European regulations do not yet provide a production specification for organic wine, although this has been discussed for a long time now. So far, consumers can buy wine made from organic grapes which, even if incomplete in the winemaking process, ensure a vineyard cultivation technique that respects the environment and, above all, guarantees greater expressiveness to the wines.
Therefore, one can only speak of wine produced from organic grapes and not of organic wine.
Organic wine does not exist
However, by cultivating vineyards organically, the use of many substances is excluded that, besides worsening the quality of the grapes, denature them, that is, detach them from the production territory.
In organic vineyards, chemical herbicides cannot be used, so besides promoting life in the vineyard, this creates root competition that often results in a favorable, spontaneous reduction in yield per hectare and therefore better quality.
Endotherapeutic pest treatments (which penetrate inside the plant) cannot be used, thus avoiding their possible presence inside the berries and, most importantly, harmful chemical insecticides are avoided.
But one of the important aspects is the exclusion of chemical fertilizers. These fertilizers based onNitrogen, Phosphorus e Potassium create vigorous, thirsty vines and grapes that are always too diluted, lacking flavor.
The farmer who uses these fertilizers becomes increasingly dependent on them because they are the only source of presumed production quality, actually producing flavorless grapes more sensitive to parasite attacks that prefer well-nourished and unventilated plants.
Everything added to the vineyard (and also to the wine) actually subtracts!!
It subtracts the important link of the vineyard, the grape, and therefore the wine to the production territory and thus to uniqueness and typicity.
Also thecloning of vineyards, that is the use of grape varieties that have undergone clonal selection, contributes to this, as does the use of so-called international grape varieties at the expense of indigenous and thus unique varieties.
Last but not least is the maintenance of vineyard landscapes that in organic and biodynamic agriculture are more complete because they practically prevent the overly intensive development of the vineyard, leaving space for other crops and especially forests that are sources of insects and birds indispensable for the biological control of pests. If viticultural areas had been cultivated more in an organic and biodynamic manner, they would hardly appear as endless aligned vineyards between one highway toll booth and another as has happened in some areas producing famous Italian DOC wines.
Organic and biodynamic agriculture
Organic and biodynamic agriculture greatly reduces yield per hectare, avoids production excesses, surpluses, subsequent stockpiling, and price drops.
The chase for high production has pushed the expansion of historically hilly vineyard areas to very fertile and poorly suitable flat lands, and the planting of international varieties used to improve quality lost due to increased production of indigenous varieties. All this has produced increasingly diluted, denatured wines, without soul, and above all lacking the connection to the original territory and therefore more vulnerable to competition because standardized.
The quality of organic and biodynamic grapes is clearly superior to conventional ones, but this is not enough, because with the winemaking process, the link to the territory and everything painstakingly maintained in the vineyard risks being lost.
Since there is no winemaking specification for organic wine, one can find in the market wines of poor quality or made very industrially that have lost any reference link to the territory.
It takes little to ruin a wine: use of selected yeasts, especially highly aromatic ones; use of extraction enzymes, oenological tannins of various kinds and flavors; reckless use of clarifiers (gelatin, casein, bentonite, etc.); wood chips of various flavors and aromas; inadequate filtration that does not preserve the wine; and last but not least, high doses of sulfur dioxide. This is why some “natural wine” movements have emerged.
