“French Organic Wine Quality Mixed”

This was based on one comment which is true for all wines, not just organic. It’s only when dealing with organic wines, where winemakers are suddenly supposed to defend an entire category of other winemakers they have no association with, that this sentence seems to have meaning with wine journalists. We’ll love the day that all conventional winemakers have to refer to the quality of Yellowtail in every article they are in.

Over 200 UK restaurants are offering natural wines as part of Real Wine Month.

‘A few years ago natural wines weren’t even a ripple in the collective consciousness of the UK restaurant scene,’ said Doug Wregg of importer Les Caves de Pyrene, organiser of both the Real Wine Fair and Real Wine Month.

‘Now there are wine bars and top class restaurants that specialise in these kind of wines. The Real Wine Month takes this a step further by effectively asking restaurants to go directly to the consumer and allowing them to choose what they like to drink.’

So, welcome a new group: Les Vins S.A.I.N.S. (Les Vins Sans Intrant Ni Sulphites). Those in the group are all French with one Italian. Included in this group are at least 10 vignerons with wines that I like/love.

Future members will be admitted only if the board is unanimous. There will be no police, the candidates must pledge honesty. There will be more groups like this coming down in the future. We already have something similar with more forgiving criteria in Association Des Vins Naturels, there are groups in Austria and there are groups that belong to Renaissance as well as Vin Natur. So, let the anarchy begin.

More info here.

It has been a long time since wineries like Albert i Noya (now in its fourth generation) introduced organic farming to its vineyards.

In the late ‘70’s, when everyone was into other things, this visionary winery was beginning to produce its first wines from their organically grown vineyards.

On this long journey every year more Spanish wineries have joined in, placing Spain at the forefront of global organic viticulture, boosting it into 3rd place.

As for the remainder of Spanish wineries, virtually all of the DOs have a good number of them, with Catalonia the greenest of all. Seeing serious growth, in just one year we have gone from 86 to 108 wineries.

The grapes are grown in the appellation Lima Valley within Vinho Verde. The estate sits on a bed of granitic earth in a bio-rich zone where eucalyptus, acacia, and chestnut orchards are plentiful. The vines grow on trees in a pergola-trained system. I find their biodynamic wine to be vibrant, a little floral, carrying a long fruity finish. Some red Vinho Verde can have a hint of effervescence. I didn’t find this to be the case with Afros. It’s as dark as squid ink almost daring you to get to know its core being.

Randall Grahm made news four years ago when he began citing not only tartaric acid but also substances used to process the wine (indigenous yeast for fermentation; bentonite, a clarifying clay) but gone by the time it’s bottled. Shinn Estate Vineyards followed suit with its North Fork estate-bottled wines, and the Anderson Valley winery Foursight printed its first ingredient list last summer.

But there’s risk attached to laundry lists of unfamiliar terms. Would the average drinker be glad to know his wine was clarified with isinglass, a fish-bladder extract, or its alcohol level boosted with beet sugar? “To have a long list makes it look like anti­freeze,” says David Lillie, co-owner of Chambers Street Wines, who likes the idea less in practice than in theory.

Fabio’s last two lists–“It does/doesn’t contain the following” and “I did/didn’t do these things to it”–are the best short course in winemaker interventions I’ve ever seen. I salute his honesty and commitment. The question he raises- whether his statements would be legally permitted on the back label of his wines in America–is something I can’t answer. If he could, then would consumers demand to know what all other wines have in them, or have had done to them?