The Not-So-Quiet Revolution: Biodynamcs

By Campbell Mattinson

Winefront Monthly EDITION 29/30 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2004

(Method: “the use of specifically developed preparations that assist in connecting the whole farm unit with the dynamic rhythms of the earth and atmosphere … working with the living soil and the invisible energies of nature.”

Effect: The world’s best tasting wines)

ROOTED. Absolutely rooted. And it’s the dissing of Jasper Hill’s Ron Laughton that’s done it. The meanness of it. The silliness. The lack of spirit in a spirit-charged climate. It’s after midnight and I’m sitting at a large round table at the former mental institution at Beechworth, now part of LaTrobe University. It’s near the end of the First International Biodynamics Wine Forum. We’ve been talking roots and leaves and sun and moon and energy, soil and water and biodynamic ‘preparations’ for two long, full, inspiration-infused days. We’ve tasted dozens of wines produced under biodynamic conditions. Wines from France, Italy, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, the United States and Australia. It’s been unlike any wine-focussed conference I’ve known: it’s been like sitting in wine psychology class, rather than the usual wine anatomy class. It’s been a conference wherein people have talked of the land on which they farm as a living, emotional landscape, rather than as a dirt-laid spreadsheet: crop in, fertilizer and herbicide on, crop off per acre. It’s been a conference where Clos de la Coulee de Serrant’s Nicolas Joly, who has an MBA, has let his theatrical, obsessive, evangelical heart flow free: “An elephant knows how to find water, even if it is 40 kilometres away, because they are part of (nature’s) system. They just know. A male butterfly can find a female butterfly even if she is kilometres away – because they are part of that system too. We need to become part of that system, because once you are part of that system, nature’s system will naturally help you. This is what Biodynamics is. It is a fantastic system that you receive on your own landscape, in your own way, to catch the climate and to catch the soil. It is not something that you do for five days a year, it is about your own understanding, your own energy, your own soil, your own climate. Nature is just a giving process, which you can use well, or not well. When you grow a tomato bush, it gives you fruit, and it never gives you a bill the next day. Nature is a giving process only.” It’s been a conference, no matter how mad or manic or misguided it has sometimes seemed, of the greatest importance to wine everywhere: because in a wine sense Biodynamics is all about giving your land the ability to strengthen your vines, in order to make your wines taste better. Full stop. Forget the witchcraft. Forget the oo-de-wah-wah. Forget the new wave fashion of it. The wines will taste better. That is why so many of the world’s greatest wine estates are now run biodynamically: Domaine de la Romanee Conti, Leflaive, Leroy, Zind Humbrecht, Ostertag, Chapoutier, Larmandier-Bernier, Marcel Deiss, Gombaude-Guillot, Clos de la Coulee de Serrant, Domaine Saint Nicolas, Ferme de la Sansonniere, Domaine de l’Ecu, de Villeneuve, Montirius, Zenato, Weingutt Wittmann, Weingutt Eymann, Weingutt Hahnmuhle, Weingutt Sander, and a raft of top-line Australian and New Zealand producers, including Cullen, Castagna, Savaterre, Tarrington, Carlei, Seresin, Millton Vineyards, and Jasper Hill. The weight of evidence is free, fleshy and exposed: you want better wine, you create a better emotional and agricultural landscape. Soil, sun, air, moon, sky; the intricately beautiful, randy-pants dance they’ll together perform, given the chance. Does it seem unreal that the moon is the catalyst of the ocean’s tides? Does that sound like witchcraft? Is it possible that things grow in moist, fertile soil different according to where the moon is at? Come on. It’s not such a leap. It’s not radical, it’s just a better logic. It’s Biodynamics, the ultimate lift-the quality-of-your-wine opportunity, the well-spring of vineyard life, the sunburst ray on a new, more sustainable, more intuitive, way of seeing – way of looking at a vineyard. Forget the greenie touch to it; forget that people call it ‘attaching to the simple joy of life’; the wines will taste better.

And yet here people, with mean spirit, are dissing Ron Laughton. It’s enough to root anybody. At zzzzzs past midnight. Full of wine and spirit. And it makes me mad.

So I come to Ron’s defence, even though I barely know Ron Laughton. I do because the people at my table are saying this: Ron Laughton is not a real biodynamicist. Way back when, he used chemicals on his vineyards (interestingly, a few days later I hear this same criticism applied to Julian Castagna, as if, ludicrously, you must be born a biodynamicist for you to be ever considered one). Worse, the folk at my table believe that if you are not formally, criticially, bureaucratically, lawfully, officially certified as biodynamic, then you must not be allowed to either speak on biodynamic issues, or mention to anyone that you pay attention to biodynamic principles in the growing and making of your wine – they want to pull the bureaucratic rope tight around the neck of practicising biodynamicsts, and if they have to they’ll stop it’s heart from beating in order to keep that rope tight. I get the impression that if they could, they would also try to officially certify creative artists. I get the impression that they weren’t listening when Nicholas Joly said of Biodynamics: “No one can tell you what to do. Find your own way.” Nor when Keppell Smith’ said that “the very best farmers are the farmers who are really observant”.

However, I do think that they were listening to me – because within 30 seconds of me finishing, 70 percent of the table has got up and left. Now I’m stuffed too.

Ron Laughton did address the Biodynamics Wine Forum, and he had this compelling thing to say: “I’m not a hippy, I’m not an evangelist, I’m a low interventionalist grapegrower and a low interventionalist winemaker, and to me the concept of looking after your soil is not necessarily biodynamic, it’s just good farming. If you don’t look after your soil, it’s bad farming. I watched my father as a farmer be hoodwinked by the agricultural chemical salesman – people have been farming for centuries without them (chemicals), and I think that over the past few decades people have been hoodwinked into thinking that they need them. Let me put it another way: We make a living from our soils, and it makes sense to allow our soils to keep living.”

The Biodynamics argument goes like this: chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides are a self fulfilling industry with little benefit to anyone other than itself. They argue that chemical fertilisers make the vines grower faster, in the process making them water-thirsty. In the process of making them water-thirsty, they make the vines weaker, and more susceptible to disease. In thus being more susceptible to disease, they require more chemical spray to kill off perceived nasties. The chemical sprays used to kill these nasties damage the natural ecology of the soil. With the soil’s natural ecology damaged or dead, more chemical fertiliser is required, making the vines thirsty, making the vines more prone to disease, and so it goes. The biodynamic argument is that this cycle must be rejected. James Millton, of the Millton Vineyards winery in New Zealand, put it like this: “Stop putting the salt on the salad, because it will only make you want to drink more water. Fertilisers are like salt. They make your wines drink more water, and when you’re full of water you go floppy, and you leave yourself open to disease.

“Biodynamics is about looking at things and learning to see, it’s about hearing things and learning to listen, it’s about common sense. We’ve got five senses but what about the sense of warmth, the sense of wonder, and the most important sense: common sense.”

Time after time at the Forum attendees would ask what the Biodynamic answer is to disease A or disease B, to dryness this or vigour that. Always, the answer was this: once you have an effective Biodynamics system in place, you will stop asking these questions, because you won’t have these problems. Biodynamics is not just organics: it’s a whole world more (interestingly, Julian Castagana reckons that if he’d gone organic, rather than Biodynamic, it would have been “too hard”, and he may have been forced back to the conventional). Biodynamics is about prevention. It’s about strengthing the vines, energising the soil, allowing nature to reassert its own solutions. Noted biodynamicist John Priestley went so far as to say that this is the crux of biodynamics: “the thing that separates Biodynamics from all other forms of agriculture is that we’re dealing with prevention rather than cure.” Ron Laughton put it even stronger: Biodynamics is not about giving your land aspirin once it has a headache; it’s about preventing the stresses that cause the headaches in the first place.

When James Millton was seven years old, he was given a packet of seeds and told to go and grow them. He did, and he loved it. He grew all sorts of things – flowers, vegies, various types of plant. By the time he was 14, he’d moved from planting and growing to fermenting – he’d ferment dandelions, honey, anything he could get to work. No wonder then that by 21 he was studying winemaking while doing vintage in Bordeaux, and that he’d soon become a biodynamic vigneron – it was a natural line. He has a fair analogy for the interest a biodynamicist takes in the health of his land, versus the interest a more conventional farmer has in his land’s health. His analogy: it’s like looking at a plate of bacon and eggs. The chicken (conventional farming) only has a passing interest, but the pigs (Biodynamic farming) is really committed.

“I say to people who come to certify my vineyard, who want to know all my procedures so that they can tick various boxes and certify me. I say, Look, come out to my vineyard, I’ll dig a hole, we’ll count the worms. Then we’ll got quiet and we’ll listen to the bees, and if we hear the bees than we’ll know that I’m looking after the air, and if we can see the worms then we’ll know that I’m looking after the soil.

“The earthworms are the policeman of the subsoil. Bees the policemen of the insect world. Birds the policemen of the air around. It’s always interested me that when people buy land to plant a vineyard on, the first thing they do is spray herbicide on the couch grass, and then they chop down the trees – in the process killing off the bees and the worms and the birds on their land. Instead of that, what if they planted more nectar-generating trees, put down manure, applied some biodynamic preparation, and nourished the birds and bees and worms? To me, it’s a no-brainer. It’s understanding the rhythm of where we are.”

If this is all starting to sound a bit woolly, or a bit hippy, or a bit green, then here’s something else to consider. Millton: “You can’t live in the green if you’re always in the red. We’re here to grow the absolute highest quality – there’s no secret about that.” Joly: “We are at a unique time,” he said, “in that what is good for the soil is also good economically – in that this philosophy will also be profitable. The stupidities of the past decades have a price – what I can say is that the next 30 or 40 years are not at all like the past 30 or 40 years.

“The more you have debts”, Joly continued, “the quicker you should turn to Biodynamics, unless you want to go bankrupt very quickly. The economic rules of tomorrow are not the same as the economic rules of yesterday. I am willing to wage that bet.”

The message at the Forum was strong: Biodynamics is not just about going green. It’s about taste, it’s about quality, it’s about the future. And when the taste improves, the economics follow.

It made me wonder, as I’ve wondered many times since: why wasn’t there any real representation by the Big Four Australia-based wine companies at this forum? Can you imagine the interest that would be created if Wynns announced that it would run 20 percent of its Coonawarra cabernet vineyards using the exact same vineyard practices as Domaine de la Romanee Conti and Cullen (i.e. biodynamically), and would bottle and sell the wines from those grapes separately? Can you imagine the sudden jolt of attention the struggling Wynns label would suddenly achieve? Can you imagine – or rather, can the big companies imagine?

Julian Castagna is forthright on this very subject: he openly muses that he can see a time in the medium term (or sooner) when, to thrive as a boutique winery, it will be essential that you be biodynamic. We’re lounging at Wine Australia when he says it: to compete at a quality level, you will simply have to be biodynamic.

At the Forum, he talked along related lines: “It’s wonderful to see so many iconic producers at a conference on sustainable agriculture – though in the end, it isn’t about sustainability, but about taste. About what we put into our mouths. Wine is very fortunate in that it’s all about taste. And wine should be about the taste of the land, where the fruit is grown, and by my experience, Biodynamics is the most effective way of achieving that … I just know that through these methods is the best way to express what it is that your land wants to say, nothing more, nothing less. It’s simply about the truth of your land.”

And then, in responding to a repeated concern that the Biodynamics preparations, in assisting the soil’s energy and life, could easily lead to increased vine vigour – he made this crucial point: “Biodynamics is not a fertiliser, it does not make your vineyard more vigorous, it does not fertilise your soil, it simply makes your soil more alive, so that your vines can take what they need from it – not for vigour, but for health, for taste, for life.”

On a table at the Biodynamics Wine Forum sat two bowls of oranges. One lot of oranges had been picked from a farm run using conventional farming techniques. The other lot of oranges from a farm next door to the first orchard – but run biodynamically. I took one of each home to my wife, who had not been force-fed the joys of Biodynamics, cut them open and into pieces, and then asked her if there was any difference between the two. “Yes,” she replied. “This one’s tasteless, and this one tastes beautiful.” This is not a scientific experiment. The difference was phenomenal. I know which one I’d rather be making wine with.

John Priestley is a farmer from Patterson in NSW. He’s been a biodynamicist for over 25 years. Listen to him and you can’t help but be inspired: he’s the proof, the mind that shows that the biodynamic idea does work. The area he farms in has a large bower-bird population, a bird which enjoys little more than to feed on citrus fruits near the time of harvest. Other farmers in the area go mad with spraying and netting: John worked out that the only thing the birds enjoy more than citrus is olives, so he planted a row of olive trees to distract them – which has worked. He creates conditions to encourage the blue tongue lizard population on his property, because “they are great controllers of slugs and snails”. His idea, across the full spectrum of his farm and of its possible invaders, is: “If you can provide for the birds and animals, then we have a better opportunity of getting our crop. The people who try to eradicate an animal or bird seem to have problems with their numbers building up. If you allow and provide for the natural birds and animals, they seem to stamp their territory and not allow other birds or animals to come in and overpopulate.”

At Chapoutier in the Rhone, the decision to go biodynamic was not about clean and green issues, but simply about wine quality: the view was that it would give their wines greater complexity, and greater individuality. Everything they have seen since making the shift has confirmed this belief: Chapoutier believes that biodynamics has led to greater finesse, complexity, and (in their own words) “greatness” in their wines. They also believe it has helped build increasing differentiation between terroirs. The Chapoutier example is an important one: because the wines are renowned for their high quality, and because it is often believed that biodynamics is for small producers only. Chapoutier runs 530 acres of vines biodynamically, in a wide range of soils and slopes. The Chapoutier company line is: “we can only talk about quality wine if we have quality, living soils.” The day a large Australian wine company adopts the same line will be the day Australian wine is taken more seriously on the world stage. It sounds dramatic, but it is true: Australia is renowned as a producer of supermarket wines. Biodynamics would slash at this image. Biodynamics also, in world markets, has street cred: as a journalist, I was floored at the amount of interest shown in this Forum by international wine magazines. Ignore the biodynamic revolution at your peril.

Though of course most will ignore it: because it sounds green, because it sounds strange, because elements of its application are confronting (the whole burying the cowhorn thing, which biodynamic preparation is famous for) – not that these are verygood reasons. The idea that the earth is round sounded strange and confronting once; it’s amazing how quickly humans can adapt.

Five years ago I used to look at a meticulous vineyard, the type that nukes each and every weed, and think how well-looked-after it must be; I used to have a respect for the cleanliness of it, and thought that it followed too that the wines would be well looked after. I don’t know when I changed, but sometime in the past five years I’ve come to wince at the sight of such chemical battlegrounds; my favourite vineyards now are the lively ones, the weedy ones, the ones that are a ecology in themselves. I now look at weedless, grassless, lifeless vineyards as the ones who will produce the least interesting wines, while the messier ones may just have something interesting going on – my attitudes have reversed. The last thing I did at the biodynamic wine forum was speak to someone who said that the biodynamic argument sounded good, but his boss liked a “showcase vineyard” – his boss would never put up with weeds, with the look of mess. His boss liked a vineyard that looked like a suit and tie. We both shook our heads: the fact is that for the sake of neatness we may not only kill our land, our soil, and the lifeblood of our food, but also destroy our chance to taste the best wine that there is. Which sounds a massive price to pay.

(For information on the nuts and bolts of biodynamics; try www.biodynamics.net.au)