Interesting take on sustainable vineyards

This is not true for vinifera viticulture in the Northeastern United States. The soil beneath the vines is often kept free of weeds via tilling and then used to hill up the vines before winter. Also herbicides are risky business due to the need to keep new growth coming up from the base. Roundup destroys the young growth so many shy away.
 
originally posted by SteveTimko:
Interesting take on sustainable vineyardsNice tell-tale sign of who's using herbicides and who is not.

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Good article. However, when he says "sustainable is a term with no enforceable standards", it might give the wrong impression. There are organizations that do provide some kind of certification for sustainability, although there are no Federal standards as there are for organic. Oregon has started an Oregon Certified Sustainable umbrella program where the auditing is executed by various organizations such as Demeter, LIVE, Salmon Safe; anything USDA organic also can use the certification.
 
Well, this is mostly politicaly correct bullshit.

One more jerk who makes,obviously intentionally , confusion between agricultural means and wine quality.

Please help organic growers stop that shit!
Very soon, 100% of the desert vineyards (argentina, australia...) will be certified organic and everyone will think all the industrial wines made there are great artisanal productions.

Yes Alice Waters wouldn't make as good cuisine as she does without organic food but growing organic carrot doesn't make you a Gagnaire or a Barasategui for God's sake.

Eric
 
One of the reasons why "sustainable" has no standards is that its meaning is so elastic as to defy satisfactory definition.

Unless someone wants to dive in and correct me.
 
originally posted by Brzme:
Well, this is mostly politicaly correct bullshit.

One more jerk who makes,obviously intentionally , confusion between agricultural means and wine quality.

Please help organic growers stop that shit!
Very soon, 100% of the desert vineyards (argentina, australia...) will be certified organic and everyone will think all the industrial wines made there are great artisanal productions.

Yes Alice Waters wouldn't make as good cuisine as she does without organic food but growing organic carrot doesn't make you a Gagnaire or a Barasategui for God's sake.

Eric
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Actually he doesn't seem to be equating organic practices and quality at all. You don't need to look around too hard in CA to disprove that one.
He's just saying the term "sustainable" is often a bunch of PR bullshit to ride the "green consumer" wave.
I'm an organic farmer myself and this kind of greenwashing shit drives me crazy.
Organic certification has its own issues but at least theres something quantifiable in terms of meaning something and some teeth to enforce it albeit not very big or sharp ones.
Theres nothing "intentionally confusing" at all about this argument.
At the end of the day, with produce growers and wine makers, its all about getting to know your producers.
 
There seems to be confusion in various quarters about whether "sustainable" refers to farming practices or rather, to business practices.
 
originally posted by Brian C:
At the end of the day, with produce growers and wine makers, its all about getting to know your producers.
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Amen!

Oh Martha high in heaven if you truly do exist please let Chris Coad post in this thread.
 
In California, at least, attempts are being made to codify and certify "sustainability".
See the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance website (http://www.sustainablewinegrowing.org/index.php) for more info on the program.

As Eric says, such programs are no guarantee of wine quality, nor do they differentiate between hands-on, artisinal production and industrialized winemaking.... yer big, anonymous wine manufacturing conglomerate can receive certification from CSWA by instituting the various aspects of the program.
But at least it's something. I'd like to think that compared to what was dominant in California a mere 25 years ago, these kinds of initiatives hold promise for a change for the better environmentally-speaking.

Cheers,
 
originally posted by Brian C:

Theres nothing "intentionally confusing" at all about this argument.
At the end of the day, with produce growers and wine makers, its all about getting to know your producers.
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So I am wrong when I understand that this guy mostly says :

"Our competitors are liers, we are doing the real thing and that's why our wines are better"?

Please, I hear these arguments every day, now.

Bordeaux organic growers producing 25 000 cases a year, with australian yeasts, enzymes, 26 brix merlot and oak chips, saying that they neighbours who claim growing according to "lutte raisonne" are imposters because they go on using glyphosate.

Where is the imposture, really?

Growing organic should not be an option, especially for non vital agricultural products such as wine.
And saying that your wine will be a better expression of the terroir because you grow organic is at best a conjecture, at worst a fasle commercial argument and a lie.

And Yes, I believe that most of the wine producers are going organic in order to be able to say that their wines are the real thing...
Again going organic in CA, Argentina, Spain or Languedoc with irrigation (not for languedoc though), clonal selection and no limitation on fossil energy use is a joke, and should not be an option.

THIS is the real imposture.

In addition and to be more specific, I think a lot of people are buying industrial wines because of this kind of intentional and deceitful confusion.
Grow organic your flagship wines, then your 1 000 000 cases industrial stuff has to be organic and therefore an artisanal terroir driven wine.
I know a lot of growers who can't say that they grow organic and who are making more real wines than most of the organic growers I know.

Sustainable agriculture should be a citizen act. No more, no less.

Eric

BTW I am certified organic (ecocert) for my 2.5ha of Brzme.
 
I don't think that's quite what he's saying, no, but you're right that he is claiming that organic viticulture is responsible for their own wines' quality, and that not everyone who says they're [insert term here] really is. I don't see that as particularly controversial, especially since -- obviously a personal opinion -- their wines are better than most of their neighbors' wines.

And he's still not a jerk.
 
originally posted by Thor:
I don't think that's quite what he's saying, no, but you're right that he is claiming that organic viticulture is responsible for their own wines' quality, and that not everyone who says they're [insert term here] really is. I don't see that as particularly controversial, especially since -- obviously a personal opinion -- their wines are better than most of their neighbors' wines.

And he's still not a jerk.
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Maybe not. But he is doing a great job for organic industrial growers who are making tons of industrial wines (organic or not, by the way...)
 
originally posted by Brian C:

Organic certification has its own issues but at least theres something quantifiable in terms of meaning something and some teeth to enforce it albeit not very big or sharp ones.
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anyone know what has been happening with walmart's efforts to redefine (down) organic farming?
 
Maybe not. But he is doing a great job for organic industrial growers who are making tons of industrial wines (organic or not, by the way...)
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OK. Not my take on the motivation behind Perrin/Haas project, but if you insist.
 
Eric
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I am generally in agreement. Organic certification *should* not be about marketing. A product whether its food or wine should stand alone on quality. I Don't see Noel Pinguet strutting around posing with cowhorns for the press (Christ, you can barely find the word Huet on the bottle). But, in a consumer culture that is totally disassociated from its producers it is a tool to help identify your intentions to the public. In general, the harder someones tries to identify themselves as such, the more it looks like greenwashing and the less trustful I am.

But perhaps in contrast to what you wrote, I DO feel that organic viticulture, when genuine, is a big part of the production ethic that drives quality in winemaking, and I don't think that too many folks around here would disagree.

Then again I don't eat alot of "Organic" salad from earthbound, Bananas from Dole, or oranges from Sunkist.

Brian
 
originally posted by Thor:

OK. Not my take on the motivation behind Perrin/Haas project, but if you insist.
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Obviously my english is too bad to precisely explain my thinking.

I'll try again some day, with outside help.

BTW, Foncalieu is going for 3000 ha of organic growing over the next years. A lot of brillant terroir wines in perspective, then.
And believe me they will play the partition organic growing = true, deeply terroir driven wines
Oh, I forgot : 6000 /ha of european subsidizes for going organic. That would be around 18 M. More money than if they sold the land... Motivations ?

Good for the soil at least, if they do what they signed for.
But for the real wines? 5 or 6 million bottles of an organic Languedoc or Roussillon at 1 each. Why bother with Fadat, Ledogar or Magnon wines?
 
originally posted by Brzme:

Obviously my english is too bad to precisely explain my thinking.
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Your point came through just fine, and for the most part I agree. Lets just not hang out the artisans who are believers in certification with the posers.
 
Eric, my problem isn't your point, with which I largely agree, and it's not a matter of your English. My problem is applying it to Tablas Creek, which is doing as well or better than just about anyone else in their region (if I may piss off yet another wine region in its entirety; Paso, give Walla Walla a call), both in terms of practices and in terms of making good wines (it's far too early to know if they're making terroir wines or not). I don't see the point in dumping on them because some huge (and theoretical; I don't want the lawsuit) producer in Sonoma is making crappy, industrial, yet "organic" or "sustainable" wines. Tablas Creek is so far from the problem you're identifying that it's not even connected to the conversation. When the California industry has matured a lot more and we can talk about whether or not Tablas Creek is expressing their terroirs and doing the best they can with real (vs. in-name-only) organic/sustainable viticulture, we can also discuss how well or badly they're working within the philosophy you'd prefer.

But until that point, I agree with Jason Haas' argument as well: there are a lot of wineries using the buzzwords without actually doing anything other than what the exceedingly denuded law (far worse than France's, I believe) allows. Tablas Creek, for better or worse and rightly or wrongly, thinks that they're actually doing the right/organic thing because it makes better wines, not because they have a marketing advantage (which I don't think they actually have as a result). If your point is that they're faking it, then that's one thing, though in that case you know more about their viticulture than I do. If your point is that they should say what they're doing until they achieve some arbitrary standard of wine quality, then that's also OK, but I don't think it's possible given the age of their region and their vines. And if your point is that they're representing the mercenary side of the faux-green movement in winemaking, I have to disagree with you. Even if they're not doing all they could, they're doing much better than most others, and I don't see the value in crapping on them because they're only the best in their region but not as good as...I dunno, Cornelissen.

Or, as we say in English, don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
 
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