Biodynamic Viticulture Benefits The Land, The Farmer and The Wine Lover

Horns full of dung. “Teas” made of nettles and manure. Moonlight rituals at the equinox. No, I’m not describing activities that a few centuries ago would have gotten you pilloried in Salem, Mass. They are, however, activities that, if sloppily managed, could result in a scarlet mark on your shirt. Naturally, I’m talking about wine and, more specifically, a few of the more supremely unusual practices involved in biodynamic viticulture, the compelling and intriguing form of grape farming that has sparked great interest across the vinous world. The goal of many serious, smaller producers is better wine that tastes of where it is grown, and, increasingly, biodynamics is seen as the best way to get there. What exactly is biodynamic farming? In a word, it’s homeopathic medicine for agriculture, using natural means to obtain a better, more sustainable and healthier natural product. What’s good for the land, it goes, is good for the consumer who loves a good lip-smacking Cabernet Sauvignon. The history of “biodynamie,” as the French call it, is fascinating. First put forth in 1924 by the Austrian philosopher, writer and scientist Rudolf Steiner, the principles of biodynamics were delivered in a series of eight lectures to a group of European farmers who had come to him for advice on their problems with soil fertility, the spread of animal disease and poor crop quality. In no small part due to his somewhat occultish mystical thinking (he was an early devotee of Theosophy before breaking off and forming his own belief system, which he called anthroposophy, the stated goal of which was to “lead the spiritual in man to the spiritual in the universe”), Steiner was both influential and controversial. But many of his ideas have had a lasting impact on Western culture. For instance, in 1919 he was asked by the head of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory to direct a school. Today there still are Waldorf schools across the globe. And now biodynamism. In the latter part of his career, Steiner turned his attention to agriculture. The major ideas behind biodynamic farming are that every plant is influenced by the two major energy sources in the world – the earthly and the cosmic – and that all these things are interdependent. To Steiner, each individual farm was an individual organism that should be as self-sufficient as possible. A biodynamic farm should have a diversity of crops and livestock, and one should give life to the other. As a living organism, he theorized, nothing but live things should nourish it, so he advocated the use of only organically derived materials as fertilizers and pesticides. Nothing dead or scientifically fabricated should be applied. It is in this regard that biodynamic and conventional organic farming overlap. Where the two methods diverge is in the application of Steiner’s special preparations, which he numbered 500 through 508. They range from a tea made of nettle, yarrow, oak bark and other plants (to be sprayed onto plants) to cow manure packed into a cow’s horn (to be buried in the winter and dug up in the spring to be made into a spray). Natural rhythm also plays a role, so these activities are timed around the cycles of the seasons and the moon. The goal is ultimately to have a living soil through compost and crops that naturally deter pests through their own strength or through the unified force of the entire ecosystem, including the crops, the grasses, the flowers and the beneficial insects themselves. Steiner was a controversial figure then (in perhaps a sort of L. Ron Hubbard way?) and biodynamic farming remains so today. First applied to viticulture in the early ‘80s by the idiosyncratic French vintner Nicolas Joly, biodynamic farming flies in the face of vineyard practices that rely more and more heavily on technology. It asks vintners to make a (sensible) leap of faith and to try practices that seem fanciful at best and at worst time consuming and labor intensive. Yet, with results that sometimes seem like magic, it’s winning new converts all the time, including some of the world’s greatest producers such as Domaine de la Romanée Conti, Domaine Leflaive, Domaine Leroy, Chapoutier, Zind-Humbrecht and Dominio de Pingus. Stateside, top biodynamic producers include Sonoma’s Benziger Winery, Napa’s Robert Sinskey Vineyards, Joseph Phelps Vineyards, Cooper Mountain Vineyards and Peter Michael Winery. All will tell you in one way or another of the great results they have seen. Winegrower Steve Beckmen of Santa Barbara County has told me that one can plainly see the difference between different sections of his vineyard farmed classically and biodynamically, with the latter seeming intensely healthy and vibrant even when it was very young. I’ve been to blind tastings where nine out of 10 tasters will say they prefer one wine over another, and the wines turn out to be from adjacent plots, simply farmed differently. Can you taste biodynamics in a wine? Of course not. Wine will simply taste like wine. But wine made from healthier, more balanced vineyards will produce grapes that mirror those qualities. The result, winegrowers hope, will be wines that are more “alive” and taste inarguably of the place they were made. Some of the dubious surmise that biodynamics might work simply because the sheer rigor of the program forces the winegrower to spend more time in the vineyard, observing, treating and getting to know her plants. Perhaps this is the secret. But who knows? Do I believe biodynamics works? Indisputably. But, as a natural-born skeptic, I can’t exactly say how or why. I have been known to take echinacea for a cold, even though I’m far from certain that it actually helps. It certainly can’t hurt (I hope). And this is the case for biodynamics. Clearly it’s good for the land itself and good for the farmer (who feels more connected to his land). How can you argue with that?