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Last week I attended Advanced Topics in Organic Winemaking over at Frog’s Leap in Rutherford. It was organized by the Napa Valley Grapegrowers and featured a number of interesting speakers discussing the costs and benefits of true organic farming.

Pete Richmond of Silverado Farming Company laid out the high costs of going organic (disease control alone is estimated to be 9 times more expensive than conventional farming), but argued that costs must be viewed from within the framework of John Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line. Other presenters hammered home the point that organic is not a direct substitute for conventional fertilizer and weed and pest control methods, but a systems level approach that must be well thought out in advance for it to work. Many repeated the claim that growing organically made them better farmers, and to a certain extent they were convincing.

In the end however, it was Frog’s Leap owner and winemaker John Williams’ enthusiasm and eloquence that spoke to me most. In a short paper he provided attendees, a sort of an organic farming manifesto, he argues that organic farming is not only good stewardship, healthier for workers, and a good marketing tool, but that it also improves the quality of wine. Here are some nice sized quotes from his paper.

Simply put: the principals of organic farming and sustainable practices are the single most important tools you can employ to improve wine quality. Most, if not all, challenges you face in winemaking can be positively influenced in a significant manner by a closer relationship with the natural eco-systems responsible for growing your grapes…

Here is the major point: A healthy soil produces a healthy vine; a healthy vine produces healthy fruit; healthy fruit produces healthy wines; deep in color, deep in flavor and deep in their natural character…

If you believe, as I do, that the essence of winemaking, the Holy Grail as it were, is to make wines that deeply reflect the soil and climate from which they emanate, it seems self evident that you would want every molecule, every enzyme, every ester, every flavonoid, every protein, every essence possible to be derived from the soil in which the grapevine is grown…

Without soil-based flavors, we, as winemakers, are stuck with trying to manufacture those flavors on our own. Thus, ridiculously excessive overripe grapes, spinning cones, esterifying yeasts, reverse osmosis, super malo-lactic cultures, micro-oxygenization, megapurple, flying winemakers and 200% new oak….

If you want a real pleasure in a wine, if you believe that a wine has a soul, if you believe in the natural quality of wine and its dependence on place, you will be left with the inescapable conclusion, as have I, that we need to grow our vines deeply in their soil. We need to retain adequate amounts of organic matter back to our vineyards. We need to, at all costs. promote the vastly complex biological life in our soil, and that means the complete banishment of toxic herbicides and, yes, I include glyphosates. We must promote soil structure and moisture retention capacity to significantly reduce, or better yet, eliminate irrigation. We must cultivate our vines to promote deep root growth. We must banish chemical fertilizers and other growth stimulants. We must retain natural soil fertility to complete balance, in doing so, we will eliminate excessive vigor and all of its related problems…

We must be conservative in our use of resources in every way. And, we must be respectful of our larger community, to our nature and to our God. Then, at the end of that day, we must raise our glass and toast ourselves – for those who have the privilege of growing grapes and making wine sustainably are the truly blessed.

John is also a proponent of biodynamics which is, in my opinion, an extremely silly way to approach farming. Still, being wrong about one thing (harvesting by the cycles of the moon, manure horns, Red Deer bladders etc.) doesn’t preclude you from being absolutely right on about something else. And when it comes to organic farming and its affect on wine quality, I think John Williams may very well be on to something.

Capozzi Winery, Winery Blog