After spending the year learning some of the limits of regenerative wine, and reporting those in the Death in the Vineyard mini-series, I wanted to spend some time exploring what regenerative wine could be. This is a stand-alone episode, but it also functions as an epilogue to the Death In The Vineyard series.  The most important lesson I learned this year is that it is impossible to grow or make wine “regeneratively,” or even to grow organically or biodynamically in a meaningful way, or to make “natural” wine in any way that isn’t green-washing, unless you start with an ecological foundation. But what does that mean? What does an ecological approach to winegrowing and wine making look like? This episode looks at two brilliant and unique approaches to growing and making an ecological wine business. It is meant to excite and tempt and titillate you about how we could have a very different experience with wine. This episode is an invitation. I invite you to cultivate your imagination for what's possible, to think constructively of alternative perspectives on winegrowing, to recreate your understanding of what it means to be regenerative. I invite you into a new vision for wine. This episode and the others in this series took a lot of work to produce. If you'd like to support or sponsor them financially, this would be incredibly helpful to enabling me to continue to do this kind of investigating and reporting.  You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine

This episode is a conversation I got to have with Ariana Ross and James Sligh. Ariana you may remember from an earlier episode in which I talked to her about her treatise, Wine’s Way To Art, and James is the creator of and educator at The Children’s Atlas of Wine. This conversation is about what we talk about when we talk about wine, and it includes philosophy, history, politics, social justice, art criticism, and of course agriculture. You may learn some juicy historical tidbits that upend your understanding of what is classic or traditional in regards to wine, or some wines, and which wines get left out of these ideas and why. Rather than arriving at a consensus of ideas, I think we helped each other see the unanswered questions in each of our ideas, and we came away with a more expansive understanding of, at least, wine. And I hope you do too. https://childrensatlasofwine.com/ @childrensatlasofwine https://www.whoisariana.com/ You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine

My guest for this episode is Steve Matthiasson. This is the second time I’ve interviewed Steve, so I highly recommend listening to the first episode from about three years ago if you haven’t. Steve is the eponymous dude behind Matthiasson Wines, and maybe dude is the wrong title for Steve. He might be more of a punk rebel organic evangelist operating from inside the Cabernet Curtain in the heart of Napa Valley. Surprisingly for this podcast, you’re going to hear praise for James Suckling AND The Mondavi Family, and a hopeful outlook for classical wines in California despite climate change. But much more importantly, and less surprisingly, you’re going to hear numerous incredibly helpful technical vitiultural insights into how to farm grapes organically to make fresh, vibrant wines in an increasingly hotter world. Once again, I recommend getting out your notepad and pencil for this one. You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine

How do we reconcile the need to take life in order to grow life and survive?  What are the consequences of not growing wine ecologically, first? What does a vole infestation tell us about the human story? What role does death have in our winegrowing? Should regenerative viticulture, regenerative wine growing, attempt to reduce the amount of killing necessary to produce wine? This episode and the others in this series took a lot of work to produce. If you'd like to support or sponsor them financially, this would be incredibly helpful to enabling me to continue to do this kind of investigating and reporting.  You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine

Do humans have a vole infestation or do voles have a human infestation? This and other questions from this episode may haunt your dreams and have you wondering if maybe "regenerative winegrowing" is an oxymoron.  The big question of Part 2 of the Death In The Vineyard mini-series is "What are the regenerative solutions to all the things that want to eat our wine crops?" In trying to answer this question Part 2 looks at the cultural assumptions, language, beliefs, and prejudices that inform the way we currently see and relate to all of the lives that feed on our vines and trees.  Get ready to take a wrecking ball to your ideas about Integrated Pest Management, not to mention your assumptions about snakes.  Additionally, you'll get a list of practical tactics for preventing or stopping vole infestations or other plagues of rodents.  Don't listen to this episode unless you're ready to be a global leader in regenerative winegrowing and regenerative agriculture in general.  This episode and the others in this series took a lot of work to produce. If you'd like to support or sponsor them financially, this would be incredibly helpful to enabling me to continue to do this kind of investigating and reporting.  You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine

In this episode I get to talk to Abbey Chrystal, Ken Swegles & Cole Thomas of Madson Wines and Rhizos and Skyline Viticulture and a few other ventures. If you haven’t heard of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, you’re about to be introduced to a wine region unlike any other. I didn’t realize how special it was until Abbey, Ken, and Cole began describing it, and they may know it better than anyone else because between them they farm, make wine, and sell wine from up to over 50 vineyards around the AVA and have initiated transitions to better than organic farming on many area vineyards. The Madson Wines website says, “As a standard, all of the vineyards that we work with have been converted to 100% organic practices. We use only ecologically based pest controls and biological fertilizers including animal waste and nitrogen fixing cover crops to help regulate and maintain the health of soil microbes. Many of our vineyards were not organic prior to our adoption; we find that motivating vineyard owners to adopt organics is more rewarding than merely searching for growers who already understand its value. However, organic agriculture does not encompass all of the solutions for responsible agriculture. We must explore beyond the organic system to maintain and improve our surrounding ecosystems and communities.” It then goes on to talk about their goal to practice regenerative viticulture in an effort to help their farming evolve with the changing climate and mitigate the effects of climate change.  In addition to these very admirable farming values, these guys are kind, generous, and compassionate people with lots to share.  https://www.madsonwines.com/ https://www.rhizosconsulting.com/+ You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine

We’re going back to Michigan for this episode to talk to Andrew Backlin, the production mangager / winemaker of Modales Wines in Fenville, Michigan. You may have heard Andrew’s voice already if you listened to the first part of my special Death In the Vineyard series. Andrew introduced me to a little known fact outside of Michigan. Michigan farmers produce over 300 different kinds of crops, making Michigan the second most agriculturally diverse state in the US… after only California.  Andrew tells the story of Modales’ transition from conventional wine production just four years ago, to fully organic for the last three years and now certified… growing mostly vinifera. Their vineyard went from dead, round-up nuked hardpan with basically zero organic matter, to living, thriving, healthy soils with worms and a 400% increase in organic matter. You can hear in his voice and enthusiasm that his participation in regenerating this ecosystem has lit him up, and it’s infectious. On the other hand, he also doesn’t shy away from mentioning the big problems that still face winegrowers who want to do the right thing but who have inherited a large investment in vinifera in a temperate, humid climate that was made possible by chemistry. I want to mention just one of those issues as a call to action. Andrew at one point mentions the fact that because something like 95% of the wine in the US comes from the west coast where we don’t face problems like black rot, very little research and investment has gone into organic controls for black rot specifically, and it is the main Achilles heel of organic viticulture in humid climates. While I of course think grape breeding should be a primary effort to solve this and other fungal issues, the reality is that many hybrids also have issues with black rot, and there are very few hybrids that can tolerate this fungus in very wet years. And Andrew brings up several other great points about why better organic sprays are necessary given the current wine culture… unless the USDA wants to invest millions of dollars on marketing to create a new wine culture that’s not chauvinistic toward hybrids. Come to think of it, the USDA could sponsor this podcast to help with that effort…. A few other important things to know about Andrew… he’s a California native who moved to Michigan for wine. He gave me the inspiration and gentle kick in the butt to create the Beyond Organic Wine google group for anyone who is learning and trying to farm and make wine in more ecological, better than organic ways … and if you’d like to join, just log into google go to groups and search beyondorganicwine all one word with no spaces and ask to join. It’s a low key vibe community… no one is trying to sell anything, but we’re there when you have questions or important discoveries to share… and the more the merrier, healthier, and better at farming and winemaking we will be. So we hope to connect with you there. Finally, I have tried Andrew’s wines and I they are wines I can’t wait to buy again, and not just because I want to support their leadership in Michigan organic viticulture. They are delicious, diverse, and interesting. Andrew makes what he calls “natural wines that you don’t know are natural” for Modales. He has some classic cool-climate single variety wines, as well as some blends of vinifera and hybrids, sparkling and orange. And if you’d like to try them or, in my case, re-try them, Modales has created a 20% discount code that is good until the end of the year. The code is MODALESBOW20 for 20% off wine purchases until the end of 2024.  And you can purchase those wines at Modaleswines.com Now the one catch is that because of Michigan’s protectionist and litigious stance on interstate wine commerce, shipping is only available for those of you who live in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Florida, Arizona. The rest of us just need to go visit… apparently Michigan is worth the trip. As Andrew talks us through both the hopes and the realities of transitioning to organic vinifera viticulture in his climate, there’s as much to learn as be inspired by. Enjoy. Michigan is the #2 farming state in diversity of crops https://farmflavor.com/michigan/michigan-farm-to-table/diversity-of-michigan-agriculture/ https://modaleswines.com/ You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine

I experienced a vole infestation in a vineyard for the first time, and it has devastated my understanding of regenerative viticulture. In this first of a multi-part series called Death In the Vineyard, I talk to experts and winegrowers from all over the US about this adorable little creature, the vole, and the massive impact it has had historically and ecologically in our wine landscapes. As I follow the threads of truth that unravel before the voracious voles, they reveal some gaping holes in the fabric of our regenerative ideology. This episode and the ones to follow in this mini-series will question some of your most cherished beliefs and ideals about regenerative wine. If the regenerative movement is to survive, I believe we need to begin answering the questions that voles are asking of us.  This episode and the others in this series took a lot of work to produce. If you'd like to support or sponsor them financially, this would be incredibly helpful to enabling me to continue to do this kind of investigating and reporting.  You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine

“Thinking like a vine,” is a motto that Paul Rolt and Jemma Vickers of Hebron Vineyard in Wales, UK farm by. Hebron Vineyard is the first vineyard in Wales — and the UK — to be Certified Regenerative by A Greener World (AGW). Paul and Jemma use no sprays or off-farm inputs to grow their vines – zero zero farming which preceeds the same kind of zero zero, raw and living winemaking. To do this they focus on creating optimal health and growing conditions for their Rondo and Solaris piwi varieties of grapes by using what is available on site. In considering what might be optimal for a vine, they implemented an arbustrum and have grown vines for four years in a living willow tree trellis system. The design of this system is ingenious and inspired by ancient practices. Willow has unique advantages both below and above ground, and Paul and Jemma’s vineyard is just one of the many styles of vitiforestry that showcase the deep and multi-layered benetfits of married vine polycultures. The biggest critique that I can imagine for this kind of approach to wine growing is that it can’t be commercial because some years you won’t get a crop. When I asked Paul and Jemma about the problems of farming wine this way, they admitted they have limits. They know them and know they must work within them. That’s very different than the persptive that sees limits as problems that must be overcome by any means necessary, though. Both of those mindsets have consequences. In Paul and Jemma’s case they have prioritized ecological and psychological health, beauty and biodiversity, family and quality of life, and long-term resilience and independence. @hebronvineyard https://www.hebronvineyard.com/ You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

An epic conversation with David Bos of @BosWine in Michigan, so I’m going to keep this intro short. Dave is a fantastic ambassador for Michigan wine, and yet he spent more than a decade growing and making wine organically and biodynamically in Napa Valley first. So his enthusiasm seems well informed, and I hope you find it as infectious as I did. Seen through Dave’s eyes, Michigan sounds pretty exciting. Even more importantly to me Dave is a fantastic ambassador for biodynamic and organic viticulture, so this conversation is LOADED. https://www.boswine.com/ You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

I’m delighted to share this conversation with Eduard and Stephanie Tscheppe of Gut Oggau in Burgenland in Austria. 17 years ago they started making decisions about how to farm and make wine that were not popular or even understandable to most of the wine world. It was a huge risk, maybe even a little foolish, and because of it, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say, they became one of the most loved and respected natural wine brands in the world, with unique approaches to nearly everything they do with wine. We talk about biodynamics, high density vine plantings, the magic of farming with horses, the creation of culture as agriculteurs, wine personalities, hybrids and ecological approaches to grape growing, planting trees and other perennials in, between, and around vines, making wine the same way the wine is farmed, the price and the cost of wine, the beauty of diversity, and so much more. @gutoggau https://www.gutoggau.com/ You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

Shelby Perkins farms grapes beyond organically in the Eola-Amity Hills of Oregon's Willamette Valley, and makes thoughtful wines of place. And speaking of thoughtful, Shelby seems to have lived several lives already. In one life she worked for the US Department of Energy doing technical research related to nuclear weapons and waste clean up. She was also once Science Policy Fellow at the National Academies, examining climate geoengineering. A trip to Antarctica changed her life and she began her life in wine and uncertainty and living in the outdoors. We talk about terrorist squirrels, climate change, what's going on behind the curtain, nuclear energy, growing grapes with voles, what to do about voles in the vineyard, renewable energy, biodynamic and organic viticulture, craving failure, how farming will kick your ass and save you, and how to transition from being a warrior to being an artisan. There's so much in this conversation because Shelby is a special person with a beautiful mind.  https://www.perkinsharter.com/philosophy You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine  

It’s my pleasure to present this conversation with Robin Snowdon of Limeburn Hill Vineyard. Limeburn Hill Vineyard is an innovative, ecological vineyard near Chew Magna on the edge of Bristol. It is the only biodynamic vineyard in the south west of England, and one of only a handful in the UK. In addition to farming biodynamically, Robin and his partner Georgina Harvey have a vision of their farm as a nature preserve, and really want to approach the land as a living being that we can care for and also connect with. Robin talks of dancing grasses and trees and vines trellised at a height that little sheep can graze beneath, with foxes and rabbits and a vineyard full of wildflowers, and the attempt to build the system only with what grows naturally. He discusses having an intuitive, emotional connection with the land and our opportunity as farmers help it achieve its greatest potential. He talks about how integrating ruminants brings joy to the land and those who visit it, and how that joy translates into the wine. They’re growing some really interesting grapes, some hybrids that we don’t have here in the US. We talk about their winemaking and how their approach to not letting anything go to waste results in some really interesting approaches to wine... And how small is beautiful and sustainable in an approach to a wine business. https://limeburnhillvineyard.co.uk/ @limeburnhill You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

I’m really excited to share a conversation I had with Ariana Ross, a certified sommelier and the author of the book: Wine’s Way To Art: A Treatise on Wine as Art and Why Art is Something We Need to Be Human. It is such a pleasure to talk with Ariana because she has the unusual ability to entertain ideas and argue a perspective without getting her ego involved. Conversation is a tool that she uses to hone her own thinking and to move further down the path in the pursuit of truth. Because of that I could talk to her for hours, so this discussion feels to me like just the beginning of a much bigger conversation. We delve into some pretty juicy topics including elitism in wine: how to separate that from expertise and acquired tastes and reverence, as well as questioning the idea of higher pleasures. We also ask whether it’s appropriate to refer to wine as art, and what it means for wine to be approached as an art. Among many questions discussed and unanswered, we discuss the importance of the canon of wine (one n, not two, as in the prime examples and archetypes) and whether a canon exists for other types of wine besides the commonly understood European grape wine. We don’t always agree, and that’s the fun of it…Ariana allowed us to explore these perennially important ideas through her book, which seems extremely timely, and the result was a dynamic and candid exchange that has left me looking forward to the next conversation.  @thesimplesomm https://whoisariana.com/ You Can Support this podcast by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

Esther Park leads Cienega Capital, a private investment company that invests in food and farming enterprises that are helping to build a regenerative food system. This episode is about the unique criteria and ways of investing that Cienega Capital uses, and why it shouldn’t be so unique. If you are a regenerative farmer or if you are helping to build a regenerative food system – and I think Esther would include wine in this – you may be very interested to hear what Ester looks for in a good investment, and how you might become one. But everyone, whether you’re looking for a regenerative investment or not, should hear the questions Esther asks of all of us. https://www.cienegacapital.com/ https://www.noregretsinitiative.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

This episode is about growing Vitis vinifera wine grapes without sprays. Yes, it is possible. My guest is Paul Vandenberg of Paradisos del Sol Winery in Washington state in the US’s Pacific Northwest, and he has been growing about 5 acres of vinifera with zero sprays since 2012. Beyond this pretty amazing achievement, Paul has a remarkable wine career. He started by making wine with blackberries, and has been making a living in wine since 1983. He was at Badger Mountain Vineyard when it became Washington’s first certified organic vineyard, and he was at Worden’s Winery to produce the first organic wine in the state. He was an organic gardener before he could walk, and so maybe it’s a fitting climax to his life’s work to figure out how eliminate pesticides, fungicides, and anyothericides, whether organic or not, from his vinifera vineyard completely. And he isn’t growing some obscure, special vinifera with super powers… they’re Cabernet Sauvignon, Chenin Blanc, Sangiovese, Riesling, Tempranillo, Zinfandel, and more. And teaching us how to grow vinifera without sprays is only one of a handful of incredibly valuable insights that Paul shares.  https://paradisosdelsol.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

My guest for this episode is Megan Bell of Margins Winery near Santa Cruz California, and this conversation may cause you to have strong emotional reactions at times. That’s not a trigger warning, it’s a tease. Megan has hot takes on just about every topic related to wine, and I’m not shy about asking her some big questions. Most of all I think you’ll come to love Megan’s honesty and openness about her struggles and visions, some of the financial and business realities of her winery operations, and the state of the wine industry from her perspective. Her candidness is refreshing, and her dreams are inspiring. https://www.marginswine.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

Daniel Hess is the owner of Convivium Imports, which has one of the largest Swiss wine portfolios in the US, as well as unique wines from lesser known producers practicing organic viticulture (at minimum) in lesser known regions all over Europe. The wine he imports to the US reflects his multi-cultural background and his desire to represent a greater diversity of producers who put great farming first in the wine import market.  https://conviviumimports.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

My guest for this episode is Ben Falk. If you don’t know Ben, he’s the author of The Resilient Farm and Homestead, 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design, which I would describe as THE homesteading manual and is the result of decades of Ben’s life in Vermont designing, implementing, and maintaining regenerative polycultures systems. Ben is very well known in the permaculture world, but isn’t known so much in the wine world… which seemed a shame to me, as he has immense practical knowledge to share that would be useful to those of us growing wine. We cover many topics, as usual, in this conversation. From the state of the world, to learning how to design your life to be able to spend more time working in the land. And we get practical about many aspects of growing and maintaining fruiting perennials… which is my catch all term for grapes, apples, pears, berries, etc that we use to make wine. I’ve been thinking a lot about how owners of smaller vineyards can incorporate grazing, since the larger ruminants like sheep and cows are difficult to keep in any significant numbers without a good bit of land. Ben loves working with cows more than sheep, as it turns out, and has some great suggestions about how to protect your fruiting perennials from them. But we also dig into geese, which are also amazing grazers for smaller vineyards and orchards, and have their own nuances, as well as ducks, chickens, fencing, livestock guardian dogs, and more. Also, Ben has some beautiful things to say about mead making and has very much inspired me to consider mead making. Ben asks us to consider resilience in our winemaking. What kind of winegrowing and making can we continue to do indefinitely? What kind of wine makes our land continually healthier and more lush? What kind of winemaking makes our lives happier and more energetic? What kind of winemaking can continue to nourish us regardless of the changing whims and trends of the wine market? I think you’ll find that Ben has some great insights into answering these questions. https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Or by donating or taking action at: Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

If you haven’t heard of Dr. Jonathan Lundgren and Ecdysis, you’re in for a treat. Jon is from the middle of this country and has seen the return of dust storms to our farmland. He was one of the most preeminent scientists in his field, but when he looked around at the farmland he passed as he drove through the Midwest, he saw that none of his achievements were making a difference. He wanted to effect positive change. Like most of you listening who see what is happening to your world, he wanted to make it better. So he did. I don’t want to over-hype him or the work he’s doing, but it may be unique in the history of the world. Ecdysis is undertaking one of, if not the largest science projects of its kind ever. Known as the 1000 farms initiative, the folks of Ecdysis visit and collect data from what will soon be over 1000 farms, including vineyards and orchards. Of course he isn’t doing this work alone. There’s a team of passionate, intelligent people who make this project possible.  This data he has been collecting shows the ecological, economic, environmental, sociological, and psychological results of different types of farming practices. And as Jon and the Ecdysis team collect more and more data over more and more years, the results provide an avalanche of evidence that not only makes it clear that regenerative agriculture is the solution, but also provides the basis for policy and laws to change and adapt to the undeniable evidence. https://www.ecdysis.bio/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Beyond Organic Wine Sponsor: Centralas Wine

My guest for this episode is Nick Hillman. Nick has worked with vineyards on three continents, including all across the US. Nick now lives in Texas where hed does vineyard and farm consultation with his company Regenerative Agriculture Solutions. Nick has been on a journey that led him from conventional, recipe-type viticulture to a transformed regenerative outlook and approach. He tells us about the ideas and experiences that began to make him ask harder questions, the things that didn’t make sense or seem wise. We get technical about Integrated Pest Management or IPM, as well as the pros and cons of VSP versus high trellis systems, dormant spraying for the most effect with least impact, and Texas AVAs. Along the way, Nick digs into what regenerative viticulture is all about, and why it has grabbed him and led him on this journey.   https://www.regenerativeagsolutions.com/home Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsor: Centralas Wine

What if everything you ever heard about foxy wine is a lie? Wine’s F-word is the word "Foxy," and I have been on a journey over the last few years to discover the truth about this word. It has been a surprising and surprisingly impactful journey because it turns out that this word is tied up with almost everything that is currently and perennially relevant to the wine industry because it has to do with deeply held prejudice. And that’s why I believe it’s important to understand what’s going on with this wine term. I don’t know of any journey that is more important than freeing ourselves of prejudice. Liberating our minds from the tyranny of misinformation and our own psychological hang-ups may be, I think, the only way that we will be able to adapt, evolve, and survive on a planet that is wired with a nuclear self-destruct button that has been entrusted to the care of chest beating apes.  In other words, Free your mind, and life will follow. Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsor: Centralas Wine   Some links for research:   The red-white wine tasting test: https://web.archive.org/web/20070928231853/http://www.academie-amorim.com/us/laureat_2001/brochet.pdf   A History of Wine In America, Thomas Pinney 1989 https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft967nb63q&chunk.id=d0e11447&toc.id=&brand=ucpress   “foxy” study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41438-020-0304-6?fromPaywallRec=true   https://www.nature.com/articles/s41438-019-0163-1 genetic basis of grape wine aroma      

Meet Charlie and Josh of Sylvan Farm and Cidery. They do such an excellent job of introducing themselves and their story, that it would be redundant for me to pre-introduce them here. But I will tempt you to listen on by saying that they talk about harvesting wildish fruit – you know wild is an illusion, right? So maybe feral is more accurate - and making wine cider from it. Or cider wine. They talk about Queer ecology, and living and growing on the feral side of agriculture. They talk about how they’re integrating tree breeding and selection and adaptive un-farming into their orchard program. And they talk about what they’ve learned from getting this thing started over the past couple of years. Now Sylvan Farm & Cidery is new, and I love the ideas and intentions behind it and through it because I think we’ll all be able to learn some really valuable things along with Josh and Charlie as they explore these ideas in their farming. Oh and they may be making some of the most deliciously interesting perry that come from a grove of wild feral trees that may actually be one tree, like one super organism tree, so I’m excited for you to hear about that and for us all to taste their first vintage soon! https://sylvanfarmandcidery.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsor: Centralas Wine

Winegrowers around the globe have made it their goal to grow grapes without sprays. Not only are they succeeding, they are reshaping the way we think about wine. This is a special episode featuring a story about multiple winegrowers who make wine from grapes that they never spray with pesticides or fungicides, neither conventional nor organic. If the thought of attempting this makes you queasy, it may be because of some foundational beliefs you hold about wine that you've never challenged. This story will ask you to challenge them. In fact a wine publication who had bought this story as a pitch decided to kill it because of the questions it asks of the entire wine industry. Yet when we begin to ask how we might grow wine without sprays, we discover an entirely new way of thinking about wine, how it is grown and made, and what it is made with. If you care about zero zero wine but have never considered no-spray viticulture, you're missing out on the fundamental zero that could and perhaps should be the essence of natural wine.  At the heart of the no-spray viticulture revolution is reconnection with the natural world, to see how it grows and thrives and produces abundance without sprays, and then to emulate and work in cooperation with these forces. It may take a perspective shift, and the eradication of some prejudice as well. The result will be economic benefits, emissions reduction, health, diversity, and true reflections of terroir in our wines.  Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsor: https://paicineslearning.org/events/regenerative-winegrowing-workshop/

My guests for this episode are Kelly Allen and Andrew Napier of Artemisia Farm in Virginia. They are hybrid grape growers, and winemakers, aromatized wine makers, makers of wine made with native American fruits besides grapes, writers and publishers, wine faire organizers, farmers who do a regular CSA, foragers, and passionate entrepreneurs. But more than that they are incredibly thoughtful about everything they do, and they are really enjoyable to talk to, which never hurts. Now, one important thing that is worth mentioning. Kelly and Andrew use lots of wild fruits and ingredients, as well as some permaculture farmed fruits – so things that are far beyond organic – and they use some other farmed fruits that are farmed organically though not certified. But they don’t farm their hybrid grapes organically. This is an intentional choice they make because they believe it is the more ecological choice in their context. Virginia, for those who aren’t familiar, is a subtropical climate that also has cold winters. Their growing season is hot, sticky, humid, and wet… and the perfect conditions for every grape fungal and insect pest. In these conditions, many people in Virginia are growing vinifera. To do this often takes weekly applications of chemical sprays, as many as 15-25 conventional sprays in a growing season. That is frankly insane and is tantamount to poisoning our environment. But Organic sprays, which are less effective, often need to be applied at least as frequently in Virginia – that is weekly - even when using resistant hybrid grapes, which means a lot of substance buildup and compaction and fossil fuel use. Meanwhile Kelly and Andrew can spray their hybrids once per month and are learning how to manage the vineyard so they can do even less.  I’m not saying what’s right or wrong here, I’m saying that if you are trying to grow grapes in the most ecological way in this context, I think an organic label doesn’t give you enough information and there are likely compromises to any path you take. However, Kelly and Andrew and I all agree that growing vinifera in Virginia is not only foolish, it’s irresponsible, and we aren’t afraid to piss some people off by saying that. This conversation is information rich! Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://paicineslearning.org/events/regenerative-winegrowing-workshop/

This episode is the second part of the conversation I had with Nicolas Haack of Triebwerk agroforestry consulting in Germany. In this part, Nicolas asks me to go into detail about the vitiforestry project I’m planning near the Finger Lakes region of New York. As part of my education and design process for this farm, I took a permaculture design certification course last year through Oregon State University, and used the New York land for my design project. As we learned in last week’s episode, it’s probably more accurate to call this an analysis process, rather than a design process, because the emphasis is really on carefully learning about the land, who lives there, what kind of relationships exist prior to my involvement, how can we best enter the picture without doing harm, how can we ensure that the actions we take on the land are beneficial? Once you ask these questions, and listen and observe and research for the answers, the design almost takes care of itself… all of the elements of soil, water, wind, sun, fire, ecology, culture, social connections, climate, and history join together to guide what our stewarding of the land could look like. Our passions and intentions are important, of course, but in ecological design, they should respond to the land rather than force the land to respond to us. In this episode we discuss many of the details of the vision I have for my vitiforestry project and how it was informed by this process of land analysis. As you’ll hear, even though grapes are what inspired this project, I’ve come to see them as only a part of what is best for this land. I think it’s an important point that I began by thinking about features, and through a lot of learning and considerations I realized I needed to pay attention to systems and relationships. The permaculture course I took led me to these considerations, and asks us to plan “plant system designs” rather than “tree planting” for example. Relationships are at the heart of regenerative viticulture, and that’s what I love about vines growing with trees. 2000 years ago Pliny the Elder wrote a Natural History encyclopedia, and one chapter was about growing vines in trees. He said, “The experience of ages has sufficiently proved that the wines of the highest quality are only grown upon vines attached to trees…” Since then we’ve lost most of the knowledge that was common to his time about this practice of “tree-lising” vines, as Nicolas coins the term in this episode. So much of the work that is being done in vitiforestry now is re-discovery… We aren’t providing answers, we’re asking questions. If you, like me, want to create a wine culture that isn’t built on fossil fueled industrial inputs, that is diverse and regenerative, then growing vines in living trees seems an important form of viticulture to consider. It has some obvious benefits. But it also has some obvious challenges. Like anything, there are some compromises to consider, and there are even more unknowns. I mention this in the episode, but I want to underline that all of this planning and designing of a vitiforestry system on this land in New York is not my idea, I’m just mimicking what’s already happening on the land. Without any help or analysis or planning and designing, grapevines are already growing in trees all over the property. All I’m really doing is encouraging more of that natural cultural expression in a way that is easier for humans to manage and produce even more grapes and tree fruits. The Context – the ecology of the land – is of utmost importance. For example, if I was planning a farm in California now, I would probably be thinking about agave and prickly pears and peyote, rather than grapes and pear and persimmon trees.   There are some things that we know about vitiforestry. As Pliny pointed out, one reward for embracing vitiforestry is diversity. To me, diversity is one of the elements of beauty. As you’ll hear, my primary goals for my vitiforestry project are to ask what viticulture might look like if we designed our systems, if we built our cultures, to be beautiful rather than just efficient, to be self-sustaining, rather than just productive. I want my farm, my WineForest, to give you a sense of wonder as you walk through it, and to be resilient when the fragile systems we’ve built quickly with fossil fuels come crashing down. I don’t think beauty and wonder and resilience have to be at odds with living, but they might be at odds with my current mindset about some things, they might be at odds with our current dominant culture that exerts so much pressure on our thinking through its economic values. Maybe what I’m proposing is an alternative universe. But I hope I can share it with you someday. Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://paicineslearning.org/events/regenerative-winegrowing-workshop/

“To care for what we know requires care for what we don’t, the world’s lives dark in the soil, dark in the dark.” “Forbearance is the first care we give to what we do not know. We live by lives we don’t intend, lives that exceed our thoughts and needs, outlast our designs, staying by passing through, surviving again and again the risky passages from ice to warmth, dark to light.” - Wendell Berry, A Small Porch I care deeply about the natural world. That’s why I do this podcast. And of course when I use the words “natural world” these aren’t exactly the right words. They’re just the poor abbreviated metaphor of the English language for something Wendell Berry refers to elsewhere in A Small Porch as “the presence of the world being made, a fabric of interdepending wonders, moment by moment completed in beauty, leaf shadows on light leaves moving.” The Forbearance Berry mentions describes what it looks like to love in a world where we know so little. It reminds us that our actions have consequences much bigger and that  last much longer than what we intend or even know, and the preeminent gift we can give to what we love is forbearance – patient self-control, restraint, avoidance of urge fulfilment and impulsive action. When I first fell in love with wine and developed a taste for my favorite grape, I wanted to find some perfect terroir that rivaled the Crus of France and grow the worlds greatest version of my favorite thing. I’m really lucky I’ve never been rich enough to do all the stupid things I wanted to do with the earth. Having said that, I have lived long enough and been fortunate enough to finally get access to a piece of beautiful land. I’m also fortunate that this land came into my life after my ecological consciousness had been awakened and begun to be educated. I remember walking the land for the first time and thinking how absurd an idea it is that land can be “owned.” I remember how seeing the roll and slope of the land, walking its forests and meadows, made my heart beat faster. I fell in love with it, and this love made me terrified to harm it. It is something in itself, I realized. Not something for me to calculate as an asset, not a commodity to harvest. As Berry says, “The conversion of trees to wood to money, which is all 'the economy' asks, is limitlessly the mistake of arrogance, for it is the forest, not the tree, that is the source of economic good; the forest as the whole community of itself, its lives living as the gifts of lives lived.” This episode is the first of a two part conversation I had with Nicolas Haack. You may remember Nicolas from the episode just a couple weeks ago, as he was the consultant for the vitiforestry project implemented at Staffelter Hof, the oldest winery in the world. Nicolas is one of the founders of Triebwerk, an agroforestry consulting company in Germany, and vitiforestry projects are one of the kinds of agroforestry that he helps implement. So, naturally, I had to talk to him some more. This first part is a conversation about engaging in a process of forbearance before embarking on any viticultural or agricultural implementation. We talk about the kinds of questions to ask, and analysis that’s advised, before acquiring a piece of land and altering it to achieve your goals. There are many valuable insights scattered throughout the conversation, but I hope the most important thing you takeaway is questioning your goals. Is what you want what’s actually best for a given place? As Berry says, “We must acknowledge first that it is dark, and we are blind by sight.” https://www.triebwerk-landwirtschaft.de/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://www.centralaswine.com/

Joyce Jones and Charity Potter sound like the street names of Marvel super heroes, but they’re actually the real women I interview for this episode. They’re better than super heroes, though, because they actually live in this messy, complex real world and take part in the real battles that result from living with the courage to speak up and ask questions and call BS when they see BS. This episode is an expose, and it focuses on the experiences and insights and conflicts and unquestioned assumptions and prejudices that Joyce experienced, and continues to experience, as a woman of color taking classes in what passes for wine education currently. We did not name the institution or the instructors where she takes classes, because it’s really unimportant. The things she experiences could and do take place in any wine education institution on any given day. I’ve talked a lot about diversity on this podcast. It’s one of the few agricultural solutions we have to climate change. It allows us to adapt and be productive regardless of the crazy weather the year brings. It is the antithesis to our current dominant wine culture. And Biodiversity is the solution to our farms’ health and resilience. But equally, if not more, important is the diversity of people we include and listen to and allow to challenge our perspectives. Our mental and spiritual health is an ecosystem just like the ecosystem of our farms and forests. We cannot grow without the help of diverse connections to as many different perspectives as we can find, understand, and learn from. Joyce Jones stepped into the bubble of our dominant wine industry, and popped it. Her impressions of her wine education are an incredible example of how important it is to get a fresh perspective, to include those who have traditionally be marginalized, to let down our guards and stop defending, to listen, to see our hypocrisy and self-contradictions. Though there aren’t many like her, we need more Joyces in the world to keep us forever young, forever learning and growing. I want to thank Joyce and Charity for their bravery and their willingness to share their personal experiences and challenges. This is heavy lifting. It’s difficult, it’s lonely, and it’s frustrating… and I’m not sure the wine industry deserves it, but we certainly need this help and are incredibly fortunate for these women’s perepsectives. I think that our current wine education is laughable, or maybe cry-able. It needs to re-envisioned and re-designed from the ground up, literally. It creates and reinforces an entire structure of prejudice and exclusion that is not only cringe-worthy, but completely unacceptable. If anyone wants to help me build a better wine education, please contact me at [email protected]. In the meantime, I’m so glad to help Joyce and Charity swing the wrecking ball through our current wine education. Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://www.centralaswine.com/

This episode is a conversation with three gents who help caretake the oldest winery in the world: Staffelter Hof. It has been a winery since the 800s… and it seems incredibly fitting that Jan Matthias Klein, Kosie van der Merwe, and Nicolas Haack are thinking and talking about how to build resilience into their systems. They farm organically, have planted PIWIs, and implements several hectares of a vitiforestry block. We dig into what’s going on in the Mosel that has necessitated and allowed for these changes. We dig into their vitiforestry project, and talk about the mindset shift that may be required to embrace it. Shade is not shade as it turns out, in the sense that there are many kinds of shade and not all shade is equal. We look at how some aspects that may be perceived as potential problems of vitiforestry become irrelevant once you take a different perspective. Monoculture has infiltrated the way we think, as it turns out, and diversity grows out of a change in thinking. Staffelter Hof seems to be embracing the Albert Einstein quote: We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. And I hope this conversation helps inspire you to new ways of thinking. https://www.staffelter-hof.de/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://www.centralaswine.com/

This episode is an outdoor spirits tasting with Rob Easter in the backyard at Crenshaw Cru… so you will hear some authentic LA audio texture in the back ground. Rob Easter is the man behind Workhorse Rye and Modern Ancient spirits, and he’s trying to instigate a revolution in the grain spirits industry. The vast majority of grain spirits in the US come from a single variety of genetically modified corn, rye, or wheat and are made in a handful massive industrial facilities using the same recipes. Slap a new label on it and market the hell out of it, because they’re all the same other than how much time they spent in charred American oak barrels. On the other hand, there are thousands of varieties of heritage grains that have many different delicious flavors and could introduce an incredible diversity into our spirits industry… God this sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Rob is not only taking on the status quo with regards to ingredients and the way they are farmed, but also the use of oak in spirits, traceability, and more. There hasn’t really been a Natural Spirits movement the way there has been a natural wine movement to shake things up. Even the craft spirits industry sources similar grain, or, with very few exceptions, doesn’t register the farming of the grain in its top concerns. So… maybe Rob is in the vanguard of what should be called the Regenerative Spirits movement. I hope he helps inspire a wave of spirit enthusiasts who care, as he does, about what the ingredients are, where they come from, how they’re farmed, who farms them, and making spirits that showcase these flavors. https://www.workhorserye.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://www.centralaswine.com/

My guest for this episode is Regine Rousseau. Regine is the the founder & CEO of Shall We Wine, and she’s also the communications director for The Veraison Project… one of the best named programs in wine. Regine explains the work of Veraison Project, and she offers some really important insights into how we can help make wine more inclusive. I’ll be honest, I got a little choked up as I relistened to her describe why someone might get involved in wine, as it has been narrowly defined, despite it not being friendly to people who look like her. Here’s a hint… it’s about love. Ultimately, I hope Regine helps you, as she helped me, fall even deeper in love with wine. https://www.theveraisonproject.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://www.centralaswine.com/

When we say the word "wine" we most often express a system of unquestioned assumptions that excludes the fruit fermentation traditions of everyone throughout all time who has made "wine" from anything besides Vitis vinifera. As we head into 2024, I'm asking us to begin to question those assumptions. Whose definition of wine are we using? Who and what is included and excluded from the dominant definition of wine?  This is a journey through history, enslavement, genocide, marriage, archaeology, culture, love, and truth. This is a journey to discover the soul of wine.  Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://www.centralaswine.com/

My guest for this episode is Cameron Clark. Cameron just finished a masters program at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. As part of completing his masters he spent several months working on an Biodynamic farm and the wrote a thesis titled: Spiritual Agriculture, Wellness, & Sustainability: A case study of Biodynamic agriculture in South Tyrol, Italy Last week’s episode with Garett Long about Biodynamics asked us to reconsider what questions we haven’t asked of our farming systems. In this episode, we discuss the central claim of Cameron’s that a spiritual approach to agriculture is not just an optional add-on for farmers who happen to have that bent, but it is an essential part of the most efficacious and productive forms of agriculture and will be necessary as we navigate the transition away from anthropocentrism and economically motivated values systems. Cameron’s definition of “spiritual” may not be what that term normally conjures for you, so hang in there to hear how he defines "spiritual agriculture." We also discuss, as Cameron does in his thesis, the conflicts that arise from trying to practice spiritual viticulture in an economically driven world, and the compromises, complexity, and nuance that result. These are the tough decisions we all face daily – whether we are directly involved in agriculture or not. And that’s why I think you’ll find this discussion with Cameron so relevant. As he says in his thesis: "We have no choice but to use land--our existence requires food procurement and energy usage, tying all of us into inextricable relations with the world that leave a wake in the lives of others (Heldke, 2018). We are only left, then, with a choice of how to engage with our land--in a life-diminishing or life-promoting way." Read Cameron's full Spiritual Agriculture thesis here. Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://www.centralaswine.com/ Robin Wall Kimmerer's Three Sisters Essay  

This episode is a special how-to exploration of a year of biodynamic viticulture.  The more I’ve learned about biodynamics, the curiouser and curiouser I’ve become. and the more I want to learn. So this episode is a practical exploration of biodynamics from both a practical and a philosophical perspective. 2024 is the 100 year anniversary of the start of Biodynamics.  My guest for this episode is Garett Long. Garett is the Director of Agriculture at Troon Vineyards. Troon Vineyard is a Demeter Biodynamic® Certified and Regenerative Organic Gold Certified™️ farm in Oregon’s Applegate Valley. They are only the fourth farm in the world to achieve Regenerative Gold Certification, and they are creating a beautiful culture in southern Ofregon. I had a great conversation with Troon’s General Manager, Craig Camp, over a year ago for an episode that I highly recommend finding in the Beyond Organic Wine library. Garett takes us through an entire year of biodynamic practices at Troon, so this episode is information rich. One of my favorite things about talking to Garett is that while I intended this to be a step-by-step instructional for practicing biodynamics, he made it so much more. We get the practical how-to, but we never get very far from the relevance of the spiritual aspects of agriculture to those practices. This is in part due to Garett’s deep sense of the importance of the spiritual aspect of farming to farming itself, and in part due to biodynamics, which is unique as a farming practice in its embrace of spiritual perspectives. Garett talks frankly about some of the ways that biodynamics is often dismissed, but he also offers alternative perspectives and interpretations about what these things may arise from. One note to keep in mind is that I ask Garett to talk quite a bit about the requirements of Demeter Biodynamic certification, and I just want to point out that while he’s extremely knowledgeable about this, he isn’t a BD certifier and isn’t speaking for Demeter. So please do your own research and talk to the folks at Demeter if you want to get certified. Having said that, this Garett is a wealth of information, and I think everyone will find this conversation to be incredibly valuable whether or not you plan to get BD certified. Most valuable of all, I think, are the questions about whether we have been asking the right questions about biodynamics, the questions that ask us to consider what we don’t yet know. https://www.troonvineyard.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://www.centralaswine.com/

For a dose of hope and imagination and a vision of beauty and permanence, for this episode I bring you Ron and Monique of Wijngaard Dassemus in the Netherlands. Ron and Monique are doing so much cool stuff all at once I don’t know where to begin. They are the largest commercial no-spray vineyard that I’m aware of, at 6 hectares or 15 acres, and they’re doing this in Holland… That means that the vines they grow are resilient to some pretty bad, wet weather… trust me, I spent a year there. And 2 hectares or 5 acres of that vineyard is a younger vitiforestry planting that will use trees as living trellis posts. When you hear about how and why they use a high cordon trellising system, how and why they mow very sparsely, how and why they don’t need to add fertilizer, how and why they’ve chosen the tree partners in the vitiforestry block, and how this system lends itself to expressive wines… and so much more, you will see how incredibly caring and thoughtful they are about the ecology of every element of their system… and why I’m so thrilled to share this with you! While there are folks doing pieces of what Ron and Monique are doing, I have yet to find anyone doing all of this in one vineyard… and they are doing it in a place that doesn’t even have a wine tradition, mostly because of the bad weather! I guess what I’m trying to say is… if they can do what they are doing where they are doing it… the rest of us have no excuses. Let your imaginations run wild! https://dassemus.nl/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://stokewines.au/ We at the Stoke wanted to sponsor the Beyond Organic Wine Podcast because of the importance of the message that so many of these conversations bring. Our future generations depend on us, and education is the key to a change in our concepts of how we could and should be farming and treating our soils. It doesn’t matter your level of education with these topics, as long and you are willing to learn and your heart is in the right place, YOU will make a difference and it doesn’t matter the size as it all adds up. Keep pushing and please keep chatting. Let’s do this.  Mentioned in the intro: https://www.lylajune.com/ What if things get better? Tags: vitiforestry, no-spray vineyard, biodynamic vineyard, piwi grapes, hybrid grapes

This episode is sponsored by Stoke Wines. https://stokewines.au/ My guest for this episode is Jason Haas. Jason is the partner and general manager of Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles California. I hope that you’ve heard of Tablas Creek, but if not, let me give you a short list of their environmental leadership in the wine industry. Tablas Creek was the first Regenerative Organic Certified winery in the world. They’ve been farming organically since their start in 1989, certified organic since 2005, and certified biodynamic since 2015. They employ a full-time shepherd to manage a year-round flock of over 250 sheep that rotationally graze their 270 acres of vineyards, as well as the woodlands around them. Their winery is 100% solar powered, and they use their wastewater to feed a native species wetland. They are leaders in reducing glass bottle weights and bringing awareness to the many downsides of heavy glass bottles, and they are pioneering alternative packaging for ultra-premium wine. And this is just a short list. We talk about all of this, as well as get into the technicalities of no-till and low-till considerations in regenerative viticulture. We talk about how Tablas Creek has brought every grape from Chateauneuf du Pape to the US through the rigorous and time consuming process of quarantining that can take over a decade… and it’s likely if you’ve drunk a wine from the US made with a Rhone variety of grape, you can thank Tablas Creek. Behind all of this, I hope you get a sense of the timeline of the vision for this winery. It extends beyond Jason’s, or any single person’s lifetime. It’s a vision of continual, incremental improvement, of regeneration, over centuries. It’s a vision that I hope inspires the way we think about wine. https://tablascreek.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: https://stokewines.au/ We at the Stoke wanted to sponsor the Beyond Organic Wine Podcast because of the importance of the message that so many of these conversations bring. Our future generations depend on us, and education is the key to a change in our concepts of how we could and should be farming and treating our soils. It doesn’t matter your level of education with these topics, as long and you are willing to learn and your heart is in the right place, YOU will make a difference and it doesn’t matter the size as it all adds up. Keep pushing and please keep chatting. Let’s do this.   

I heard a great quote that went something like this: when you’re a child, you think your parents are gods. When you become an adolescent, you realize they’re human. When you become an adult, you forgive them for being human. When you become wise, you forgive yourself for being human. My guest for this episode is Nick Dugmore. Nick is a winemaker in South Australia for his winery The Stoke. Nick listened to the episode I recorded with Jeff Lowenfels about the soil microbiome, and he’s been traveling down the regenerative viticulture rabbit hole ever since. In 2023 he was named Australia’s Young Gun of Wine, and then four months ago he was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer. He’s 39 years old. When you hear Nick’s positivity, humor, and joy, keep in mind that he’s in the midst of the following treatment schedule: 5 x 3 week rounds of chemotherapy with 1 week of intravenous followed by 112 tablets over two weeks and then a week break. Then 6 weeks of radiotherapy which is 5 days a week at the hospital for 45 mins. Then a 3 month break and then surgery to remove what’s left.  We talk frankly about his cancer and the fact that his alcohol consumption may have contributed to it. Yet Nick is incredibly grateful to work in wine, and he loves the winemaking community. Both Nick and I can thank wine for the most important relationships in our lives – our spouses. But if his cancer was caused by alcohol, there’s a chance that alcohol could take his life. Both are parts of wine, and there are many more. Nick talks about the wine community that has come to his aid, and he talks about the spirituality of wine, and the beauty of Kangaroo Island where he converted 12 acres of conventional vineyard to a thriving regenerative ecosystem. He makes some profound connections between soil health, physical health, and mental health. And at least twice he mentions how busy we all are, and how this leads us to make thoughtless decisions… because we don’t have the time to be thoughtful. It reminds me of the famous quote from Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Designers Manual: "The philosophy behind permaculture is one of working with, rather than against, nature, of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action." As I think about regenerating wine, Nick has made me think about how important time is. The speed of our lives is completely antithetical to the complexity of life. Look how patiently nature grows an ecosystem, look how it builds complexity and diversity layer by layer over centuries. I want to make wine this way. I want to think about wine this way, and let this perspective inform the decisions I make for this vintage. I want to stop rushing to buy things when I don’t know where they came from or how they were made. I want to take the time to observe and learn about complex things carefully. I want to take the time to be grateful. If you’re moved by Nick’s story, he mentions a go-fund me campaign that his wine community set up for him and his family, and you can link to that here. https://stokewines.au/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: Centralas Wine  

AKA - How to make wine from everything besides grapes! It seems to me that what we have called wine and revered as wine and created certifications and diplomas about, is not actually wine. It’s one perspective on one kind of wine from one region of the planet. And I think the first step, the lowest hanging fruit if you will, to having an authentic local wine culture is simply using local ingredients. Put another way, culture grows out of the earth. If it is imported and forced onto the land, it is neither sustainable nor is it culture. Do we even know what American wine, or Australian wine, or Chilean wine actually tastes like? Or do we only know what French wine tastes like when you make it in various places around the planet? My guests for this episode are the gentlemen of Hermit Woods Winery in New Hampshire: Ken Hardcastle, Chuck Lawrence, and Bob Manley. They have an incredible story of asking these questions and beginning a journey of discovering and creating their local wine culture. These guys are exploring unexplored territory in wine, and they have a lot of knowledge to share about what they are finding. The wines of Hermit Woods Winery are well-aged, dry, textured, complex, with great mouthfeel and nuanced aromas, but they aren’t made from grapes. They’re made from blends of things like quince, day lily, kiwiberry, black raspberry, honey, and rhubarb, and many other fruits and plants, herbs, flowers, and spices that thrive in New Hampshire. They make about 35 different wines, at least, every year, and they have been at this for over 15 years. They started by asking “Does it have to be a grape?” and I think they’ve answered that question with an emphatic “Absolutely not.” We cover their philosophy and their unique approach to winemaking, and this conversation has an inordinate amount of practical and helpful ideas for anyone who might want to consider joining this local wine movement. These guys are an incredible resource, whether for technical advice on navigating the particular challenges of fermenting things like tomatoes and how long you need to wait before Japanese knotweed wine stops smelling like baby wipes, or for how to reconstruct a metaphoric grape. Though this should be obvious, I think it’s very important to point out that the diversity of ingredients that Hermit Woods uses supports, honors, and generates more biodiversity and more diversity of wines. There are many practical advantages to not relying on a single variety of fruit for your entire production, and in the bigger picture it also leads to a healthier, more resilient, and more beautiful wine culture. These three friends are changing the world of wine as we know it, and they seem to be having a lot of fun doing it. https://hermitwoods.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: Centralas Wine

My guest for this episode is Zac Brown of Alderlea Vineyards in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Zac grows an array of grapes in his vineyard, some that he has to spray multiple times every year, and some that he doesn't really have to spray but chooses to once per year. Zac grows resilient wine grapes (some PIWIs), side by side with more common vinifera, and he has direct comparisons between their resilience and performance in many ways. His findings are striking: the resilient hybrids out-perform vinifera in every measure, including fungal resistance, drought resistance, recovery from extreme heat and cold, and productivity... and the hybrids don't need to be sprayed to do this.  In addition to talking about the viticultural advantages to growing resilient grape varieties, we discuss wine making techniques for working with specific resilient grapes. Like any grape, they can make beautiful wine but each variety requires its own specific care in the winery to elicit its best flavors. Zac had some great insights for making wine with the varieties he grows. Zac is at the forefront of a revolution - the dawn of the ecological era of viticulture, guided by biology. His mixed vineyard provides a great example of a way that the larger wine industry may begin to transition to a kind of wine that can withstand climate change... and be interesting, indigenous, and delicious.  https://www.alderlea.ca/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. If you'd like to sponsor an episode, please contact Adam at: [email protected]

My guest for this episode is Nan McCarry, and she’s no exception to the exceptional people I’ve been fortunate to get to know because of this podcast. Nan is an ethnobotanist by passion and trade, and she has had a focus on the native grapes of North America over the last few years. What we might call “native” grapes, Nan refers to as “crop wild relatives.” She talks about the importance of preserving the biodiverse gene pool contained in these crop wild relative, and the work she has helped with to catalog and inventory these North American vines. One of the most famous incidents demonstrating the importance of the biodiversity contained within crop wild relatives is the rescue of the entire European wine industry from phylloxera. The term “crop wild relatives” of course refers to the genetic ancestors of our current domesticated wine crops. But by the time Nan gets done explaining the process of domestication from an evolutionary perspective, you may begin to think of that term in a different way. You may begin to step away from your human-centric perspective and see yourself as a relative of the grapevines that you tend. This idea was introduced to me, actually, on a podcast called The Land You’re On, which I highly recommend. It’s a podcast that interviews members of the Onondaga and other nations of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, Confederacy… the oldest currently functioning democracy on earth, and the inspiration for our current society here in the US and other western democracies. If you’ve heard of the three sisters in gardening and farming – corn, beans, and squash – this came from the people of the Haudenosaunee. Like strawberries? You can thank these folks for those as well. And in one of the episodes about an incredible living library of seeds, an Onondaga Seedkeeper talks about how her culture sees food as a relative. The crops collaborate with the people who farm them to help each other survive, have sovereignty, and provide for 7 generations to come. If you’re going to listen to just one episode from this podcast, let it be this one… I never would have thought that a seed bank could make me cry, but wow. And I began to think about how I could see wine as a relative. What would that mean? How would I work differently with vines? How would I work with fermentations if I took this perspective? Nan and I talk about a presentation she created which is one of the most unique and impactful combinations of science and psychology that I’ve seen. Nan sees wine, grapevines, and everything from an evolutionary standpoint. And like many of you, and myself, cares deeply about what humans are doing to the environment. Because of this, she partnered with a local organization dedicated to mindfulness – imaginebeingwell.org - to explain the Cosmic Evolution Story and how this helps deal with eco-anxiety. I’ve definitely experienced eco-anxiety, and I found Nan’s presentation to be one of the most helpful things I’ve ever seen, which actually speaks to me from a scientific perspective that I found refreshing and more compelling than many other things I’ve seen. We only touch on a small part of her presentation here, but Nan has generously allowed me to post the entire presentation on her episode page at BeyondOrganicWine.com. Also at BeyondOrganicWine.com you’ll find a link to Nan’s talk about the importance of native grapes, and you can learn more about Nan and her other projects at: Ethnobot.org and on Instagram at @successionalforest Enjoy! Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. If you'd like to sponsor an episode, please contact Adam at: [email protected] (310) 663-3542

In the intro to this episode I introduce the new name of the podcast: Beyond Organic Wine Podcast.  I also talk about the three weeks I've spent working with the crew of La Garagista, including Deirdre Heekin and Caleb Barber, and Camila Carrillo of La Montañela, and Anna Travers of Lilith Wines.  Should you get a chance to come to Vermont, you could not be more fortunate than to meet this crew – maybe coven is a better word – who make up the team here at La Garagista. Deirdre and Caleb, Camilla of La Montanuela, and Anna of Lilith Wines, I’ve had the honor to work alongside and learn from these lovely folks, both in the vineyard and winery, and I can’t say enough here to do justice to the amazing work that they are doing. Their commitment to an ecological approach to growing grapes and making wine is beautiful, inspiring, and delicious. If you haven’t listened to my previous interview with Deirdre Heekin, it’s pretty special. But also, her wines, and the wines of Lilith and La Montanuela are transformative. The wines are informed by deep passion and a seemingly preternatural ability to intuit what kinds of wines these grapes in these conditions want to become, all without any inputs other than cosmic energy and probably a little magic. https://www.lagaragista.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: Centralas Wine  

My guest for this episode is Mireia Pujol-Busquets, and she’s breeding the future of Catalonian grapes at her family’s estate vineyard just outside of Barcelona, Spain, called Alta Alella. 27% of the organic vineyards globally are in Spain, making Spain the country with the most organic vineyards in the world, by area. Mireia grew up on a vineyard that was organic from its inception in 1991, but she wanted to go her own way and follow her fascination with science. So instead of viticulture and oenology, she studied Biology at university, and then had two unique experiences working with agriculture in Thailand and Switzerland. In Switzerland she got introduced to resistant hybrid grapes, piwis, and saw that if grapevines were allowed to reproduce sexually, instead of through cloning, they could evolve and adapt to the changes of nature. In contrast to the traditional vinifera grapes that her family grew organically – that needed to be constantly sprayed with copper and sulfur – she saw that grapes could be bred to need no sprays at all. As she looked to the legacy and the land that she would leave not only her children, but generations to come, she realized she needed to start the process of making viticulture something that improved the land, and as a farmer she saw the increasing need for more resistant and resilient vines that could survive in a rapidly more extreme climate. So Mireia has started a project to breed the traditional vinifera varieties of Catalonia to produce resistant varieties that preserve the culture of her land, but that can be farmed without sprays of any kind, and that can withstand the increasingly extreme weather conditions. Her project is called the Resistant and Autochthonous Varieties Adapted to Climate Change (VRIAACC, acronym in Spanish). With resistant varieties of grapes and the elimination of the need to spray, she will reduce compaction, reduce emissions, create a healthier environment for humans and animals working in and around the vineyard, and reduce losses due to fungal infestations. https://altaalella.wine/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: Centralas Wine

This episode is a special update on the 2023 vintage at my "estate” winegarden - Crenshaw Cru - in Los Angeles, where we lost essentially the entire crop to powdery mildew this year despite regular organic treatments and canopy management. But more than that, this episode is a call for an honest assessment of the vine species upon which we base our global wine industry: vitis vinifera. The truth is that it is inferior in almost every way possible, and can no longer even claim superiority of flavors, to other grapes that have been hybridized in recent years. It has become a drag on our resources, our creativity, and our joy, and it’s time to explode the narrow box - the coffin - that we’ve put wine in for far too long. It’s time to eradicate prejudice and bring wine back to life with a diversity of wine cultures. Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: Centralas Wine

My guest for this episode is Gizem Duyar of Kerasus Wine. Gizem lives and makes wine in Turkey solely from “married vines" that are over a century old. A married vine is a vine that has been wrapped to a tree, grown with the tree, and lives symbiotically with a tree as its support structure. It is likely the most ancient form of viticulture because it simply mimicks how vines grow naturally without human intervention. This was the original vitiforestry. Because of this relationship with its partner tree, the vine gets many benefits that Gizem discusses. There’s something so special about this relationship that Gizem has committed to making a very traditional form of natural wine in amphora that she has altered to include a unique technique for keeping the wine amber or orange wine while including both white and red grapes. She adds nothing and removes nothing to the wine so that it can reflect that special expression of the relationship between the vine and tree. She calls the wine Melez, which is the Turkish word for hybrid. It describes her winemaking process, but it also takes on a much more literal meaning when you discover that the red grape she blends with is a hybrid grape from America that has been living in Turkey for over 100 years. Turkey has an ancient winemaking tradition that has fallen out of popularity lately for social and political reasons. It is home to thousands of indigenous varieties of vitis vinifera, and it has also lost thousands of acres of vineyards in recent years. Turkey’s neighbor, Georgia, gets a lot of attention in US wine circles, and it should, but once you start digging into Turkey you’ll find as much as three Georgia’s worth of wine culture… It’s incredibly rich in wine history. After all, both countries have been at it for about 8000 years, from times before the borders or the names Georgia and Turkey meant anything. A special thanks to Gizem and her translator Elif for conducting this conversation in English! @kerasuswine Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: Centralas Wine

My guests for this episode are my friends, my neighbors, and my bosses, Khalil Kinsey, Teron Stevenson, and Justin Leathers. Collectively they are known as the Westside Winos, and they own Offhand Wine Bar where I work a couple nights each week, and we talk about why Offhand is special, and why it shouldn't be. Offhand serves only West Coast (of the US) natural wine, meaning almost every wine by the glass is both organically farmed and from California. It is unique in this sense in Los Angeles, and extremely rare in the US. But why is there so seldom a focus on local wine in America? During this conversation I introduce the guys to six very special wines from all over the US as we try to answer that important question, and they talk about how they are re-writing the script at Offhand.  https://www.offhandwinebar.com/  Wineries represented: https://www.centralaswine.com/ https://www.fingerlakesciderhouse.com/ https://www.dearnativegrapes.com/ https://www.wildtexaswines.com/ https://kesselringvineyard.wordpress.com/ And after recording: https://redbyrdorchardcider.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon.

My guest for this episode is Etelle Higonnet. Etelle is a graduate of Yale Law school and she spent her early career working on some war crimes tribunals, and with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. She then shifted focus from human rights to environmental protection and worked with Green Peace focusing on, among other things, ceasing global deforestation. She continued her focus on stopping deforestation as Campaigns Director at Mighty Earth, and ultimately began to shift her attention from just stopping deforestation to beginning to rebuild global forests through agroforestry. She is a founding member of the Sustainable Wine Roundtable, and has become a vitiforestry enthusiast and is compiling an online vitiforestry library, for the SWR, of every publicly available peer-reviewed study published about vitiforestry as a resource for anyone considering the possibility of introducing agroforestry into their viticulture. She has graciously allowed me to link to this library – while it is still in development - from the episode page on Organic Wine Podcast.com. Etelle discusses the many benefits of vitiforestry, and the many ways trees can be incorporated in and around vines. https://swroundtable.org/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: Centralas Wine

My guest for this episode is Gelert Hart of AmByth Estate in the Templeton Gap region of Paso Robles. Implicit in the idea of permaculture is the idea of "forever." It contains the goal of building a culture that can last. AmByth is two Welsh words that mean ForEver, and this adds another dimension to the term. What if we thought of our actions, our creations, as gifts for the future? How would that shape the way we grow and make wine? What would that mean for the kind of viticulture we would practice? In the case of AmByth, it means that their vineyards are head-trained & dry-farmed on steep hillsides since planting, certified organic and biodynamic, and biodiverse with inter-plantings of olive trees in the vineyard and chickens and sheep (with a protective llama) rotating through their land. AmByth is the first winery to make Demeter certified biodynamic wine in Paso Robles, and to respect this farming they make all of their wines without adding to or taking away anything away from the grapes. This is natural wine that starts with natural farming... the kind of farming where the term "natural" came from.  https://www.ambythestate.com/ Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Sponsors: Centralas Wine

My guest for this episode is Deborah Parker Wong – the co-editor, with Pam Strayer, of Slow Wine USA. Centralas, my winery, is honored to be listed in the Slow Wine guide. I say honored, because Slow Wine is unique in the entire realm of wine scoring or recommendation guides in that it takes into account the ecological context of the wine that they recommend. All other wine scoring and recommendation guides reflect the problem that plagues wine in general – that is the problem of disconnection. When wine reviewers and guides give a 100 point score to a wine, what does that tell you about the way that the fruit was grown? What does it tell you about the way that winery conducts it business, treats its employees, manages its land, or interacts with its community? It tells you nothing about these things. Yet aren’t these things vitally important to the “greatness” of a wine? Can a wine be great if it tastes amazing yet poisons children in nearby schools? And I use this example of poisoning children because it is an actual example from both Napa and Bordeaux. Our disconnection from the context of wine is the only reason we revere 100 point scores that are based on the flavor of a wine, rather than think them ridiculous. I tried to point this out at one point by creating the Ecological Wine Score, as a comprehensive, yet satirical take on giving a wine a score that is actually meaningful, and all that would have to be considered. You can see this at EcologicalWineScore.com Slow Wine and the Slow Wine Snail of Approval reconnect wine to it context in a human community and living ecosystem, and Deborah walks us through how it does this. We talk about the Slow Wine Manifesto, which I’ll make available on the episode page at OrganicWinePodcast.com, and we talk about the research that is required to get behind some of the green façade that wineries rely on, and understand the complex practices that no one certification can capture. So much more goes into a wine than just its sensory evaluation or a biodynamic certification. Just for fun we talk about Drops of God which we don’t spoil if you haven’t seen it, and we talk about how the common idea of wine – you know, the Euro-centric monoculture that has been spread around the globe through capitalist imperialism – is actually not going down so well among young folks. Crazy, right? A big thanks to Deborah for this fun and engaging conversation, and for letting us know about Slow Wine. https://slowfoodusa.org/ Snail of Approval Support this episode by subscribing via patreon. Organic Wine Podcast Sponsor: Centralas Wine