Biodynamics is a Hoax

originally posted by Thor:
If you can, treat yourself. I find that nothing destroys an open mind about biodynamie more quickly and thoroughly than a few hours with Joly.
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Maybe I've been putting it off... closest I ever got to a face-to-face was the carpark of his domaine where my wife, feeling the full effects of pregnancy's early stages, lost most of her spinach salad behind a conveniently located shrub.
My guess, it was fate. Either that, or it wasn't a Leaf Day.

I doubt even Joly's zeal would turn me fully against BD.
From what I've seen, BD unquestionably "works". By "works" I mean that the use of BD protocols is not inimical to the production of wine at the highest quality levels.
Having been through UCD and having spent a lot of time in New World wine-producing regions, I have a hard time saying the same about a completely scientific, mechanistic approach to winemaking.

Regards,
 
originally posted by Bruce G.:
the use of BD protocols is not inimical to the production of wine at the highest quality levels.
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This statement is beyond dispute. The examples overflow the proof.
 
originally posted by Bruce G.:

I doubt even Joly's zeal would turn me fully against BD.
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Not to discourage you from the full experience, but for me it wasn't his zeal, it was the utter vacuity of content of his endless arguments.

But don't let me spoil it for you, I hope you have another opportunity.
 
my wife, feeling the full effects of pregnancy's early stages, lost most of her spinach salad behind a conveniently located shrub
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I wouldn't bet against a recurrence of this response.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
Not to discourage you from the full experience, but for me it wasn't his zeal, it was the utter vacuity of content of his endless arguments.

But don't let me spoil it for you, I hope you have another opportunity.
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OK, it's back on my To Do list, but with reservations... zealotry I can deal with, but utter vacuity is a hard pill to swallow.
 
originally posted by Bruce G.:
By "works" I mean that the use of BD protocols is not inimical to the production of wine at the highest quality levels.
Regards,
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Don't you or shouldn't you limit that to "farming wine grapes"?

Isn't that also logistically a bit flawed? To go beyond "not inimical" to "works"?

As has been mentioned, I think a key factor is that BD physical practices qualify as organic. The dedication and commitment to quality BD practitioners usually exhibit may account for a significant amount of where the perceived high quality comes from. That plus the tendency to practice minimal or noninterventionist practices in the cellar, which are not a part of BD AFAIK. It seems a bit of a leap to ascribe all the benefits accrued through the chain of the process to BD. I've still yet to really hear anyone tease apart how BD specifically exceeds well conceived, masterfully executed organic farming. I think that's because no one can.

I'm unable to see how adequately controlled experiments could be designed that would reliably and repeatably distinguish BD from finely tuned organic farming. The fact that it is impossible to farm the same parcel of vines two ways for a season is a genuine obstacle. When one considers various terroirs and their different requirements, it seems that long established traditional local practices tuned to the particulars of the place could excel beyond BD and it's relative standardization.

Plus, it's not possible to scientifically evaluate the resulting wine in a meaningful way. There's only subjective evaluation, that's why we get stuck with well meaning anecdotal reports.

I'm prepared to indulge mysticism if I'm not also expected to pay a premium for it over equally rigorous organics.
 
I've seen several adjacent parcels where one is run organically and the other by bd. In each instance, over several years, the BD portion was healthier and more vigorous. That doesn't constitute scientific proof but it was empirically impressive.

Organic farming is simply a statement of what you cannot do. The reason everyone used to spread so much chemical crap in their vineyards was that vines need, require and demand management. Working organically tells you what not to do, but it does not propose an alternative regiment of care, treatments, tenderness, nurturing and disease resistance.

This is why so many people turn to BD. At least it gives them a routine and something that has visibly worked for many growers. Even the more extreme practitioners seem totally reasonable to me. Guy Bossard is a wonderful guy who doesn't seem to have a cultist bone in his body. I leave judgements about Nicolas Joly to others folks.

Didier Barouillet and other growers are trying to find other organic methods to cultivate their vines that go further than BD. But as Didier is fond of pointing out, anything that brings a vigneron closer to their vines is a good thing.

We hear at Wine disorder have the luxury of not having to maintain vineyards and can just sit back, drink and enjoy the year's work of people who are trying to do the best they can through some hard physical work. This is not to say we have to suspend scientific judgement while we jeebus intesnively, but it might be nice to maintain a healthy agnosticism while others try to figure out the optimal time to plough, prune and pick.
 
originally posted by Thor:
I see no problem with hypothesis 1
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Mathematicians do.

hypothesis 2 sounds out of character
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Drinking buddies, were you?

hypothesis 3 is always a possibility but who can say with any confidence?
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This has been pretty thoroughly answered by the people who can.

not consistent with an open mind
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Did you know that Europa is made of cheese, and populated by tiny unicorns? I mean, who can say with any confidence?
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I'm just going to register that I'm with Claude on this and so are the histories of science I've read. Fermat stated a theorem and stated (no doubt fallaciously) that he could prove it but didn't have the space. The fact that he couldn't prove it didn't make the theorem incorrect. Everyone thought it was correct because, as high as they calculated, and they calculated pretty high, it was correct. They just couldn't prove why it was correct. The mathematicians I know did think the theorem was correct and were excited when Stiles proved it precisely because he had solved a long standing problem, how to prove a theorem that people knew was right but didn't know why.
 
originally posted by John DeFiore:
Really well said, Joe. Unfortunately there are instances where there are lots of dollars spent and time wasted on these "Earth, round or flat?" type questions. For example, the US government spent $2.5 billion doing controlled experiments into alternative medicine treatments. The result was that nearly none of the alternative treatments worked: MSNBC STORY

Now some of those may have been worth investigating, but $2.5 billion? Found nothing? Likely a lot of the money was spent to find that the earth is still round.

What's worse is the money and effort spent on all the controversy about vaccines causing autism. First it was the thimerisol preservative. They removed thimerisol, and autism rates stayed the same. Now they contend it's the combination of childhood vaccines that cause it. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and the retraction and discrediting of the original papar suggesting the link, the vaccine/autism people won't let go. There are still lots of dollars that could be going to legitimate autism research going to prove that vaccines don't cause it.

Why is that?

John
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Democracy and adversarial procedure can be wasteful in the short run, but they often prove less bad than the alternatives in the long run.
 
originally posted by Ned Hoey:
Don't you or shouldn't you limit that to "farming wine grapes"?

Isn't that also logistically a bit flawed? To go beyond "not inimical" to "works"?
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Ned:

I see no need to set the bar of "proof" all that high.
The practices contained within the BD program are at worst benign. And if many of the people that employ such practices feel it is important for them to do so, all the while turning out some stunning wines, then who am I to argue?

If engineers suddenly started using BD to design and maintain commercial fleets of airplanes I'd find some other form of transportation.
But this is fine wine.... inspiration, artistry, and passion are as important as an understanding of the basics of wine chemistry.

Cheers,
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:

Democracy and adversarial procedure can be wasteful in the short run, but they often prove less bad than the alternatives in the long run.
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No argument there. My only point was that once there's enough evidence that the earth is round, let's stop spending money to see if it's flat and start spending that money on the next question. If later some good, valid reason comes up to make us think that the earth has flattened out, we can go back and check, but only because there's a reason, not because some celebrity or corporate special interest tells us to.

John
 
originally posted by Bruce G.:

If engineers suddenly started using BD to design and maintain commercial fleets of airplanes I'd find some other form of transportation.

Cheers,
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Maybe instead of maintaining the engines they can bury a Sears Craftsman wrench under the plane during a full moon and that will get the job done.

The plane will still work fine. For a while. Anyone want to test it out?

John
 
originally posted by Joe Dressner:
I've seen several adjacent parcels where one is run organically and the other by bd. In each instance, over several years, the BD portion was healthier and more vigorous. That doesn't constitute scientific proof but it was empirically impressive.

Organic farming is simply a statement of what you cannot do. The reason everyone used to spread so much chemical crap in their vineyards was that vines need, require and demand management. Working organically tells you what not to do, but it does not propose an alternative regiment of care, treatments, tenderness, nurturing and disease resistance.

This is why so many people turn to BD. At least it gives them a routine and something that has visibly worked for many growers. Even the more extreme practitioners seem totally reasonable to me. Guy Bossard is a wonderful guy who doesn't seem to have a cultist bone in his body. I leave judgements about Nicolas Joly to others folks.

Didier Barouillet and other growers are trying to find other organic methods to cultivate their vines that go further than BD. But as Didier is fond of pointing out, anything that brings a vigneron closer to their vines is a good thing.

We hear at Wine disorder have the luxury of not having to maintain vineyards and can just sit back, drink and enjoy the year's work of people who are trying to do the best they can through some hard physical work. This is not to say we have to suspend scientific judgement while we jeebus intesnively, but it might be nice to maintain a healthy agnosticism while others try to figure out the optimal time to plough, prune and pick.
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This gets to the heart of what I was trying to say yesterday. Most vignerons are not scientists, and we here like it like that. All they can offer up as proof is their wines, and if that doesn't satisfy, they have nothing more to say than "it works for me" as they wake up at six in the morning to prune, pick, or burn the skin of a boar as the case may be.
 
originally posted by John DeFiore:
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:

Democracy and adversarial procedure can be wasteful in the short run, but they often prove less bad than the alternatives in the long run.
Click to expand...

No argument there. My only point was that once there's enough evidence that the earth is round, let's stop spending money to see if it's flat and start spending that money on the next question. If later some good, valid reason comes up to make us think that the earth has flattened out, we can go back and check, but only because there's a reason, not because some celebrity or corporate special interest tells us to.

John
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There's a difference between spending money to investigate whether the earth is round, which is a settled question (with a couple of outliers), and whether alternative medicines (although I'm not completely sure what you mean by this here) may be effective, which isn't.

The chief difficulty is, who gets to decide when there's enough evidence, and when something's been settled. You? Me? My friends? Sarah Palin? Our political system is a godawful mess, but people don't appear to have invented a better approach to this kind of decision-making yet. I'm not willing to accept the contemporary Chinese model, for example, as superior.
 
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