Organic Wines

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Organic Wines

From: Mark
Category: Wine
Date: 09/01/2007
Time: 20:21:31

Comments - many thanks to the source documents of this article - acknowledged at the bottom of this page.

Tastes the same dunnit?
As it seems that what we eat and drink is a matter of healthy and topical concern at the moment I thought the time was right to extend this discussion to the merits of organic wine and the demerits of your average bottle of plonk most of us consume, without a second thought, each day or week. The use of chemical additives and residues in wine is extremely widespread: from the use of heavy metal compounds to cancer inducing fungicides and interesting animal parts added to your little glass of ‘natural’ wine. This is invariably marketed as a healthy, sunshine filled and naturally farmed product. In your dreams! I am now going to give you nightmares.

The Philosophers Stone?
The use of less than healthy additives in wine is no recent phenomena, for instance the use of lead as a preservative in wine to stop them spoiling was first discovered by the Romans. It was found that lead ions curtail enzyme growth and hence all living organisms due to its toxicity (for instance lead ointment has been used as an anti-biotic for centuries). The Romans also discovered that the lead gave the wines a sweet taste and smooth, pleasant texture in the mouth. Early in the 17th Century lead poisoning in Poitou, France was endemic and all wine drinkers suffered from it. This is because all Poitou wine was treated with ‘litharge’ a lead oxide in order to sweeten it and mask the acidity in order to make it taste more like the more expensive wines of the Loire. The price these people paid for was indeed high. Lead poisoning symptoms include ‘unbearable gripes’, fever, complete constipation, jaundice, the loss of control of extremities (‘hand and foot drop’), loss of speech, blindness, insanity, paralysis and ultimately, death. It was shown that epidemics were most common after cold years and bad vintages (ie: more lead to sweeten the wine). A late 18th Century cookery book alluded to the use of ‘a pound of melted lead in fair water" for a wine making recipe. The disease was incredibly prevalent in the West Country where farmers hung lead weights in barrels of cider to sweeten them – its was known as Devonshire cholic. It also seems that a significant part of ‘gout’ during the 18th Century can be attributed to mild lead poisoning just as some moonshine makers and drinkers in the US suffered from the use of soldered car radiators which were often used in the production of moonshine (not to mention the non-potable alchohol produced in this process – which is high in methylates – which can make you go blind). In France, as late as the late 1880s musket-balls were found in barrels in order to sweeten wine. More recently the sweetening of wine was the similar objective of the Austrians. In the late 1980’s the ‘Anti-freeze’ scandal broke. A small group of Austrians were found to be adding a compound to the wine to sweeten it (and therefore gain a higher price for the wines). The chemical they were adding was in fact Glycol (the press confused this with a similar chemically structured and named compound which constitutes anti-freeze). Glycol is in fact harmless, less toxic than alcohol. Nonetheless, this virtually destroyed the Austrian export market and has never truly recovered. This is a shame because some of the greatest wines and the greatest value come from this region. For those in ‘the know’ do well to seek them out.

Sulphur and the headache from Hell
All non-organic wine and a significant proportion of organic wine uses sulphur, either in the vineyard or in the winemaking process. This natural compound is already present to some level in grapes but it has been the mainstay of the wine world for hundreds of years. It is mainly used as an anti-septic or sterilizer to prevent bacterial spoilage of the wine or to stop certain fungal, viral, bacterial attacks on the vines. Sulphur is an extremely good preservative and can be evidenced by the plethora of sulphur-based E numbers we get in our foods. The major problem with Sulphur that it is toxic, at certain levels some people are allergic to it (rather than the wine itself as some people think they are) and can cause headaches and nausea. In some cases the hangover you experience might be to do as much with the sulphur in the wine as with the alcohol. It is not that straight forward for the consumer to source wine that is made without sulphur. Firstly, because it is extremely difficult to make wine without it. Wines that are made without it tend to spoil very easily in bottle. There are a many organic producers (and non-organic ones for that matter) that are really trying to use the absolute minimum levels possible. Only in some cases do they dispense with it. It can be a huge financial risk for them. But in buying an organic wine you can increase your chances of having a wine that has kept its sulphur levels to an absolute minimum. Secondly the labelling of organic wine can be misleading. With the exception of California (1990 California Organic Foods Act – no sulfites or preservative 220 – i.e. no sulphur dioxide) wines labelled ‘Made from Organically grown grapes’ can mean organic grapes in the vineyard but all kinds of chemical additions in the winery. Those labelled ‘organic wine’ lay claim to the entire process from vineyard to bottling has been organic.

Would you like some wine with your fungicide Sir?
Although there is no concrete proof that organic wine is healthier but we do not know what the long-term benefits are of ingesting some 240 man-made compounds allowed in non-organic wines as spray residues (fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides, herbicides). Indeed, there have been some un-substantiated (and probably spurious) stories about the birth-defects in Chilean vineyard workers children who are exposed to very high levels of these chemicals whilst working in the vineyards. To demonstrate that use of chemical in wine is widespread, Kingston Estates of South Australia had its export licence suspended last July (it has been reviewed and renewed consequently) because it was discovered that small quantities of silver nitrate had been added to some of the estate’s cuvees. Although the levels were well below the permitted levels allowed in drinking water, it is not an authorised additive under Australian law (although it is permitted elsewhere). The same can be said of a recent test conducted on New Zealand white wine. The Liquor Board of Canada tested 18 New Zealand Wines from the 1995 vintage and found that some samples represented some of the highest levels of the lab had seen for any agricultural chemical. The chemical in question was Iprodione, a fungicide that is used in especially damp vintages to prevent rot. In 1996 the same board found traces of Rovral in some of this wine. For you information Rovral is listed by the US Environmental Protection Agency as a ‘probable carcinogen’, its highest level of classification. Although these levels are all well below the ‘permitted’ levels for what can be termed ‘seasonal fruit’ the major problem is that traditionally, seasonal fruit has been only available for a small part of the year it is therefore allowed the highest levels of chemical residues (because they are not consumed throughout the year and build up in the human system) but grapes, which fall under this same category are made into wine which is available and is consumed throughout the year on daily or weekly basis. For instance, vegetables which are consumed every day have much more stringent limits which wine making does not generally adhere to. This indeed could be a health time-bomb waiting to happen. At the end of this column I have listed some of the permitted additives in non-organic wine.

It’s all down in the dirt.
Healthy soil contains up to a million creatures in each square centimetre: among them nematodes, mites, fungae, algae, and countless species of bacteria. It is the soil bacteria which produces much of the food for plants. These bacteria are incredibly biochemically active. Bacterial fermentation is at the beginning of all life. It is the soil bacteria which make atmospheric nitrogen available to plants in the form of potassium nitrate, or saltpetre. It is this bacteria which work on other mineral elements in the soil which plants cannot directly absorb or process. This process is called ‘chelation’ in which elements are formed into complex ring-shaped compounds that are easily absorbed. Unfortunately the cycle of healthy soil has been broken in many agricultural sectors, including wine. The addition of chemicals to counteract soil deficiency or to boost vine growth has led to the damage and depletion of microbial life in the vineyard soils. This means that the vines do not have the benefit of the microbes to convert food for them. In turn more chemicals are needed to fill this deficiency. Ultimately the vines are on constant ‘medication’ because they are sick and need the chemical to keep them alive. In some instance if you took the chemicals away the vineyard would die because there is not enough microbial life in the soil to support the plants. This is the situation many commercial vineyards have got themselves into. As a result cocktails of chemical are regularly sprayed into the vineyard soil. Since the plants are so imbalanced there own immune systems are weakened allowing new parasites to infest them. In turn most pesticides are used to combat this. The energy to spray regularly and to create these chemical has further implications: it now takes 10 times as much energy to ‘plough soil’ than just after the Second World War. That goes for farming and not just viticulture. Some recent research by the controversial figure Claude Bourguignon of the Laboratoire d’Analyses Microbiologiques des Sols has stated that he has found more life in the soil in the Sahara Desert.

Well you can fix it simply by crapping in a bulls horn and burying it in yonder field’
To try and return to the natural rhythm of nature which man and technology has interrupted has been spearheaded by a body of extreme, almost fundamentalist organic-farming producers. They follow the Demeter practice, pioneered by Rudolf Steiner. These are the Biodynamicists, an extreme form of organic farming (since organic farming does allow for some chemical treatment – both in the vineyard and cellar). This increasingly influential and numerical body of producers (not just restricted to wine but all farming) plant, sow, prune, harvest, vinify and bottle their wines according to strict principles – no chemical, no animal additives, and by the natural phases and seasons of the Earth, Sun, Moon and Stars. Yes, it may seem like a trendy new-age crystal healing hippy rubbish but some of the most influential and wealthy agriculturalists have been adopting this practice. In simple terms, the aim is: the creation of a natural product in accordance with nature. This body of farmers has sought for ways to enhance this microbiological layer in the soil. Even to the extent of planting a cows horn filled with dung, buried in the autumn (during a certain moon phase) in the vineyard, dug up, and used to make an infusion (stirred for an hour in a chestnut barrel) and put on the soil after multiple dilutions. It has been found that this creates extraordinary levels of micro-organisms: trillions per millimetre way above what can be achieved in a laboratory. In this way one can inoculate the soil to bring the balance back with an amazing diversity of microbial species including bacteria, yeast and fungus. These people have said to even argue whether it should be a right or left ox’s horn.

How about some bloody BSE infected wine with your meal?
When wine has finished fermenting it is usually cloudy. These are usually ultra-fine particles (colloidal matter) held in suspension in the wine. It is usually difficult to get wines totally clear since these particles are so fine and have the same electromagnetic charge (think of positively charged dust-like magnets) which push away from each other due to their similar charge and therefore hold each other in suspension, not allowing gravity to slowly let them settle. Of course over time these particles can lose their charge, clump together and since they become heavier by clumping together, naturally fall as a deposit in the wine. This is not the case with most commercially available wine which often uses what is termed as ‘fining agents’ to speed up this process and ensure the wine does not deposit matter in the bottle. These are added to the wine, disperse through it and by having the opposite electromagnetic charge to the suspended matter attracts it. So, as it settles through the wine the suspended matter clumps together with the fining agent and becomes heavier and speeding the descent down through the wine to the bottom of the cask or barrel. Then, the clear wine from above it can be racked off for bottling. This is where is becomes interesting from the ‘organic’ viewpoint. Fining agents include man-made chemical compounds (polyvinylpolypyrrolidine – try saying that after a few glasses), naturally occurring materials such as bentonite clay (from sunny Wyoming) through to animal-based compounds: egg white, casein (milk solids), gelatin (from cow hide and bones), isinglass (the swim bladder of fish), albumen (derived from the blood of cattle) and ox blood itself. In 1987 the use of blood as a fining agent in wine was outlawed by the EU for wine produced within its borders (regulation 822/87). In 1997 the French outlawed the use of albumen derived from cows blood due to BSE scare. But wines outside the EU, or outside France do not necessarily adhere to this exclusion. The practice within France and even quality wine regions such as Burgundy was used until quite recently, so older, more maturing vintages of this wine, can still have been clarified through this method. More alarmingly is that even the law has been flouted occasion, even within France. In August 1999 an estimated 100,000 bottles were seized by the French government (the Direction Generale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Repression des Fraudes to you and me) for suspected contamination by BSE infected blood. The authorities swooped on a number of estates across the southern Rhone after discovering that winemakers were illegally using dried cattle blood as a fining agent. These wines did fall under the lower quality classifications (vin de table and VDQS) below the benchmark Appellation Controlee (AC) level. David Bird, Master of Wine and Head of David Bird Quality Assurance stated that: ‘I’ve never encountered anyone using this sort of material for fining in a European cellar’. The international fall-out of this scandal led to the US and China temporarily banning French wine. Even the UK Government, not usually one to think about the health and safety of its own citizens considered banning French wine (but consequently didn’t. Maybe the Treasury’s import duty tax would have been affected). As it happens, the wines were fully tested, not one was found to be contaminated with the BSE prion, and the seized stocks were released. Despite David Bird’s assurance about the rarity of this practice is obviously still goes on albeit in a minor, illegal way usually at the very bottom of the quality ladder (ah! You get what you pay for). Due to the virtual impossibility in policing the manufacture of all wines some Senators in the US (Nebraska, Montana and Kansas) are pushing for amendments to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Bill for the compulsory statement on all imported French wine bottles to state: ‘Dried Blood is occasionally used as a clarifying agent in French wines.’ In conclusion I would like to state that it might well be the hidden benefits of a more friendly and environmental farming practice which makes these wines more healthy to drink and ultimately make them seem to taste all the better for it.

Happy drinking!

NOTES: Permitted additives in wine Ascorbic Acid, Calcium and Ammonium phosphates, Calcium, sodium and potassium carbonates and bicarbonates, Citric Acid, Copper as ions, Dimethylpolysiloxane, Specified enzymes, Fumaric Acid, Grape anthocyanins, Isoascorbic acid (not EU), Lactic Acid, Lactic acid bacteria ,Malic acid, Metatartaric and tartaric acid and associated potassium salts, Oak chips (not EU), Oak extractives (not EU), Polyoxyethylene monostearate, Potable spirit, Silicon dioxide, Silver as ions, S~orbitan monostrearate, Yeast, Acacia, Activated carbon, Agar, Albumen ,Bentonite, Casein, Cellulose fibre filter pads, Diatomaceous earth, Gelatin, Polyvinlypolypyrrolidine, Ion exchange resins, Isinglass, Koalin, Milk solids, Phyrates, Silica sol, Spanish clay, Tannin, Egg white, Propellant carbon dioxide, Sulphur dioxide and sulphites, Sorbic acid and associated sodium, potassium and calcium salts, Dimethylicarbonate, Fructose, Glucose, Glucose syrup, Sugar .
This does not include the 240 compounds permitted as chemical resides from spraying the crops in the vineyard.

Bibliography and referenced source material: David Bird ‘The Science of Wine’, Patrick Matthews ‘The Wild Bunch’ , Hugh Johnson ‘The Story of Wine’ , Jancis Robinson ‘Vines, Grapes and Wines’, Anthony Hanson ‘Burgundy’ , Decanter Magazine, Wine Magazine.