coast Wine Country you can call for a 1 hour consultation (FREE only as a Club Member) to help make your trip rock! Tell us what you like in wine & we’ll tell you where to go. You’ll have a hand tailored itinerary based on ConsciousWine’s commitment to supporting vital choices to both palate & planet. Normal rate for this service is $75/hr.

How do you sign up for CW’s Winery of the Month Club?

The sign-up on the website will be available the end of the 1st week in October.

For now, you can comment on this post, drop us a note at info@consciouswine.com or call 541-531-7653 and we’ll get you hooked up!

Totally excited to be getting this together & looking forward to sharing these amazing wines with you.

Cheerio!

Jeff & The ConsciousWine-ers

In Basic Wine Enjoyment, Jeff's Blog, Tasting Wine, The Shop, Uncategorized, Wineries | Tagged with california, education, oregon, organic, sustainability, the 4 principles

What keeps a farm strong and healthy? What practices does that imply? Can sustainable farming and rockin’ wine come out of the same bottle?

On Earth Day 2011 ConsciousWine officially launched with a new website. Our blog and video-tastic experience covered four areas: basic wine enjoyment, demystifying natural wine, pairing up wine and food, and sustainable practices. We vetted 50 US wineries (mostly Oregon and California) for following our four principles: 100% organically grown grapes, sustainably farmed, creating vital products that taste great. Our goal is supporting the consumer in making wine choices both yummy for the palate and vital for our planet.

Trendy buzz words like natural, green, sustainable, organic and biodynamic® were getting thrown around without clarity of meaning. An early ConsciousWine blog post called The Green Wine Confusion Helper was our first attempt at help for figuring out what meant what. I’m compelled to think that whether or not one looks for natural, sustainable, organic or biodynamic products, most of us do have a real and honest desire to leave behind a better world for our kids and their kids.

Digging a little deeper, here’s some thoughts on the terms sustainable, organic and biodynamic.

• Biodynamics in particular has an interesting rap. Katherine Cole’s (wine writer for both The Oregonian and MIX Magazine) book, Voodoo Vintners, does a great job of telling the stories of people, places and practices in Oregon committed to a combo of biodynamic farming and making wines worth discovering. Monty Waldin’s (Decanter Magazine and vigneron) book, Biodynamic Wines, was the first book that inspired me on the topic. It affirmed that many of the wines I adored (as a life long wine lover) had this holistic farming practice at their core.

• Many articles, the media’s perspective and conversations on biodynamics tend to focus on the preparations (think homeopathy with a twist), cow horns, voodoo, magic, and esoteric aspects hard to grasp.

• Biodynamic farming seemed to me to be steeped in deeply rooted common sense which was often left out of the conversation (more on that to come below).

• Have you seen the refrigerator magnet or heard the line: “Organic food, or what our grandparents used to call food”?  A hundred years ago, organic farming was the norm. Post WWI, many left over poisons used in the war continued in the forms of agricultural products. Is this really a good idea? Does synthetic chemical use on the farm (today called conventional farming) really support the vitality of the land being farmed for our kids’ kids and beyond? Are the present use of terms (and their branding) telling us what’s important to know to help us make conscious choices?

• One of my favorite descriptions of sustainability came from Ivo Jeramaz at Grgich Hills Winery in Napa, CA. In 2010, over half a million acres in California were quarantined for a pest problem called the European Grapevine Moth. Everyone was told they had to spray, and Europe’s answer to this problem the year before (a pheromone) was slow to be approved by the FDA. Grgich Hills used the larvae of a predatory wasp to take care of the problem. 366 acres of biodynamically farmed vineyards were saved from damage. When I asked Ivo about their approach he described their commitment to the health of the whole system and coming up with a natural answer. “If it’s a biological problem, there’s a biological answer. To look for an answer outside of that box is not a sustainable approach”.

My personal inquiry into this world deepened in 2005. I discovered sustainable farming and rockin’ wine often come out of the same bottle. Over time I became more comfortable saying it is indeed a common practice in Oregon and in multiple parts of California.

Here’s some personal observations from this journey on what keeps a farm strong and healthy:

• Diversity on the farm and a strong immune system go hand and hand.

• Through observation the farmer discovers the assets of their farm, and as a result builds a growing, evolving, living relationship with their farm. The depth of that relationship supports the on-going health of that farm.

• The farmer/farm relationship is what can allow the farmer to not put round pegs in square holes when making choices. This supports a set of dominos which keep the farm’s immune system strong. The easier things fit together, the less stress on the system, the more naturally the whole system works.

• When you take, you have to give back. That’s what makes any relationship work well and sustainably. If you take the natural vitality out of the soil (because it’s been absorbed by the products harvested), then that vitality needs to be given back. Indigenous cover crops and compost (created ideally from materials on the farm) are a couple of ways to accomplish this.

• Synthetic chemicals used in farming can help in the short term, but appear to come with side affects including nutrient and diversity depletion. Think of taking medicine for an ailment and how it affects your system especially if you take them long term. How do you support your overall health, and what might you do to balance or counteract the side effects of taking medicine both short and long term.

• Agriculture doesn’t exist in nature. It’s roots go back approximately 10,000 years. When a farmer takes away the natural diversity that was on that land pre-agriculture, a lot of conscious work’s required to reinvigorate the soil and the environment with diversity and vitality. Here’s a crazy idea: what animals were on that land pre-agriculture and what could a farmer do so those same animals were attracted to that environment today?

• Farm as if it was 1850. Huh? Use what’s on the farm to farm and to support the farm.  Think of it like a closed loop system. If you want to build a house or wall, where does the wood and stone come from? The idea is to create a closed loop system where the nutrients and resources needed to nourish that system come from within that system.

A commitment to move in these directions can lead to sustainability defined as:

• leaving the land healthier than it was before farming

• passing a healthier place on to our kids and their kids

• minimizing the pull of resources from outside the farm

Specific practices include animals on the farm, biodiversity, biodynamic® farming, energy conversation, family farming, good worker policies, natural winemaking, packaging conservation, polyculture and water conservation.

Big cheers to the wineries walking the talk while putting in the bottle wines that rock! Lucky for those of us here in Oregon this trend is becoming more the norm and less of an exception.

In Biodynamics, Digging Deeper, Jeff's Blog, Sustainable Practices | Tagged with biodynamic, oregon, organic, sustainability

100% organically grown grapes is  the 1st Principle of ConsciousWine. What the farmer does and doesn’t do in the vineyard is where ConsciousWine begins its vetting process. The legal term “Made from Organically Grown Grapes” means that only National Organic Program (NOP) approved products are allowed to be used in the vineyards. Continue reading “Organically Grown Grapes” »

In Basic Wine Enjoyment, Digging Deeper, Jeff's Blog, Storytelling | Tagged with education, kymberli colbourne, organic, the 4 principles

I need a massage.  I have a few rows of Merlot and Cabernet Franc in a hobby vineyard in Southern Oregon that I “manage” and coax into wine.   Each year I try to develop more skills and spend more time with the vines.  While this growing season had me Continue reading “Green Farmer” »

In Guest Bloggers, Jeff's Blog, Sustainable Practices | Tagged with Beverly McKenzie, education, organic, sustainability

Do you speak Italian? I can’t say I do, but I have a big thank you to make to an Italian gentleman, Duccio Morozzo della Rocca (Managing Director of The Olive Bureau). Duccio is also a journalist and writes for a wine review publication called, “Vite, Vino e Qualità”. The article linked below appears in their September Issue. Continue reading “ConsciousWine on “Vite, Vino e Qualità”” »

In Interviews, Jeff's Blog, World | Tagged with articles, Italy, media, organic, Travel

Scinagro! What’s that? That’s Organics spelled backwards. I got so fed up with the present definition for organic wine that I threw myself into a mission: reframing organic wine as a positive in the fine wine lovers mind. Continue reading “Organic Wine” »

In Demystifying Natural Wine, Jeff's Blog, Storytelling, Sustainable Practices, Tasting Wine, Wineries | Tagged with natural wine, oregon, organic, organic wine, tasting notes, Vitality

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away I was attending my very first wine basics class in New York City. The teacher was Rory Callahan, who later became part of the original team that opened NY’s International Wine Center. Rory’s spark, knowledge, and style was a contagious combo. It was a month long series and his four basic points of what affects quality (in regard to wine) still live with me today. They are:

• Grape Type
• Soil
• Weather
• Winemaking Continue reading “Wine Basics: What Affects Quality” »

In Basic Wine Enjoyment, Jeff's Blog | Tagged with organic, winemaking

Terry Sullivan owns one of only two certified organic vineyards in Southern Oregon, Upper 5 Vineyard. The other certified organic vineyard is Cowhorn, which we will get to shortly. Upper 5 was established in 2003, certified organic in 2005, and is located outside the secret hideaway of Talent, Oregon, one mile up beautiful Wagner Creek Road. This high elevation site, 1900 feet up, makes for a uniquely intriguing home for Sauvignon Blanc. Continue reading “2010 Sullivan/Steele Sauvignon Blanc: Collaboration & Celebration” »

In Certifications, Jeff's Blog, Tasting Wine, Wineries | Tagged with biodynamic, Demeter, organic

Agriculture is not natural to start with. We need it, our communities need it, and our world needs it. There are many different ways to do it. Different forms of agriculture include monoculture, polyculture and permaculture. Farming practices include conventional, organic and Biodynamic®.

Industrial and large-scale agriculture most often show up as monoculture (one crop fills all the cleared land). Can that kind of cutting away, and putting in a monoculture, be a good thing? Does the story start to change when some biodiversity is part of, or is added to a one-crop farm? What about when there’s a monoculture next to monoculture, and so on? Who and what exactly are supported by that set of dominos? Continue reading “An Agricultural Perspective” »

In Biodynamics, Glossary, Jeff's Blog, Storytelling, Sustainable Practices | Tagged with organic, Vitality