Are Organic Wines Healthier?
by William Cates
These days wine, particularly red wine, gets a lot of good press for being healthful and beneficial for us when consumed in moderation. Wine’s high level of antioxidants such as resveratrol are chiefly responsible for this. So the question often arises: Would a wine from organically grown grapes be even healthier for us? Here’s one way to answer that question.
Organic grapes are grown by feeding the soil while grapes grown by conventional methods feed the vine. Thanks to drip irrigation, grape vines can be grown anywhere there is a source of water. It is a marvelously simple method that doesn’t even require the many gallons of water needed by an overhead irrigation system. Thin irrigation drip hoses are placed along the bottom wire holding the vines. The vines thus can receive water and nutrients, basic fertilizers if you will, through this system. It’s a viticulture system that has allowed arid regions of the world to produce very good fruity wines.
The problem with this system is that it encourages the vine to feed and drink from the topsoil rather than encouraging the vine to send its roots deep where valuable micronutrients are available. Thus grape vines that rely on surface feeding mainly get the synthetic nutrients supplied through the drip system. It isn’t too far removed from hydroponic agriculture where plants are provided with basic nutrients that botanists have determined can produce growth.
With organic practices that feed the soil, the vines get balanced nutrients because microorganisms have not been destroyed by synthetic chemicals. Organic grapevine roots hold vast quantities of fungi (mycorrhizae chiefly) that work symbiotically with the vine, the vine providing carbohydrates, the mycorrhizae taking up minerals from the soil. Thus, the organic grapes are nutritionally far better balanced.
Winemakers are delighted to get organically grown grapes. Not only will the wine hold the promise of taste quality, it is much easier to ferment because there are no sulphur residues to affect the process. (Stuck fermentation can be a big problem for wineries, particularly with pinot noir.) Also, organically grown grapes are nutritionally balanced and rarely require additions of yeast nutrients such as nitrogen (by way of diamonium phosphate) to ensure complete fermentation or fermentation without off odors.
With organic viticulture everybody wins except for the agrochemical company owners and stockholders. It’s a victory for the workers in the field, for the winemakers, and for the consumer. Thus, when we feed the soil rather than feeding the vine, we are far more likely to achieve a wine that is even more beneficial to us because it has no chemical residues and probably contains many micronutrients not available in wines from conventionally farmed grapes.
So the question should arise, isn’t there another viticulture system that is a compromise between these two extremes of conventional and organic, a sort of hybrid? Yes – sustainable viticulture. It is what many grape growers are turning to. And we’ll get to it next time.