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Organic, Biodynamic, Vegetarian, Natural and Fairtrade Wines

Wine has been made since Roman times but the environmental consequences are only starting to be fully understood. It is not just about the effects of global warming and carbon footprints. The recycling of wine bottles and the green credentials of glass are not quite as clear cut as they seem.

This page pulls together the different environmental issues that influence wine, starting with glass recycling in the UK.

Sulphur and Organic Wine

Organic wine is a lot more rare than you think. Next time you are in the supermarket or wine merchant and you see some organic wine take a look at the bottle. Is it organic wine or wine made from organic grapes?

What is Organic wine?

Organic wine is wine made from organic grapes using organic approved wine making process.

It sounds fairly straightforward but in that sentence is a world of confusion. In reality there is very little 'organic wine'. However there is a lot of wine made using 'organic grapes'. The biggest barrier to producing organic wine is preservatives.

Organic wine should not contain any preservative. However, it has been almost impossible until now to make wine without preservatives. The big one is sulphites which are occasionally labelled on the back as 'contains sulphites' or occasionally described as 'preservatives 220'. If the label does not mention this it does not mean it is sulphur free, it's just that the winery simple didn’t label it.

Not all countries require wines to label their additives. In Europe there are no requirements for labelling while in the US sulphite labelling is compulsory. As a result many wines from the New World for import to the UK and US markets will often label sulphites, while many European wine makers simple do not bother labelling their additives.

But why bother labelling wines correctly? The biggest complaint with sulphites added to wine is that they can cause headaches. This is true particularly for cheap wines where sloppy wine making techniques can be hidden by adding more sulphites to the wine. Sulphites are present in both red and white wines and cause asthma like symptoms, estimated to occur in 5 to 10% of patients with asthma. These symptoms are more likely to occur in patients with severe asthma, or those in whom asthma is poorly controlled. Reactions can be mild through to life-threatening. Occasional patients exposed to sulfites, will experience symptoms similar to anaphylaxis with flushing, fast heartbeat, wheezing, hives, dizziness, stomach upset and diarrhoea, collapse, tingling or difficulty swallowing.

But the news is not all bad, while wines made without sulphites tend to be very short lived, new wine making techniques and the uptake of the screw cap, which by its nature requires less sulphites to be used than cork, mean that new sulphite free wines are arriving into the UK - many from countries such as Chile and.... But don’t expect the wine to be completely free of sulphites. Even with no added sulphites wine naturally has a very small level of sulphite that occurs naturally.

Organic wine - who sets the rules?

Organic wines are governed around the world by a range of authorities, each country has their own organic body that sets the rules. In Europe for example the EU sets a high level set of rules that any wine produced in or imported into Europe must comply with.

Each country within Europe has their own governing bodies which add to the European legislation. In the UK the Soil Association has a set of rules that comply with EU legislation while the Organic Food Federation oversee production, obeying the EU rules but not necessarily the Soil Association rules. In America the National Organic Program sets the organic rules which are of a more onerous nature than the EU rules. The result is that many producers tend to follow the toughest rules of their target export market.

The make up of each countries governing body varies. In some countries they are independent, others are charities, while others still are government bodies. The key thing is that each organic body is usually backed by legal requirements in their country and that many bodies are in close consultation to keep the laws within countries in harmony as much as possible.

The situation is very different for biodynamic, vegan and vegetarian wines. Here there is little legislation and the quality of the product is a reflection of the organisation that allows their logo to be used on the packaging. For example a biodynamic wine may have been approved by Demeter or possibly BioDyn. Their logo and the associated quality assurance is the most important factor.

Biodynamic wine

Biodynamics is based on a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1924. The central aspect of biodynamics is that the farm as a whole is seen as an organism, and therefore should be a closed self-nourishing system. Disease of organisms is not to be tackled in isolation but is a symptom of problems in the whole organism.

Rudolf Steiner felt that the recent change to chemical fertilizers in farming was a detrimental move for the soil. He developed a series of preparations that were to applied to the soils. Two examples are below:

Field preparations, for stimulating humus formation:

  • (horn-manure) a humus mixture prepared by stuffing cow manure into the horn of a cow and buried into the ground (40-60 cm below the surface) in the autumn and left to decompose during the winter.
  • Crushed powdered quartz prepared by stuffing it into a horn of a cow and buried into the ground in spring and taken out in autumn. It can be mixed with horn-manure but usually prepared on its own (mixture of 1 tablespoon of quartz powder to 250 litres of water) The mixture is sprayed under very low pressure over the crop during the wet season to prevent fungal diseases. It should be sprayed on an overcast day or early in the morning to prevent burning of the leaves.
  • Pests such as insects or field mice have more complex processes associated with them, depending on what pest is to be targeted. For example, field mice are to be countered by deploying ashes prepared from field mice skin when Venus is in the Scorpius constellation.

The tie with the stars is a fundamental part of biodynamics. The Moon travels around the Earth once every 28-29 days. Biodynamics is based on the belief that in going round the Earth the moon passes in front of the constellations. As it does so, it collects the energy from the stars in that constellation and focuses it onto the Earth. So the Moon acts as a lens for collecting and focusing the energy of each constellation in turn onto the Earth. Depending upon the energy of the stars it determines the optimium time for various activities in the vine yard.

In April 16, 1993 a research article in Science magazine compared soil quality and financial performance of biodynamic and conventional farms in New Zealand. The article reported that, "The Biodynamic farms proved in most enterprises to have soils of higher biological and physical quality: significantly greater in organic matter, content and microbial activity, more earthworms, better soil structure, lower bulk density, easier penetrability, and thicker topsoil." The study compared biodynamic farms with adjacent conventional farms. However other studies have shown that there is little difference between organic and biodynamic.

Vegan and vegetarian wines

It is surprising to think that wine made from grapes is not vegetarian. But sadly very few bottles are labelled as suitable for vegetarians or vegans. There are two issues associated with this. The first is that many wines are suitable, however wine makers do not label the bottle, perhaps they consider wine to be similar to fruit and vegetables - you never see a tomato labelled as suitable for vegetarians! However there are many wines that are not suitable vegans and vegetarians.

The reason being that many commercial wines use egg and animal products to clean the wine before bottling. Often, after a wine is made, there are very small particles suspended, creating a haze or perhaps aggressive tannins. The particles can be removed by adding additives known as fining agents. They work by attracting particles in the wine, becoming bigger and heavier and sinking quickly to the bottom. The wine can then be drained off without the particles and fining agent. The problem is the wine may contain trace elements of the fining agents and since typical fining agents include egg white, milk, fish bladders they make the wines unsuitable for vegetarians and vegans.

Not all wines use fining agents, many more expensive wines designed for aging naturally throw a sediment, including the part that the fining agents would have removed. However, in the UK and most other countries, the absence or presence of fining agents does not legally need to be mentioned on the label leaving vegetarians and vegans unaware of the suitability of the wine.

Natural wines

Natural Wine is an extreme movement and it's production is all in the name - nothing is added or removed by the winemaker. That is one definition, others may say that only very small amounts of sulphur dioxide may be added. Others again may say that racking is OK (that is moving the wine from one barrel to another to separate and remove sediment). This is the key problem defining Natural Wine. It has no rules, no governing body or certification system.

While there is a lack of rules, the movement is very very small and is based on an ideal, so personal integrity of those making the wine is key. Those buying wines are more likely to know about the producers methods of production than buyers of the more mainstream and much larger organic wine movement.

Unlike organics which are focused on growing the grape. Natural Wine is focused in the winery and the wine making process. The wines are likely to be made from low yielding, hand picked, organic or bio-dynamic grapes. In the winery it is more about what is not added. No sugar, acidity or introduced yeasts and very very limited sulphites. For some taken to the extreme case of no sulphites at all. The process is decidedly low tech without any filtering or refining, and certainly no micro oxygenation, reverse osmosis or spinning cone. The key guideline is that the wine is made with as little human,  chemical, or technological intervention as possible.

Wine makers use these tools and processes to create wines with a higher quality and consistency. The concept is to let the wine make itself. In doing so, the wine will show its terroir or somehow be better for you.

The problem with Natural Wine is that wine is a man-made product. Decisions made in the wine making process have a huge influence on the wine. Decisions such as; when to pick ?, whether to de-steam ? to removing diseased fruit. In the winery too decisions are constantly made such as; what type of fermentation vessel ?  use of temperature control ? the length of skin contact ? and oak aging. So even if all the high tech tools are removed wine making is still a very unnatural process.

The lack of additives is perhaps the most interesting and dangerous decision. Sulphites are used extensively to manage unwanted biological influences and preserve fruit flavours in the wine. The lack of them can play havoc with the quality of the wine as well as massively shortening their shelf life. This can be partially managed by using screw caps or aluminum cans, as these stop oxygen getting into the wine, which are usually mopped up by the now missing sulphites. But then the question is how natural is that!

Without sulphur the wine produced will be far more varied and a larger variety of wines produced means each batch reflects its own journey, before being blended away. The wine will reflect the terroir more than the weather before harvest - within the confines of the winemakers decisions. Some wines will have random oxidation,  others very unique aromas from diseased fruit and wild fermentation. This is not a problem, as long as the drinker knows they are buying a risk. But for the fanatical wine nut who is getting bored with consistent wines one after the other this can provide its own exhilaration.

Natural wines are the Russian roulette of the wine world, but with perhaps more Mr Hydes than Dr Jekylls. They may make wines that don’t get anywhere near their potential, but when they do there is much more to be discovered.