Biodynamic wine Demystified by Nicolas Joly
86 out of 100

Published Friday, July 23, 2010

Overview

Biodynamic wine Demystified gives a good overview of the key concepts of biodynamics and how they relate to wine from a French biodynamic winemaker’s perspective. For someone new to the concepts such as myself, at times it was difficult to follow, but this was overshadowed in comparison to how hard the ideas are to accept. Whether you agree or not with biodynamics though, the book gives a solid start to understanding the topic, without going into too much depth.
Biodynamic Wine Demystified is an oxymoron. The ideas are very mystical and have a religious backbone. That is not to belittle the book. But you need to suspend any scientific approach to life which Nicolas, in part, considers the root cause of many of the problems in the vineyard.
The book certainly tries to give you a good overview of what it is and how it works. Many of the author’s views are geared more at the intensive farming habits used by some producers and Nicolas assumes biodynamics and organics are the way to avoid what he calls mistakes - wines without any terroir.
The book itself is a quick read with only 150 pages and can be read in about 6 hours. With such brevity Nicolas has limited his discussion to why he thinks French AOC system produces nice, but not terroir driven wines.
In the cellar Nicolas discuss modern wine making equipment and how even wires with their 50Hz frequency can disturb the vibration energy of life. How electrical equipment, filters and pumps can result in lifeless wines.
In the vineyard he attacks herbicides and runs what, on the surface, sounds a convincing argument. That is that herbicides kill weeds but also they kill fungi resulting in the loss of the symbiotic relationship between it and the vine’s roots. The relationship helps the vine to take up more nutrients through the soil, the loss results in fertilisers needing to be used. The fertilisers themselves are made from salts. Salts cause the vine (like us when we’ve consumed too much salt) to drink more. Having a higher water level in the plant encourages moisture loving fungi such as odium. Now although this sounds plausible, the requirement to suspend any critical thinking to engage in some of the stranger ideas such as levitation and cosmic energy meant that when things did resonate with me I felt I could not trust the source.
Biodynamic Wines Demystified is not a book to convince you that biodynamics is a reality. It is a book to explain the concepts. With many Biodynamic producers shy of talking to the press to expose some of the more mystical sides of their beliefs, this book gives a good overview of how and why the proponents of Biodynamics believe it works. It is not an exciting or riveting read and in some places can be boring. But I feel I have a better understanding of the key concepts and for that I am grateful. I rated this book 86 out of 100