Beyond Organic Wine

My guest for this episode is George Gale. George has led a double life. On the surface, George presented a public façade as a philosopher of science, American historian, professor, and author. He was a PhD student at UC Davis, and wrote his dissertation at Oxford. He has a Wikipedia page, spent 43 years as a professor of science and philosophy at University of Missouri Kansas City, and published multiple papers and books on the philosophy of science, the big bang theory, the anthropic principle, the philosophy of modern cosmology, and the Many Worlds Theory, among many other topics. But George also had another life, a dark and mysterious life. Outside of the classrooms and lecture halls of academia, George grew hybrid grapes. Not only did he grow them… he fell in love with them, made wine with them, and even hybridized more of them. For decades George has had a secret affair with Leon Millot, Villard Blanc, and many other outcast grapes. After decades of secrecy, George tells all in this scandalous interview. Well, sort of. George wrote a book that turns out to be THE book about the phylloxera crisis. Without knowing this history, I think many of us in wine take a lot of how things are for granted. But George’s book, Dying on the Vine, gives an amazing historical perspective on how phylloxera shaped the world that we live in today in ways much larger than just how we grow wine. Phylloxera became the catalyst for Big Science in the sense of international collaborative science that is tied up in national and international politics and economics. It was a cultural trauma that caused mass global population migrations that affect our cultures still, and it was one of the main drivers of hybridization in grapes that led to some of the enduring varieties we still drink today and use for further grape breeding efforts. But there was a dark side to all of this. Anti-american prejudice festers in the subtext of this history, and informs the wine world we inhabit. George gives us an overview of this history and even more details of the fascinating elements that still influence our wine culture now. This broad and deep look into the history of hybrids gives us insights into human nature, globalization, and the future of wine. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com/subscribe

My guest is Rueben Lange of Amiti in Oregon FromAmiti.com. Rueben first worked a harvest in 2016, but he has packed in something like 12 harvests since then by bouncing between Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and three continents, including some notable vintages at Idiot’s Grace in the Columbia River Gorge, Maison Maenad in the Jura, and Forlorn Hope in California. Rueben says of Amiti: “The goal of this project - beyond employing the basic tenets of good land stewardship (both in my farming and the vineyards I choose to purchase from), caring for all those who work for me, and crafting wines that are meant to celebrate those I hold dear - is to deeply explore a sustainable future for Oregon, and push the envelope of Hybrid grape varieties. I love vinifera and want to continue to celebrate it, given the remarkable wines that come from them in this state. However, we as an industry continue to push the narrative of this being Pinot country - a notion I believe to be utterly false given the challenges associated with farming it here - and fail to focus on varieties that are better suited to our climate and its ever shifting nature. For that reason, I choose to work with what are considered A-typical, or non-normative varieties for this region, specifically those that I believe are well adapted to the level of climate change I will experience in my lifetime. I choose to make hybrid wines because I believe that they are the only option for a sustainable future in this state, and present an exciting possibility to develop a true sense of place and varietal typicity, free from the constraints imposed upon us by the old world. If we truly want to develop an understanding of what American terroir looks and tastes like, it seems like a no-brainer to me to do it with a variety that has no mandates handed down from the ‘higher ups’.” On the last episode we considered how natural wine is not about minimizing intervention but about a total perspective shift to seeing life as process to celebrate. On this episode we again flip a common understanding of natural wine on its head as we discuss how natural wine is not about removing human influence but actually finding the distinctively personal touch of humans engaged in intentionally fermenting. In this spirit, Rueben makes a case for abandoning the zero-zero ethos, or at least any celebration of it or smugness related to it, referring to it as a kind of recipe winemaking for natural wine. This is a wildly pro-human discussion of wine, that will piss off the misanthropes and the worshipers of that pristine ideal known as “Nature” which is kept pure by lack of contact with the malodorous miscreants known as people. Rather, we envision wine as a flowing stream in which we, besotted beavers that we are, immerse ourselves and play and mate and build dams to overflow the banks and flood our communities with life. Rueben’s wines have been described as “disorientingly delicious” and I hope you’ll find this conversation to be the same. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com/subscribe

My guest for this episode is Michael Völker, one of the Zwei Natur Kinder in Germany. Michael and Melanie Drese spent many years working in other fields, traveling the world and. In 2013 they returned to begin taking over Michael’s father’s winery in Kitzingen in Franconia, Bavarian Germany. They began to make natural wines under the 2naturkinder label as a side project for the winery, and since then have decided to fully expand the project to take over all of the winery’s production. They make wine from grapes like Muller-Thurgau, Silvaner, Bacchus, Dornfelder, Regent, Domina, Souvignier gris, Muscaris, and several others. Some of those grapes are hybrids, and I list them all together this way to make a point… they’re just grape varieties. And if you don’t know which ones are hybrids in that list, does it matter that theyre a hybrid? Some juicy information and philosophical discussion here about lots of topics. I’m still thinking about several of the questions that come up. Enjoy! https://2naturkinder.de/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com My guest for this episode is Harold Langlais, who works as Marketing Director for and part owner with the Amoreau family at Chateau Le Puy. Chateau Le Puy’s land – the Hill of Wonders - has been chemical free since it began in the 1600’s. After WW1 they refused to begin using the novel chemistry that came out of the war and they have continued on that …

My guest for this episode is Harold Langlais, who works as Marketing Director for and part owner with the Amoreau family at Chateau Le Puy. Chateau Le Puy’s land – the Hill of Wonders - has been chemical free since it began in the 1600’s. After WW1 they refused to begin using the novel chemistry that came out of the war and they have continued on that path undaunted despite peer pressure and ridicule. As a founding member of “Nature & Progrès”, a pioneering organization for the development and promotion of organic farming in France, le Puy became one of the first Bordeaux estates certified to produce organic wine. Le Puy has successively obtained Ecocert (organic agriculture) and Demeter (biodynamics) accreditation, and Pascal Amoreau actually contributed to the specifications brief for Demeter. They use horses and sheep instead of tractors, don’t do deep tillage, and 50% of the property is forest, meadows, insectaries, and a pond, and they are beginning to implement some vitiforestry via interplanting of shrubs in the vine rows. They actually pulled up some of their vineyard plots as early as 1970 as they became aware of the damaging effects and loss of biodiversity resulting from vine monoculture. And if all this doesn’t make it sound like a pretty exceptional place, there is a cromlech which is a A circle of standing stones around a central stone, all placed between two dolmens believed to date from the Bronze Age (about 3000 to 4000 years BC). The people who erected this mini-Stonehenge recognised this site, nestled in the heart of an oak forest, as special for some reason… and the Amoreau family treat it as such. But that’s not all… as early as 1868 they began to question the need for sulfur as a preservative, and began making zero sulfur wines in 1990. And if that isn’t enough… a bottle of Chateau Le Puy was drawn into the Drops of God manga, where, In its televised version the Emilien 2003 vintage was declared the best wine in the world. And in 2010 Chateau Le Puy celebrated 400 years without any artificial chemical use as fertilizer or pesticide. Harold is an incredibly articulate spokesperson not just for Le Puy but for an ecological approach to wine. We agree deeply about just about everything with regard to the values behind the way we think about wine, so I think it’s just a matter of time until he also starts to fall in love with hybrids. And Harold offers some fascinating insight into the French appellation system, the AOC system, and how it is both a cherished tradition and something that limits innovation, prevents adaptation, and motivates the use of more chemicals than would otherwise be needed without being bound to the constraints of the AOC. This is juicy stuff, and it actually inspired this conversation with Harold in the first place. I find this not only mildly controversial but slightly revolutionary. One note, Harold makes a claim at one point about Bordeaux having the most organic vineyards of any region in France, but we fact checked this afterwards and it’s actually Languedoc Russillon, and I’ve included a link to a resource with this info. But Bordeaux is making huge strides in organic viticulture… finally seeing the wisdom of Chateau Le Puy and the Amoreau family. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com/subscribe

My guest for this episode is Alder Yarrow. Alder writes and does everything for the blog Vinography, and I’ve been receiving Alder’s weekly email for several years. He gives a list of links of articles he’s been reading, and I always enjoy scanning this list to see what’s going on in the wine zeitgeist. Alder’s Vinography.com blog has been published daily since 2004, and was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2013. Since 2011, Alder has also been a monthly columnist for Jancis Robinson where he also contributes wine reviews for American wines. Alder has been judging competitions for many years, and spent nearly a decade as a judge for the World of Fine Wine’s annual Global Restaurant Wine List awards, and for the James Beard Restaurant awards. His coffee-table book of essays and photographs, The Essence of Wine, was named one of the best wine books of 2014 by the New York Times and won the Chairman’s Prize at the 2015 Louis Roederer International Wine Writers Awards. In 2013 Alder was inducted into the Wine Media Guild of New York’s Wine Writers Hall of Fame, an honor he shares with only 24 other living wine writers. He is also a member of the Circle of Wine Writers. Alder was the architect of and serves as the day-to-day manager for the Old Vine Registry, the world’s first and most authoritative public database of old vine vineyards around the globe. I reached out to Alder for this conversation because of a comment he made about the recent Eric Asimov article about hybrid grapes. I gave Alder questions in advance, so he knew I wanted to challenge him on several ideas. To his credit he still agreed to the conversation, and you’re about to listen to the results. Though I think we share most of the same values and agree about a lot, we don’t agree about everything, and that’s why I wanted to talk with him. I hope that makes sense. You have to get out of your own echo chamber if you want to learn, and if you care about truth. And more and more you have to actively seek the company of those who disagree with you if you want to break free of the control of algorithms… if you want to cultivate diversity. So I’m grateful to Alder for being game and taking the time to have this conversation/debate. And if you listen until the end, I’m also including as an epilogue the verbatim exchange that we had via email after the conversation. As I re-listened to a specific part of the recorded conversation while editing, I realized I wanted to make a comment about something that I had let slide, but I wanted him to be able to respond to that comment. So stay tuned at the end if you’re interested in hearing more. Please join Beyond Organic Wine on Substack. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com/subscribe

Yesterday I spent the afternoon editing Wikipedia entries about hybrid grapes because they were either factually wrong, omitted important and relevant information, or pushed prejudiced perspectives… and sometimes did all of this. Sometimes the edits were small but important. In the entry on Hybrid Grape, a contributor thought it important to mention that they “exhibit a mix of traits” from their various parentages (this is true and relevant), and that hybrids with Vitis labrusca in their parentage “have a strong ‘candied’ or ‘wild strawberry’ aroma.” While I applaud this description (which isn’t the negative description I’ve found in other labrusca mentions), I changed this entry to read “can have a strong ‘candied’ or ‘wild strawberry’ aroma depending on many factors.” Labruscana have come a long way since the original 50/50 crosses (200 years ago), and Concord (with its 75% labrusca parentage) is very different from, say, Marquette, which has labrusca in its parentage but is the result of many, many crosses including quite a few species. The similarities of flavor between Concord and Marquette are extremely minimal, and they do not share a “candied” aroma, despite both having labrusca in their parentage. Additionally, I’ve had labruscana that were picked and made in a way that none of these “characteristic” aromas were present. But it’s true that labruscana “can” have those flavors, depending on many factors. Of course that begs the question of why even mention these things if you have to qualify them so extensively? Would it be relevant to say that “grapes with Vitis vinifera parentage can have aromas of cat piss and tar, depending on many factors”? This is factually true, but… does it matter to understanding vinifera? Or does it actively confuse people who haven’t been exposed to the wide variety of vinifera cultivars? This double standard results from wine writers – likely MW’s or other “experts” – who have had very little exposure to anything but Vinifera Culture and see the world through the prism that limits “fine wine” to only European “pure” vinifera grapes (and usually only a select few of those). Several of the most egregiously prejudiced lines in some entries about the flavors hybrid grapes were actually cited, and the citation linked to entries in the Oxford Companion to Wine. So it seems more than just Wikipedia needs to be edited. While Vinifera Culture has been navel gazing for the last half-century or more, the rest of the world has continued to adapt and change, and… surprise! Vinifera Culture finds itself completely out of touch with the current realities in wine. But more than lack of awareness permeates entries about hybrids. I edited the entry on the grape Kyoho, which started with the line: “Kyoho grapes (巨峰葡萄, Kyohō budō; lit. 'giant mountain grape'") are a fox grape (Concord-like) cross popular in East Asia.” The term “fox grape” is, again, outdated, and also inaccurate. “Fox grape” is the term given to the crop wild relative (Vitis labrusca). The children of the sexual reproduction of labrusca with other species of grapes can no longer be called the fox grape. This might be semantic. I know many people have called grapes with labrusca parentage fox grapes, even if not entirely labrusca. But it might also be a dog whistle. What they seem to want to imply, strongly, is that Kyoho is a “foxy” grape, for those of you who know what I mean, wink wink. What troubled me most was that the writer felt the need to put this piece of information as the first line in the entry about Kyoho. So someone coming to Wikipedia to learn about Kyoho now must see it through the lens of “fox grape” and what does that mean and how should I feel about that? How relevant to its existence and importance in the world of grapes is the fact that it has similar parentage to Concord and is a “fox grape”? I’m relatively sure that’s a designation that neither its breeder nor the billions of people who love it would ever apply...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com “The earth is alive. The earth is intelligent. The earth is having a crisis because of us. The good news is: we are the earth ourselves, and we can be much stronger in our activism if we remember that we are acting on behalf of, we are living agents of, we are part of, this living being called the Earth. Earthelujah!” That’s a quote from Reverend Billy of…

My guest for this episode is ​Lore McSpadden-Walker. Lore (they/them) is an embodiment navigator and neuro-spicy hedge witch who has dedicated their work towards helping people who have experienced systemic denial of access, disability, and/or traumatic experiences learn about their physical selves through education, facilitated conversations, movement coaching and somatic awareness, Reiki, herbalism, and earth-based relational healing. Their current projects also center aspects of food access, and include the literal sharing of foods as well as education related to growing, foraging, preparing, and preserving edible and medicinal plants. Information about their background and certifications can be found at https://www.positiveforcemovement.org/about, and you can find them on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/TheWildWithinHealing. This episode talks about wine from multiple perspectives. Wine as food, wine as a healer for our troubled hearts, wine as psychoactive sacrament, wine as mentor. As I think Lore would put it, we uncover how wine contains multitudes. Along the way we explore the vital role that wine can play in overcoming our alienation from the community of life, and how much hope we can derive from the more-than-human world where even death is part of the cycle of abundance. Lore shares several things that move me even more now because of their uncanny timeliness. Lore implores us to learn to fall out of love with the violent narrative of human supremacy over the more-than-human world, and the incredible value of diverse and inclusive communities. They bring in an analogy from cannabis culture and discuss the potential of an Entourage Effect in wine, and I’m still thinking about how this applies to human cultures as well. This episode is a bit out of the ordinary in the best way, and you’re in for a treat. Here’s a link to the Earth Medicine Gathering we mentioned in the episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com/subscribe

The last episode featured a 110 acre biodynamic chateau in one of Washington state’s famed AVAs. This episode features a 1 acre organic and regenerative vineyard of hybrids and vinifera with a straw bale winery and an underground house in a part of Washington that isn’t known for wine. I point out this contrast not to say that one is better than the other, but because in our dominant culture I’ve noticed that one is taken more seriously than the other. And I’m not saying that a 110 acre vineyard is really big and I’m definitely not saying it represents the same values as “Big Wine.” It’s just bigger than the vineyard we visit in this episode, and I use this comparison to look at this thought that we need to be able to scale the ideas that our wine embodies or they are dismissible, unimportant. This is a big area of critique of the small-farm regenerative ag movement by Chris Newman, of Sylvanaqua Farms. He makes important points and we need his voice. And there are some real challenges to consider: the issues we face in regenerating our wine cultures are unavoidably systemic, and the systems we live in are massive. But I recently heard the question posed, what if we focus on spreading rather than scaling? Could we look at regenerative viticulture as a viral meme, rather than as a business plan for a million acres of vineyards? Do we need or even want scale when it comes to wine? Right now it looks like the answer to that is “no.” Big Wine, the kind that comes with a bar code and national distribution and isn’t really wine anyway but more like a wine flavored beverage, seems to be what’s losing the most sales right now. And my guest for this episode is doing just fine. He has a loyal customer base because he makes his wine for his community. He represents his community’s highest values in his wine, even if they only care that it suits their taste and doesn’t make them feel like the wines of Big Wine do. His neighbors can tell that he cares about them and the land that they live on. My guest for this episode is Joe Barreca of Barreca Vineyards. Joe has been making wine for 50 years and lives in North East Washington state. Joe is a self-described back to the land hippie, and in recent years regional efforts to elevate the voices and perspectives of the native people of his region have exposed him to new perspectives that inform how he thinks about and lives on the land, and clearly inspire and move him. Over years of experimentation he has come up with some of the most fascinating approaches to winemaking that I’ve heard since I spoke with Peter Schmidt of Mythopia in Switzerland. And what I think is fascinating is that out in the remote corner of a place that isn’t usually thought of in relation to wine at all, by following ecological values and a desire to make wine for his community, Joe has sort of stumbled into making zero zero wines and orange wines and co-ferments like an ideological natty winemaker in the Loire or San Francisco Bay area. Joe grows one of his hybrid grapes, Baco Noir, with 10 foot canes… simply because he observed it and saw that that’s what it wanted, and that was the balance it needed to have the appropriate light and air to optimize the grape development. He let a baco vine grow into an old pear tree and has some really interesting observations to share about this partnership (see the photo below). Joe had never heard the term “married vine” but said he could see how that made sense. Joe also washes and reuses all of his bottles. This is something he couldn’t do without the relationships with his customers who know to bring the bottles back to him, as well as a small scale that makes this possible. While the rest of us spin our wheels trying to come up regional bottle reuse programs and find massive hurdles related to the inertia of habit and bureaucracy as well as apathy, even among those of us who should care the most about it, Joe has meanwhile set up his own local reuse system made possible...

Let’s take a trip to the state of Washington in the US. You know Washington… it’s that place where it rains so much on the coast that vampires can live there year round. It’s a land for volcano connoisseurs. Its largest city was named for a man commonly known as Chief Seattle, a leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples, who is thought to have said: “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” As well as: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children” Here are some wine statistics about Washington state: it’s the second largest producer of winegrapes in the US after California. It also has the second most organic vineyards after California. But the organic acreage basically didn’t increase much over the 10 year period from 2005-2015, while the total vineyard acreage increased from 54,000 to 70,000 acres… meaning the percentage of organic vineyards dropped by over half a percentage from 3.7 to 3.1 percent. Washington has such an incredible climate for growing grapes organically that the only commercial no-spray vinifera vineyard in the world that I’m aware of – Paradisos Del Sol - is in Washington, yet the percentage of organic vineyards is unchanging to decreasing. Meanwhile just across the border, Oregon has a greater percentage of biodynamic vineyards than Washington has organic, and Oregon’s percentage of organic vineyards is the highest in the US… all while Oregon’s main wine growing regions in the Willamette Valley are rainier and largely growing varieties of vinifera that are some of the most sensitive to mildews and rots. So what does this tell us? This tells us that choosing to farm organically, biodynamically, regeneratively or better is not a matter of what is possible. It IS possible. It’s a matter of deciding to do it. It’s a matter of choice. How do we get people to choose better farming? There are a lot of answers to that, but I think many of them involve establishing trust by listening, including them in our community, trying to understand them genuinely without ulterior motives… or, if I had to express this in one word, love. For this episode we are visiting one of the only organic and biodynamic certified wineries in Washington State: Hedges Family Estate. My guests are Sarah Hedges Goedhart, the Director of Winemaking and Winery Operations, and Reid Wilson, the Vineyard Manager. Hedges sounds like a fascinating place. A biodynamic family winery with around 110 acres and a honest to god Chateau in the Red Mountain AVA. I hope I’ve set up that what they are doing is pretty special in their region, and Sarah and Reid have the passion and excitement to match the work. They bring up some of the less talked about aspects of biodynamics, including the responsibilities of farmers with regard to their employees. This led me to look up the Biodynamic Farm Standard for Demeter US. Read the Environmental Statement. Read the Biodynamic Principle of Social Responsibility. Cow horns are sexy, I guess, if you’re into that kind of thing, but there are some substantive elements to biodynamics that are often overlooked or completely ignored. While some of these principles, like the social responsibility guidelines, seem to be little more than values statements, at least they create a culture that gives attention to them. Try this on for size: “Agricultural land occupies 50% of the earth’s habitable surface, about 41% of U.S. land. In the U.S., food production contributes 34% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Concerns of climate change cannot be successfully addressed without addressing agriculture’s contribution to it but, conversely, agriculture can be a potent solution. Because the underlying theme of the Biodynamic Farm Standard is to generate inputs out of the life of the farm system itself rather than importing them from outside, the heart of a...

To listen to the entirety of this episode, you must be a subscriber to the Beyond Organic Wine Substack. My guest for this episode is Pascal Baudar. For many of you he needs no formal introduction, so I’ll introduce him informally. I think he’s the Monet of wine. He has given me the inspiration of thinking of wines as impressionist paintings, capable of expressing more than just a landscape or regional distinctiveness, but also the tastes of individual seasons, and even the beauty of a single moment on earth. If you take a hike with Pascal you’ll be able to revisit the memory of that hike a weeks later as a unique and delicious boozy concoction. His fermentations don’t believe in nationalities or laws or borders or labels. They are playful, complex, and truly free. They hopscotch over rigid regulations and dance around strict definitions. They flirt with the possible and explore a world of living flavors without limits. His religion is the living landscape and his god is life. To extend the painter metaphor, his palette is infinite. Pascal has a beautiful mind and a great sense of humor. He’s a delight to talk to and as curious to learn as he is eager to share his knowledge. We cover too many things to list in this conversation, but just a few teasers… sugar from insects, an incredible vinegar hack secret that he made me promise not to tell anyone, some incredible low alcohol wine ideas, and just a massive dose of inspiration and enthusiasm. https://www.pascalbaudarceramics.com/ Wildcrafted Fermentations (the book) And also, here's the video mentioned in the intro: 10 Core Myths Still Taught in Business Schools

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com My guest for this episode is Pascal Baudar. For many of you he needs no formal introduction, so I’ll introduce him informally. I think he’s the Monet of wine. He has given me the inspiration of thinking of wines as impressionist paintings, capable of expressing more than just a landscape or regional distinctiveness, but also the tastes of individual sea…

What seeds are you sending out into the world with your wine? What systems, or economies, are you building with the energy you exchange with the plants? Absent the physical seeds, are you helping disperse the vine’s metaphysical seeds, the stories and ideas the plants embodied, or something else? Join the Beyond Organic Wine Substack

What seeds are you sending out into the world with your wine? What systems, or economies, are you building with the energy you exchange with the plants? Absent the physical seeds, are you helping disperse the vine’s metaphysical seeds, the stories and ideas the plants embody, or something else? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com/subscribe

Please Note: Beyond Organic Wine is moving to Substack! BeyondOrganicWine.Substack.com "What do you think, you higher men? Am I a prophet? A dreamer? A drunkard? An interpreter of dreams? A midnight bell? A drop of dew? An odour and scent of eternity? Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? My world has just become perfect, midnight is also noonday, pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun..." That’s Friedrich Nietzsche as quoted on the label of a bottle of wine made by my guest for this episode. My guest for this episode is Alejandro Fargosonini. With his partner Andrea Spaziani, he farms and makes wine as Chateauneuf du Fargonsonini in the center of California’s central valley. Alejandro lives off grid on his vineyard site at the foot of the Sierra Madres where he grows a mix of a I think he said around 70 varieties of grapes. He’s a philosophy PhD student, an artist, and in addition to grape wine he received a grant to make wine from upcycled fruit that would otherwise be wasted. His wines are imaginative and fun and liberated from any pre-conceived ideas of what wine is supposed to be, while also being deeply thoughtful and reflective of his unique land. I think you’re going to like him as much as I do. https://www.chateauneuf.xyz/

"What do you think, you higher men? Am I a prophet? A dreamer? A drunkard? An interpreter of dreams? A midnight bell? A drop of dew? An odour and scent of eternity? Do you not hear it? Do you not smell it? My world has just become perfect, midnight is also noonday, pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun..." That’s Friedrich Nietzsche as quoted on the label of a bottle of wine made by my guest for this episode. My guest for this episode is Alejandro Fargosonini. With his partner Andrea Spaziani, he farms and makes wine as Chateauneuf du Fargonsonini in the center of California’s central valley. Alejandro lives off grid on his vineyard site at the foot of the Sierra Madres where he grows a mix of a I think he said around 70 varieties of grapes. He’s a philosophy PhD student, an artist, and in addition to grape wine he received a grant to make wine from upcycled fruit that would otherwise be wasted. His wines are imaginative and fun and liberated from any pre-conceived ideas of what wine is supposed to be, while also being deeply thoughtful and reflective of his unique land. I think you’re going to like him as much as I do. https://www.chateauneuf.xyz/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com/subscribe

My guest for this episode is the matriarch of a Mendocino winery that has been organic since before there was organic certification. Martha Barra runs Barra of Mendocino which includes the Girasole brand, one of the few wineries with both vineyards and winery certified organic. Barra is a family business that her late husband Charlie started by purchasing Redwood Valley Vineyards in 1954. They were essentially farming organically from the beginning, even before there was organic certification. She describes a bit of what this entails in the winery, and their experiment using old vines to produce biochar when they replant… or don’t replant as the case may be now due to the state of the CA wine industry.. In this candid conversation, Martha describes the current challenges to being a winery in California, and she gives details of the significant costs of H2A visa labor for vineyards in California for wineries like Barra who abide by or exceed the requirements. this is such an important discussion at this time of evaluating the importance of immigrant labor in the US, and I think gives some valuable data for us to consider. And Barra is one of the few wineries of this size – approximately 250 acres of vineyards and 20,000 case production – who uses H2A labor, mainly because of the costs and regulations. From a migrant worker’s standpoint, it seems a very positive program, and while Barra is in a unique position to take advantage of it, and it obviously has some benefits for them, I respect how they’ve embraced it, and I respect Martha’s comment that what brings her joy is signing payroll checks and knowing that her employees are able to make a living for them and their family from this work. And I think this is important to contrast with the recent news coming from Champagne about the appalling exploitation of workers from Africa and Ukraine. Once again I’m reminded what goes into a bottle of wine, and what the cost represents, and how difficult it is for good actors like Barra to make it make financial sense, and could they even afford to be in the wine business if they hadn’t owned their land for several decades, and how silly we are to have wine tasting evaluations and competitions that don’t take into consideration the context of how a wine is produced so that we could have a gold medal, 95 point champagne made with essentially modern slave labor. And look, don’t take my advice on marketing and sales, but maybe educating wine drinkers about the context of wine and how important it is to have a quality context and not just quality flavors in the glass will help with the perception of well-produced wine’s value and price. We also hear the strains Martha notices on the wine industry, and that she is experiencing personally at Barra, as California goes through what I would call the diminishment of vinifera culture. While Martha is optimistic that California wine will adapt, she definitely thinks there are some big changes ahead. Barra is one of California’s legacy wineries, and through our conversation I came to really like Martha and hope she’s right… I’d like to see Barra and other wineries like it be able to adapt and have a future where the business is good for the land and the people who live and work in it. https://www.barraofmendocino.com/ If you like this podcast, please subscribe & leave a great review. You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine or just spread the word... thanks!

Sunny Hodge is the owner of wine bars Diogenes the Dog in Elephant & Castle and Battersea-based aspen & meursault. Known for challenging the status quo, Sunny has built a reputation as a disruptor in the wine industry. The Cynic’s Guide to Wine is his first book - a bold, unapologetic guide to a subject that’s far too often shrouded in mystery. With a degree in Mechanical Engineering from UCL, Sunny has a keen eye for detail, and love of science and hospitality. In this episode Sunny lays out his case for the need for factual, science-based discussions around wine rather than repeating the same sales stories we've been passing around for decades. He argues convincingly for a wine culture that transcends labels and fact-checks itself rigorously. Sunny's book does not try to dumb-down it's approach or content. It talks up to us and addresses an as yet unmet need in the wine world for discussions about how soil chemistry and biology works, and how that does and doesn't impact wine flavors. We talk about the potential nihilism of wine tasting resulting from the overwhelming subjectivity of taste, and how we talk about and define quality in light of that. We talk about the myth of terroir, and other oft-repeated yet unverified stories we tell in wine. Sunny's perspective and input is refreshing and needed. If you like this podcast, please subscribe & leave a great review. You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine or just spread the word... thanks!

This episode is the last of the Quebec series, and it’s such a great one to end with… because it makes me miss Quebec and want to go back for a visit again as soon as possible. This one is special for several reasons: first, I got to interview a family… or part of the family who farms and makes wine as Vignoble Pigeon Hill. Kevin, Matthew and Trisha Shufelt treated Maxime and me to a beautiful tour, tasting, and conversation. And we finally got to see some sheep in action in the vineyard! And we got to hear a lot about how they make sheep work at Pigeon Hill, from the size of the flock, to why sheep are better than deer for eating, to frequency of movement, breeds, parasites, using winter hay feed to compost the vines. We also talk about frost seeding of cover crops, we meets some pigs who are living at the vineyard forest edge. Kevin tells a fun story about Elmer Swenson and why you have to be careful when planting Lacrosse and St. Pepin. We discuss a lot about the differences in the growth and resistances of the hybrid varieties, and how they’ve learned to pay attention, get to know their vines, and prune, train, trellis and canopy manage them somewhat individualistically, according to the needs and proclivities of the vines. They aren’t farming by recipe, but by learning their vines, paying attention, seeing how the individual differences benefit the whole and provide contingencies. We get some real talk about the challenges of organic farming in Quebec, and how sometimes it’s like being an exhausted marathoner and staggering over the finish line at harvest. And I found it really exciting that Trish got into wine because of learning about regenerative farming. Her excitement, and all of theirs really, for the health of their soil and plants and animals and fostering biodiversity was incredibly encouraging… it gave me hope, honestly, and I wish I could show you their farm so you could see how it reflects their enthusiasm and care. The other thing I wish I could show you rather than tell you about is the side by side comparison of their vinifera rows and their hybrid rows. The hybrids can grow up on a high wire cordon, so the sheep can easily graze among the vines all year and the understory plants grow long and lush, pulling down CO2 and enriching the soil health and biodiversity in multiple ways. The vinifera must be grown low to the ground, and because of this it must be mowed in the alleys and tilled in the rows. Tending the hybrids is pleasant and ergonomic, while tending the vinifera requires constant stooping or kneeling, and Kevin talks about praying to Pinot…. And the vinifera requires significantly more sprays 5 to 10 times as much as the hybrids, and they must be covered with geotextiles… another expense… in the winter. But Pigeon Hill feels compelled to grow some vinifera because the market, our dominant wine culture which I call "vinifera culture," still demands it. And the side by side comparisons are so stark it’s hard not to see the absurdity of our prejudices that make this kind of viticulture necessary. I haven’t even mentioned their Marquette. It’s one of their favorites… Kevin kind of fell in love with wine because of Marquette… and now they’re making what I would argue are some of the best Marquettes in the world.... and they’re almost zero zero. Tasting one of Matt’s inspirations in the cellar gave me confidence there will be more world class wines for years to come from pigeon hill. https://vignoblepigeonhill.com/en/ If you like this podcast, please subscribe & leave a great review. You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine or just spread the word... thanks!