Organic Wines - A Modest proposal

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ORGANIC WINES - A MODEST PROPOSAL

by Sandra Hainle

I was fortunate enough to attend a Knives and Forks event in Toronto in February, 1996, which provided an opportunity to meet many like-minded Ontario colleagues who share my interest in lowimpact, ethical, environmentally sustainable food and beverage production. It was with some surprise, then, that during a question period I found myself explaining that a winery which is purchasing organically grown grapes may not necessarily be making organic wine. The integrity of pure, natural ingredients can be either preserved or compromised by the processes and materials used. Therefore, let me begin by stating a few very basic facts:

1) A truly organic wine is made from certified organic fruit (and this could be any fruit, frankly, but grapes are the norm) which is processed according to strict organic guidelines. Winemaking which does not adhere to organic processing standards may produce a lovely wine made from organic fruit, but it is not an organic wine.

2) Organic wines, like all other works of art, are subjectively assessed and evaluated. They may or may not be "better" wines than those made using conventional methods. However, they are wines whose provenanœ can be traced from the vineyard to the bottle, and for those imbibers who need or want to know this origin, a certified organic status provides a level of assurance not normally available.

3) The decision about whether or not to seek out organic wines (which, by the way, are rare in Canada; to our knowledge, we are the only winery in the country producing certified organic wines) is frequently motivated by allergies or sensitivities to additives and preservatives. This is a serious matter for many consumers. However, I would encourage all wine drinkers to think beyond the risk of an adverse reaction to what's in the bottle. Think about the agricultural and processing practices used to create the product, too. You may even want, as an ultimate expression of Sensitive New Age consumer awareness, to think about the business, marketing and advertising ethics of the producer. Is this an artisanal, handcrafted wine created by someone who can explain it to you in detail, or is it a mass-produced, slickly marketed product targeted at consumers who make their purchasing decisions based on price alone? The same questions you ask about the food you eat apply to the wine you drink; after all, wine is properly regarded as food, not as a dangerous and controlled substance.

I was once confronted by a cynic at a wine tasting who bluntly asked, "Well, aren't all wines organic, really? You've got some grapes and some yeast and that's all there is to it. What's the big deal?" It would have taken more time and patience than I possessed to explain that modern winemaking involves far more than Nature originally contemplated when she tossed off the fermentation trick. This leads me to another basic fact:

4) Organic winemaking guidelines contain important restrictions about the substances used in the winemaking process. However, the most important part of organic winemaking is the part that's not there. The key, the guidelines stress, is minimal processing. Don't do anything that is not essential. It's lowtech, low-impact winemaking, and it's a perfect match with sensitive, low-impact grapegrowing.

The low-tech approach used in organic winemaking makes for a pretty short discussion with the wine nerds in the crowd, because the glamor of expensive machinery and elaborate tech nical data is replaced with a sensory, minimalist approach. It's one of the reasons we don't do tours at our winery. There's nothing to see, really, except a quiet row of tanks, some basic filtering and bottling equipment which is dismantled when it's not in use, and a gravity-fed crushing station which is covered with plastic except during harvest. The fruit comes in, it's destemmed and crushed (or macerated, whole berry, depending on variety), and the juice goes into a stainless steel tank with a carefully selected yeast culture. It ferments at its own temperature (if the tank is getting too hot we'll run a cold-water hose over it) until the wine is fully dry (most of our wines also undergo a malolactic fermentation with a culture residing as a free spirit in our cellar) and then it rests. That's about it, probably for about seven months or so until the winemaker (my husband, Tilman) decides that it's time to rack the wine off the lees (the yeast sediment), add a bit of pure sulphur gas to protect aroma and color (organic standards dictate that free sulphites may not exceed 30 parts per million) and filter it through compostable cellulose filter pads before bottling. If the wines are hazy, the protein creating the haæ will be removed with bentonite (a fine clay used for white wines) or raw organic egg whites (for red wines). Some of the red wines may go into old oak barrels at some point (the barrels are cleaned with a food-safe citric acid wash), but many of them don't because Tilman prefers the fruit's expression to that of the winemaker's hand.

How is this different from conventional winemaking? In a good year, blessed with fruit at optimal quality, hopefully not much. The challenge intensifies when the grapes come in, either because of a poor growing season or because of poor viticultural practices, with low sugar, high acid, poor color and high pH; it's a winemaker's nightmare. The silk purse from the proverbial sow's ear is created with the assistance of everything from artificial color and oak extract to de-acidifiers, yeastboosting nutrients like ammonium phosphate, corn syrup, temperaturecontrolled fermentation tanks, high doses of sulphite applied directly to the fresh grapes in the bin, sorbate to kill the yeast and keep it from acting on the residual sugar in an off-dry wine (sweetness, just like overchilling, hides many flaws), water, centrifuging, cross flow and microfiltration (some of the cartridge filters in common use are produced by firms closely tied to the manufacture of military hardware), DE (diatomaceous earth) filtration, synthetic fining agents like hydroliæd gelatin, and ascorbic acid.

Are these substanœs and practices toxic to humans? No, because all of them are approved for use in conventional winemaking. Does that mean that all of this "stuff' is desirable? No, particularly if, through good agricultural and winemaking practiœs, it is not essential for the production of good quality wine. Organic practices, after all, are about minimizing the impact of human presence on nature. If you have made purchasing decisions in the grocery store based on the fact that you're uncomfortable with processed cheese squeeæd out of a tube (which is also considered, by the relevant authorities, to be a safely edible substanœ), then perhaps, when you're in your wine store, you should be uncomfortable with wine which comes out of a bag-ina-box, notwithstanding any label touting of quality and purity.

The low-impact approach extends beyond the œllar, too, to our labeling, corks, capsules, marketing, and work environment. Are we perfect? No. Are we still trying? Yes. Do we recommend this approach for everyone? No.

There's a logical segue here to the last basic fact:

5) 0rganic grapegrowing and winemaking is a modest proposal because the operation's integrity is most easily maintained and controlled if small in scope. The "small is beautiful" doctrine is not a universally comfortable one, particularly in British Columbia's "hot" growth-obsessed econom, involves educating yourself, anc cating your customers, and you realistically expect to capture an beyond a carefully constructed niche market.

As we say in our brochure, we like to being in a niche market; it's cosy, we know our customers and they know us. We're hoping to increase our production volumes somewhat, just to keep our sales channels flowing, but we have no ambitions to become the cour largest produœr of œrtified orga wine. We're already there, at 5,500 cases a year, a minuscule, modestly successful microdot in the bigger picture Canadian wine production. Cheers!

Sandra and Tilman Hainle own and operate Hainle Vineyards Estate Winery in Peachland, B.C. The winery include acre certified organic vineyard, a retail shop and a small bistro, and produces about 10,000 gallons of wine annually. Th winery celebrates its 10th year in 1998. Visit the Hainle web site at <http://www.hainle.com.

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