Choose Organic Wines

Video Transcript

"How to choose organic wines. I suppose my starting point is first to say what organic is in terms of wine. Organic, in terms of wine, is wines made from grapes grown in an organic fashion. Organic fashion means using no pesticides, using no artificial fertilizers, using no herbicides or fungicides. You have to use natural products. So when you use, for example - fertilizer, you can't spray your grapes with anything. You use probably of natural means like introducing ladybugs, introducing butterflies to eat the little mites that might feed off your grapes. In terms of weeds, they tend grow cover plants. By having these cover plants on the ground, it prevents the growth of any other plants that may affect the grapevine. These are the elements you need to know about in terms of organic wines - no use of artificial products, and use of natural products all the way through the vineyard. However, once you get to the seller the wines are treated in very much similar ways. The only exception would be some of the products used in producing your wine, within the cellar, can be certified organic as well. Organic wines are from all over the world. Some of the best places for producing organic wines are Chile and Argentina because the climate and soil conditions are still unspoiled and the climate is dryer. Therefore you don't get fungus, so you don't have to spray anything to produce a healthy crop of grapes. In terms of buying an organic wine, all these shops I come across now stock organic wines. What you ought to look for is somewhere on the label "grown organically" or "made from organically grown grapes". Most of the producers now get an organic certification. All geographical regions have got organic certification bodies that lay out the rules as to what conforms to organic production on the farm. Also, you'll hear of a new word "biodynamic". This is a more extreme version of organic. It means that not only do you follow organic practices on the field, you also follow the planet motions and various which you use, which are natural, to put into the ground specified according to specific proportions. So you have specific natural compounds which you use in the ground, and you follow the cycle of the moon as to when you count and harvest, and other alignment in the planetry systems. This sounds a bit extreme, but actually most wine makers are finding that the wines produced from biodynamic grapes actually do produce a wonderful flavor - produce better wines. I should say that organic aren't necessarily better than non-organic wines. Especially the organic processes within the vineyard. The advantage of using organic grapes is that you don't have residual pesticides, residual fertilizer elements, residual fungicides within the grape mast - when you're fermenting. In most cases, all these things have to be limited anyway to conform to, within Europe, EC regulations. Buying your red wines or white wine - organic fashion - don't expect it to necessarily be better than an non-organic wine. That actually depends on the wine maker. Buy organic wine to enjoy a natural feel to the wine, but don't buy necessarily because it's better quality. That's how you buy organic wines."