Cheers: here's to the delights of organic wines and brews

Better Nutrition, Jan, 2003 by Lori Tobias

Until very recently, no wine connoisseur would have uttered the words "fine wine" and "organic" in the same breath--at least not without the risk of being laughed from the room. Even producers of the organic grappa often kept their natural leanings under wraps. And who could blame them?

For years, organic wine earned not respect but ridicule, dismissed as the amateur dabblings of back-to-earth types. It simply wasn't taken seriously--and often for good reason.

The truth is, most early organic wines just weren't that winning. The flavor was off--or, at best, inconsistent--the shelf life was iffy, the color, unclear. A few bottles went bad, and the industry's reputation went with them.

But today, instead of jeers, organic winemakers are earning cheers. After two decades of trial and error, of rocky starts and unpleasant finishes, organic wines have finally come into their own.

"What we see happening across the board," says Steve Damato, co-owner of Asia Nora, a certified organic restaurant in Washington, DC, "is that organic is taking its rightful position as the ultimate gourmet product. It's not going to be this fringe product. It's going to be synonymous with the best."

Helge Hellberg, licensed nutritionist and marketing and communications director with California Certified Organic Farmers, believes it already is. "Within the past 10 years, organic wines have pulled at least on the same level with conventional wines, and in the last two or three years, it's a completely different ballgame.

"It's a much better product. It's beautiful. You can taste the love of the winemaker," she says.

Damato and Hellberg may be biased, however they are but two voices in a chorus of many. Roberta Backlund, wine buyer at the Boulder, Colorado, Liquor Mart, says the growth in popularity over the past five years is nothing short of amazing. "Everybody's buying it. Young kids with dreadlocks, older men concerned with heart disease, housewives with little kids in tow. It's a broad cross section of people buying the wines."

rules and regulations

Credit for the organic wine industry's growth, at least in small part, may go to the unlikeliest source--the US government. Under new United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations, which became effective October 21, 2002, only those items grown in accredited certified organic farms and produced in certified organic wineries may be labeled "organic." Insiders say the stricter rules will raise public awareness of organic products and help ensure honest labeling. Scofflaws looking to cash in on the trendy "organic" designation may face fines of up to $10,000 and even jail terms.

That's what folks in the business like about the new regulations. What many don't like can be summed in one simple word: sulfites--those pesky preservatives to which many people are allergic. Add them to wine, and the organic label no longer applies. That's where it gets sticky. Sulfur is used almost universally by organic farmers as a fungicide. Under USDA regulations, those grapes still qualify as organic. However, using sulfur compounds as preservatives in winemaking, the USDA says, is not natural. Labeling on wines otherwise organically produced, but with added sulfites, may only say, "made with organic grapes."

"It's a discrepancy," says Paul Chartrand, president of Chartrand Imports, an importer of organic wines in Rockland, Maine. Because of public and government fear of sulfites, their use in organic wine was ruled out even though the form is almost as natural as that used on crops.

"I compare it to an organic pretzel with or without salt," says Chartrand, who's been in the business for 17 years. "Both are organic, but some people can't tolerate salt, so they choose unsalted pretzels. Both should be available. In wines, we're talking 20 to 50 parts of sulfur per million in the final product. It's a tiny amount of what is an essentially natural additive."

Not so, says Hellberg.

"Some people argue that we can produce sulfites on earth, so they're natural. In terms of body chemistry, it's not true. You can alter natural substances or develop synthetic substances to a point where our bodies don't recognize them and don't know what to do with them. It's just not healthy."

But then, say sulfite supporters, neither is wine spoiled by bacteria or oxidation--two risks inherent in unpreserved wine. Or so went conventional thinking.

But Phaedra LaRocca, spokesperson for LaRocca Vineyards in Forest Ranch, California--certified organic and sulfite-free since 1987--says shelf life simply isn't an issue with quality organic wines.

"As long as the wines are stored properly, in a temperature-controlled setting--you want them in a cool spot with a consistent temperature--organic wines age nicely. And you don't age soft reds or whites. You're not going to take a Chardonnay and age it. If you're going to age a wine, you're going to age one that contains tannins, which are preservatives in themselves. Chardonnays last for several years. I'm not rushing to sell my Chardonnays in two months or anything like that. They're treated just like any other wine. Think about it: What did people do before sulfites were invented?" As a matter of fact, that's exactly what many winemakers are thinking about--and not only in terms of sulfites.