Are Organic Wines Healthier?
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 
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. (more…)