Organic Archives

Sustainable, Organic, and Biodynamic Wine

These days, wine drinkers are increasingly seeing the words sustainable, organic, and Biodynamic on wine bottles and in wine producers promotional materials. Stewardship of the land and the lack of chemicals sound appealing, and who doesn’t like something that is dynamic? But what, really, do these terms mean? In fact, they are not just amorphous “feel good” terms, but do have specific definitions as well as institutional certifications to go along with them.

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A Note About Vintages

Although you will see vintage dates throughout Winervana, I don’t put too much importance on them. Major producers these days strive for a consistent style, and largely succeed. (Especially in California, aided by the usually even climate there.) For instance, when shopping for a particular wine, if you have a choice between a current release and one that’s a few years old, there will certainly be differences in price and the character of the wine. But upon release, those two examples of the same wine are likely to be quite similar, especially for New World producers, who often enjoy more reliably consistent weather than Old World producers do. (Of course, global climate change may disrupt things for everybody.)

Wine Enthusiast has an interesting post about this here.