ORGANIC, BIODYNAMIC and NATURAL Wine - The Wine Experience
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- Check out my websites:
meinelese.de
meinelese.de/blog/
Follow me on ...:
/ konstantin.baum
/ konstantinbaum_mw
I am going back to the roots with another The Wine Experience Video on a topic that I recently had a long and slightly confusing conversation about: The difference between organic, biodynamic, and natural wine …
Thank you for joining me today on this beautiful morning, afternoon, or evening depending on when you are watching this video
If you are new to this channel then welcome. Consider subscribing as it is free and your opportunity to learn more about wine. If you are a returning visitor then nice to see you again! So what is the point of organic, biodynamic, and natural wines? Every movement has its counter-movement and the organic movement started at the beginning of the 20th century as a reaction to industrialization.
The impact of large-scale production and urbanization became more and more visible and some farmers and consumers became more concerned with the industrialization of agriculture in general. The use of synthesized fertilizer - invented by Justus von Liebig in the 19th century and developed for mass production at the beginning of the 20th century changed farming. And some farmers worried about the impact of those changes on the quality of the food and the health of the environment.
Great summary on the three forms of wine making. One point I’d like to add, the health of the vineyard workers is also protected when owners decide to not use chemicals in their vineyards.
I agree.
@@KonstantinBaumMasterofWine me too!!!!
"Looks familiar?" LOL
😉
This topic was on our to do list. I enjoyed listening to your perspective on these popular wines. When they aren’t flawed, they can be amazing wines.
Thanks Pat!
This peculiar world of wine-TH-camrs so small still. Love it.
You guys should do a blind tasting session of some well-known natural wines altogether with Peter also :D Think he might be in for some laughable comments
Agreed, but they are often overpriced for the experience they deliver. L’hurluberlu by Sebastian David is the best example I have encountered. A blind tasting of natural wines would be extremely interesting!
One of the best balanced and fair discussions on the topic
very informative
You said the exact statement I have made many times in the past while at school when biodynamics were brought up! I very firmly believe the reason wines made that way are often interesting and quite good is because you are forced to spend more time being proactive in the vineyard versus trying to fix shit later in the cellar. The best viticulture philosophy I've seen combines the level of proactive care from organic growing without the restraints it enforces....minimize the amount of ammendments needed but use whatever you need to when things inevitably get missed.
Great balanced explanation. I agree that biodynamic in particular likely only works, if it does at all, because it forces winemakers to pay more attention, like taking the training wheels off your bike. However, in my experience natural wine almost always gives a (far) inferior product for the money - for it to make any sense you have to value the philosophy, which I don't. Which isn't a problem except for the trend of restaurants in London to have all-natural wine lists, which means I don't enjoy them. (Cue loads of people saying I just haven't had the right natural wines: I've had loads including many served by some prominent somms in fancy restaurants, and I've formed this opinion after a lot of wines.)
This was such a great video and really represents my opinions on the subject. Biodynamic puts the winemaker in the vineyard more so the grapes get more attention. My personal qualifications for a natural wine are, organically farmed, wild yeast fermentation, unfiltered.
Thank you. Very helpful information!!
Thanks Konstantin, this is by far one of the best video explanations on these 3 types of viticulture systems. Many thanks for taking the time to simplify what many find complicated to understand.
Thank you!
Really enjoy the way you deliver information
really good videos! very interesting! thank you!
Great explanation konstantin
Great session, thanks.
Konstantin I thank you natural WINE for me 😊
Thank you for that perspective!!
Thank you!
I have a few winemaker friends who completely agree with the comments at 5:17. But they all agree, it's doing something. I had 1 winemaker say "The dirt just smells different". The certification process is costly for small wineries so many wineries will forgo it, but farm Biodynamicly anyway. Its the norm now. Lots of wineries do not want to pay for the certification because they want to be able to use drastic (inorganic) methods if a catastrophe strikes in the vineyard threatening the entire crop
I think orgnic farming in general is good so I'm all for it in winemaking also.
Biodynamic wine I have no problem with either. But it should be clear that the quality of the wine is due to the fact they take good care of the vineyard and not due to the moon, arbitrary positions of planets or any of the other nonesense they do.
Natural wine I also have no problem with. I only have a problem with natural wine when there are obvious off-flavours that are sold to me as "rustic", "full of character/personality" or some other fairytale which do happen quite a bit at for instance bars specializing in natural wines.
In short, I like wine as long as it's good and free of humbug.
Very helpful video. I have been making wine for 12 years. I have tried to stay away from using any chemicals. We just buy the grapes, destem and crush them. I don't kill the wild yeast but I do add a package of high grade yeast to ferment the wine. We don't use any clearning agents, but we do put a little egg white in the carboys. That really helps clear up the wine. The grapes we buy come from Lodi CA, so I would guess they have been sprayed. I wish I could buy some organic grapes to make my wine from. We only make reds. Thanks.
I bought a lot of biodynamic wines from a local vintner here on the Central Coast and they were great, but I stopped because an unacceptable percentage of the bottles were spoiled.
Love your content Konstantin 🙏. I was trying to figure out whether the stuff I have in my cellar is organic or biodynamic (I know I don’t have any natural) but found the process of going through each and every one of the websites for the vineyards confusing. For instance some of the Bordeaux I have has a HVE certification which seems to be on the way to becoming organic but not quite organic? Is there a resource somewhere where it’s easily available whether a given vineyard uses each of these techniques? And also what does all of these other certifications like the HVE mean? Would make for a great video 🤓.
"Looks familiar!?" I lost it
😉
I’m new to your channel and I’m impressed by you balanced view on bio / biodynamic/ natural wine ! I could not agree more with your (once again) balanced position. I feel that this topic has divided the wine community with extreme positions. The first question should always be : do i like the wine ? Then if it is bio/ biodynamic Or even nature Fantastic, but if not it’s ok as well. Congrats for you videos
Thank you Yannick!
HI, very interesting as today this a very popular topic. Thanks
Glad you enjoyed it
@@KonstantinBaumMasterofWine Sure!!!
Finally someone talking straight. Too many misleading informations out there rhese days
Thanks!
Ahhhh the way to stir up conversation, emotions, and strong opinions amongst wine geeks - biodynamics and natural wine :p
Yes, tricky topic.
Many Asian wine drinkers or even connoisseurs don't care too much about this topic. The taste and the price matter the most, then the brand (for more average drinkers).
A lot of what I appreciate about natural wines is these supposed "flaws". Give me a super funky wine any day. I recognize that many of these wines may not be conventionally what's considered good by a master of wine but some of us enjoy just drinking wine and don't necessarily always look for a specific set of criterias in every wine we drink. I fell in love with the unique flavours that are sometimes found in natural wines and I could care less how it fits in Robert Parker's vision. If enjoying wine is about as much the taste as it is about a connection to terroir, no wine can make you feel that connection like a natural wine can. Biodynamic, however, is pretty much esoteric hogwash and any biodynamic wine that is good probably owes more to the organic process and minimal intervention than it does to the crystals they buried in the soil and moon calendars...
Amen. Very articulate and reasoned evaluation of what can be dogmatic bs.
Thank you.
I wonder if growers are sick and tired of making "Robert Parker" wines to please the market, and as artists, year to create something "pure" in their pursuit of expression of their fruit.
Artists sometimes have to do portraits on the streets to bring food to the table, but privately, they are passionate about creating art work that pleases only themselves. I can totally respect that. As such, the pursuit of these wines should be viewed with appreciation to their artistic expression, and not judged on their QPR.
I think that most producers look for success in the market as they have to make a living. They sometimes or often have to adjust their style from what they like to what their customers want.
Very interesting thematic. My family has vineyard and we use only fungicide as an industrial products. Years ago we used copper based antifungal agent called blue stone, so it is possible. For the wine to go into bottle is very difficult to stay unoxidized, but we are drinking young unbotled wine directly from the cask without using a single molecule of SO2. It doesn't oxidise and doesn't spoil for months after production except you pour it in bottle and keep it for several days without drinking.
Yes, it is possible to make stable wine without SO2
Where is your family's vineyard?
@@EricZeak
Struma valley, Bulgaria
Great video as per usual and I agree with overall sentiment. from my experience, any winemaker that is trying to push either Bio, Organic or “Natural Wine” as their marketing strategy usually wine ends up been mediocre. on the other hand, winemakers that use organic way of making things and end up with amazing wines, never have to brag about it.
Thank you.
So how are we supposed to tell exactly how the wine is made without the label then? No label leaves room for deception. Some ppl want the healthiest wine possible.
Waited for this video🌚❤️
Excellent!
I really have my problems with biodynamic wine and I was really suprised that you said that there are studies which show that biodynamic wine is in a way better. The only study I have heard of is that someone at the University of Geisenheim planted three small vinyards an grew wine on one of them in a conventional way, in another in an organic way and in a third in a biodynamic way and found out that it has no influence on the taste of the wine. Maybe it could be, that the average biodynamically produced wines are better then the average conventionally produced ones because most of those guys who produce their wine this way also try to do a lot of other things to enhance their quality apart from that biodynamic stuff and so I suppose one has to compare biodynamically produced wines to organic or conventional produced wines of wine makers that are also really trying to get the best out of their grapes.
Don't get me wrong, I am really happy that more and more producers try to help the environment with their way of producing wine but I also think that this biodynamic thing is just some kind of hocus-pocus and I often ask myself whether all this biodynamic wine makers are so much in need of the money of those esoterics that they do these things because I cannot really believe that there are so many wine makers wo really believe the ideas of Steiner themselves.
Completely agree. The "science“ behind it is really really bad. It’s really bonkers stuff and there’s no way this biodynamic makes more sense than general biological farming!
@@feelinggrape I think you are missing the point. Biodynamic farming/viticulture is not a science, nor it can or wants to be proven with science.
@@gianmarcodemartino8079 If it does not want to be proven so why do so many biodynamic farmers say that these things work? If you say that something works and it cannot be proven or you do not want it to be proven and you still say it works you just sound ridiculous to others so they should prove it or not talk about it. Apart from that I know at least one wine maker from the Mosel Region who tells others that all this stuff of Steiner would be science.
@@gianmarcodemartino8079 if people claim things work, they have to be scientifically viable. If they’re not, they’re purely esoteric and no better than praying or believing in fairies.
Thanks, Alex. Biodynamic wines are not necessarily better or do not have to taste different from conventional wines, There are studies out today that show that biodynamic farming has a positive impact on soil life, root growth, and grape quality. It is however difficult to put together a study in a vineyard that proves anything definitively because there are so many factors outside of your control.
Thanks for sharing Konstantin, any domains/names in mind when you say that there are out there some conventional winemakers that also respect what I like to call 'life'?
Interesting Jeremy Irons cameo at 3:24
Wow...That is a lot of information at one time....I guess I don't know what each tastes like bio, organic or natural...I hear a lot of people that try to sell sulfite free wines - but like you say it does occur naturally..I just don't have a clue...I just know what I like and don't after I taste it.
Thanks
I just pressed my first grapes from this year’s vendage. I’ll let them mascerate for a few days before straining. I usually add some yeast and sugar to punch up the alcohol, as this is a dessert wine foe Christmas. No worries. We’ll just see.
How did it go?
Hi Konstanitin, I'm a passionate young hospo guy from Australia. I love your content and experience with wine, I have some cool and fun ideas based around the comparison between old world wine and the more up and coming new world styles over here in Australia and Nz. If you would like to venture in to that let me know, I'm not a wine rep loaded with samples and money but would be willing to buy and send some blind samples out of passion and interest. Love what you do ❤
Really interesting presentation. I also watched your one rating Vivino sourced wines (20 mins after I joined Vivino 😏)
One thing that may be worth investigating is wine rankings by country . Here in Australia we love our big smooth reds and often find Euro reds a bit ‘weak and wishy washy’. I’m not sure (i.e. I’m not an expert… just know what I enjoy) that you might view Aussie reds as ‘overdone’ and ‘lacking complexity’ !
My favourite everyday red right now is Grant Burge Barossa Ink Shiraz 2020.
Love to hear how you rate it and your description of it as a way to educate my pallet . 😬
I would love to taste it!
Bravo, excellent perspective and explanation. May I please use your words when describing natural wines to my customers? Thank you
Sure!
I'm an advocate of " Natural" wine aka low to no intervention. Nothing added nothing taken away but.... Natural elements that need to be introduced during the process to save the wine and their lively hood is necessary and I condone it, to be or not to be ? I love Ancestral wine but also love a good bottle of Dom. And funky reds from Cote Rotie that are natural
take us a tour in this room
it looks nice
I will do that.
Got to say really enjoy your channel. Got a question regarding breathing wines prior to drinking them. How does one know how long a wine needs to breath before drinking it? Some wine you can open and drink yet others may need up to 6+ hrs of decanting before it’s ready. How are we supposed to know. How long would you breath a bottle of 1986 Château Lafite
Thank you! I do not think that wine needs to breathe in general. Sometimes it is interesting to see the wine develop in glass throughout the evening. Decanting helps accelerate this process, and you will have to do trial and error to find the "right" time frame to decant a wine on a wine per wine basis. Always taste the wine before decanting it and then decide A. If you want to decant it and B. how long you think it will take to open up.
I'm seeing more vineyard's go biodynamic here in California, including some high end producers.
Yes, it is becoming more and more popular.
Is so true, that good natural wine doesn't taste like natural wine. There is a current misperception, that natural wine should be musty and smell funky. I agree that the little" imperfections" are making unique wines and interesting but in the extreme creates uniformity and non-originality.
The goal is to take good care of the soil in your garden or vineyard. Exactly how you do this is up to you.
That "look familiar?" sent me B 🤣👃
Does any of this classifications disregards the use of barriques for the fermentation or aging process?
No!
There is an issue with Organic wines, as follows: If you start a winery but either don't know what you are doing or you don't have the resources for good wine (such as the soil or climate, and very young vines) then despite that you can only make terrible wine, you CAN make it organic and use that selling point. I am not saying all or even most organic wines fall into this pit, but it's something to watch-out-for.
Great video again gotta say Probably beacause they need to spend more time in the vinyards. Only thing that matters is that it tastes better.
Thanks!
I switched to only organic foods and cut out all processed sulpher containing foods, only ate meat fruit and vege, no dairy or grains… and then i also switched to only certified organic bio-dynamic preservative free vegan wines (it had to qualify for all of those things) and initially it was so different i really didn’t like it… it often had a very slight fizz, very bacterial alive… but after persistence and having 24 different wines I started to like them all more and more, and then when i switched back to top conventional wines they all tasted dead and waxxy to me… it was so odd…its almost like my microbiome and healthy bacteria changed during my 3 months of drinking these natural wines and now I don’t feel like im drinking real wine unless its got that alive feeling… i think so much of how we experience wine has to do with our individual microbiomes, our diets, and what strains of healthy bacteria we have or do not have.
Which wine company did you find that you like ? Thank you.
shaving your head made you gain 3 points of hotness.
I like the idea of using as many natural processes as possible in winemaking, but I think these terms have become sort of like a gimmick. I thought it was interesting when you brought up maybe being able to taste the difference in the biodynamic wines. Can you taste a difference in the others? Organic vs non-organic for example.
Not between Organic and Conventional and I would not say that I can taste the difference consistently between Biodyn and Conventional. Between Natural and Conventional yes.
Out of curiosity, what's the dollar value for a gram of that preparation? Asking for a friend.
I've tried a few natural wines, and I've also once worked together with a former wine merchant who used to import a quite famous natural wine to our country. He told me that due to how natural wines are made, you can't really judge a vintage from just 1 bottle, as there's much more variation in natural wines from bottle to bottle as compared to conventional wines - what is your take on this?
Yes, bottle variation is very common amongst natural wine producers just because the wine is less stable.
@@KonstantinBaumMasterofWine Doesn't that negate the winemaker's art completely...?
Blind taste of bio vs "normal" 🍷?
but in the same type of glass, the fav one :)
Good idea!
Battle of the Wines should do the matchup - check out how they side by side blind taste
M’y english is ont Good but i totally agree with organic, biodynamie, « natural » wines. I prefer biodynamie wine, I don’t wannna buy a no organic wine, nore natural wine brettanomyces or other réduction or default.
Thumbs up for 4:32
That came as a surprise ^^
Thank you, which are your favourite organic wineries in Europe?
😉
"Looks familiar?" 🤣🤣🤣
I'm eating powdered donuts and drinking a pepsi while watching this.
honest question: why the sweet wines wouldn't be stable without added so2? is there a rule? can someone forward me to some books or something? I'm genuinely curious
Due to residual sugar it would more likely than not referment in the bottle without added SO2
Yes, Jacob is right. It is very difficult to stabilize a wine with residual sugar without SO2 and/or sterile filtration. There are yeasts left in the wine that would start refermenting it as soon as they can and then you end up with a fizzy wine or with pushed-out corks.
Great video! I’m a server for a restaurant. Can you teach me how you sell wine to people?
Thanks. Yes, I could ... maybe I will make a video on this topic.
I would think knowing the grape varietals and their general characteristics will help you gain the trust of your customers. Then, knowing the dishes and their sauces would help you to make informed recommendations. So, yah, it does take some work.
Don't care as long as they taste great🤔🧐
The quality is very important to me too. But I care about what the winery does in the vineyard. They do not have to be Organic though
Does anyone else want to rack that silica
Really, "natural" yeasts (as in yeasts floating in the air inoculating the juice) depend where you are. I suspect if you try this in Bordeaux you may catch some yeasts from the local wineries so it isn't all that natural after all. Maybe if you live near a big bakery you could catch some bread yeasts (again, engineered). So unless you live in some remote town in the middle of nowhere the yeast in nature may not be 100% "natural". I say "natural" because most wine yeasts ARE natural, just gathered, replicated, and packaged for certain purposes. It is only recently that bio engineered yeasts have come about and they are still rare.
Sure, reducing fining agents can be a good thing, but those are generally "made from nature" products which is essentially what beef is - made from a natural product.
Wine making is largely a natural process be it in a local winery or some giant corporation (after all it is all just grape juice and yeast). Yes, we should definitely reduce insecticides and fertilizers in the fields to save our water supplies. But beyond that it is largely a sales tactic.
@Brett Ware I specifically asked a wine maker once if I change the local yeast in the air around me by making wine and she said yes. She may be wrong. Dunno. I assume some escapes into the environment. But at the very least the local yeast in Bourdeaux is not the same as in Michigan
Yes, ambient yeast can come from anywhere that is correct.
Wine, of course, is not natural, since it doesn't occur randomly in nature but Natural wine is still the best way to describe what a growing section of inspiring modern winemakers are about. I can't find a better word for it, and interestingly, the same name appears all over the world in all different languages and the meaning is the same wherever you go: no intrants, and minimal human intervention. Can you taste the difference? god yes. Can I taste a biodynamic produced wine? No. But it's a personal thing I suppose, to want to support people making a special effort and having a higher respect of natural and cosmological conditions. I quite like the principles behind it, and their vineyards usually do look quite spectacular compared to a more traditional one. I have just planted 500 vines myself and can't wait to produce something out of it (2024) !
I think that minimal intervention wine is more accurate but it does not roll off the tongue quite as well as "natural".
Good wine is good wine. At the moment, I find the vibrancy and freshness of natural wines (wines made from grape juice and indigenous yeast with as little added sulphites as posible, preferably none) to make me go "MMH!" more often than conventional, bio or even biodynamic wines. I happen to have an importer of natural wines who has a strong portfolio close by, so it is not that often I encounter the flaws that "natural wines" are prone to suffer from.
Yes, drink what you like!
What is the wine you are drinking please ?
Seine antroposophische Medizin ist genauso wie die Homöopathie exakt der Gegensatz einer evidenzbasierten Medizin, sowas positiv zu konnotieren finde ich sehr sehr schwierig
organic viticulture is the way to go. we already know that monoculture is not the best option to keep the soil healthy for farming, and the long term effects of using pesticides and fertilizers are too costly (for the environment and for the workers that are exposed), so why not apply that to wine production?
the "biodynamic term" can be misused as a marketing strategy, but if it's the real deal, then I have nothing against it. who goes THAT far; allowing their crops to grow in a slower pace than the other producers', while choosing to plant and harvest according to the phases of the moon, must surely have some respect for nature and its cycles. so that's always a bonus. biodynamic farming techniques may be related to Rudolph Steiner's research, but they've been present since ancient civilizations (like ancient egyptians and pre-columbians). also, physics shows us how the moon impacts the tides through its gravitational pull, so maybe it does affect farming in more ways than we know yet.
on natural wine: maybe that's how wine should taste. or not. I really don't know. but adding preservatives to a drink that naturally wouldn't last that long makes me think of those long shelf-life UHT milk. and I really like the idea of using the grapes' present natural yeasts to ferment it. the taste of wine does matter, but perhaps with time and research, natural wine will become better tasting.
also, how was wine produced centuries ago? I'd like to know more about that and what were the things they might've added to improve "shelf-life" and flavor.
Yes, I agree but organic viticulture has its downsides too. For example the use of copper. Sulfur has been used in winemaking at least since the Romans. People have added other things to wine to make it more stable but sulfur has proven itself as the best option.
To me it crazy to call a wine Natural just because you do not add sulphur in the cellar. Doing so only at bottling makes a big difference to the style and only using indigenous spontaneous fermentation and no additives or coldfiltration is in my opinion/experience essential to any interesting terroir wine. But to be Natural surely you must also not add heavy metals or synthetics in the vinyard. Here even organic falls short w the Bordeaux mixture of copper and sulphur. You must go beyond this. And then there is the question of the difference between different sources of sulphur. It is not black and white, but most “natural” wines are definately not natural or pure…wines can not be made without physical interventions, but can be made well without additives or filtration…in the end for me it comes down to two three things; authenticity, health and taste…and ultimately sustainability…
I usually like natural wine. But in my opinion it’s often used as an excuse to produce shitty wine
This is a very objective approach to this complex matter. Indeed, many people get confused about those three different categories of wines. However, with all due respect, you shouldn't use the word 'conventional' for systemic or agrochemical viticulture. Conventional implies a convention, i.e., an agreement, and I am sure you would agree that it is not the case. Furthermore, irrespective of its deleterious impact on the environment spreading biocides exposes agricultural workers to unsanitary conditions, which can seriously affect their health. Out of respect for them, agrochemical viticulture cannot be supported. Delicious wines (and I've tasted many in the past) that harm the health of the people who work to produce them deserve only our contempt. It is a question of humanity. Indeed, if everything must be done to feed the population of our planet, nothing obliges us to destroy it for a pleasure product.
Thanks. Conventional Viticulture is the term that is most widely used for anything that is not organic viticulture. It is conventional because organic viticulture still represents a small fraction of all viticulture. That does not mean, though, that all conventional viticulture is the same. There are conventional wineries that farm their land according to organic principles but want to have flexibility in bad years and there are some, that use way too many toxic products in the vineyard.
@@KonstantinBaumMasterofWine You are right, "the usual way of doing things" is one of the multiple meanings of the word conventional. However, the decades of agrochemical cultivation weigh little compared to the millennial practices of viticulture. From a purely semantic point of view, can we, therefore, use this word to describe a temporary phenomenon, very controversial and undoubtedly in the process of disappearing? Especially since the other meanings of conventional always refer to the notion of agreement. On reflection, we must strive to find a word better suited to describe these practices. What can you propose?