A Cup of (Organic) Christmas Cheer
‘Tis the season to…let’s face it…drink. People who seldom darken the doors of wine shops and liquor stores the other 11 months of the year find their way into the aisles of the purveyors of alcoholic beverages throughout December (to the irritation of those of us who spend rather more time there), loading up their carts with wine, spirits, beer and fruity “alco-pop” for those who like to get tipsy but don’t like the taste of alcohol. New Year’s Eve, the single largest day of the year for champagne consumption, usually finds most of us popping open bottles of champagne: so strong is the tradition that even people who don’t like champagne often feel some duty to toss back at least a few mouthfuls of it 23 seconds after midnight, grimacing with distaste.
We drink a lot of alcohol in the U.S. According to a recent Gallop poll, consumption of alcohol in the U.S. hit a 25-year high in 2010, with 67 percent of Americans reporting drinking alcoholic beverages. It’s apparently a level unseen since the 1970s, when 71 percent of Americans self-reported themselves as imbibers. While beer drinking is apparently down, wine drinking has generally been on the upswing, along with spirits (though with more modest growth and consumption than wine).
We’re also a wine-producing nation: the fourth largest producer of wine in the world after only France, Italy and Spain. More than 1,100,000 acres in the United States are planted for wine grapes, according to the Oxford Companion to Wine, with California producing about 89 percent of the nation’s wine.
So it’s no wonder that as organic farming and meat production expand in the U.S., so too does the practice of “green” wine making. So, how do you make green wine?
In wine grape-growing, just as in conventional growing of grains, fruits and vegetables, chemical fertilizers are used to generate larger crop yields, pesticides are used to protect the fruit against pests, herbicides and fungicides are used to keep weeds and molds at bay and plant pharmaceuticals are used to stave off plant diseases. So toxic are many of these chemicals that many wine grape farmers must wear protective gear in their fields. The chemicals, obviously, don’t remain harmlessly on the external part of the fruit to be washed away later: they are absorbed through the plant’s roots, into the wine grape vine’s sap, through which they are then drawn into the plant’s leaves and fruit. Ultimately, they find their way into finished wine, affecting the taste (some say) and entering the wine drinker’s system.
Ultimately, the boatloads of chemicals used in the traditional grape farming process concentrate in the soil, changing its character: since wine from different vineyards often have unique characters based not only on the grapes and the vineyard’s wine making process, but on the soil in which they are grown, pumping a lot of chemicals into that soil seems counterproductive to further production of good wine. The nature and quantity of the chemicals may also ultimately damage the soil beyond the vineyard’s ability to use it for future crops.
To avoid just these scenarios, many vintners are turning to greener methods. The production of organic wine is a two-phase process. The first part – growing the fruit – involves the methods of traditional organic farming: natural and non-toxic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides as well as crop rotation and natural soil management. The second phase of wine production – turning the fruit into a tasty beverage that goes nicely with your chicken marsala – may seem the lesser of importance of the two phases, but it’s not…and here’s where it gets tricky.
Sulfites are organic compounds traditionally used in the production of wine. If you wish to call your wine “certified organic,” you can’t add any to your finished product. However, since the fermenting yeasts that reside on all grape skins generate naturally occurring sulfites – which means that sulfites are a byproduct of the fermentation process – it would, in fact, be impossible to produce a completely sulfite-free wine (or grape juice, for that matter, since grape juice without sulfites would continue fermenting until it turned to vinegar). When the level of sulfites in the wine is above 10 milligrams per liter (the level at which sulfur is generally naturally occurring in wine), it must bear the words “contains sulfites” on the label, at least in the United States. Almost all wines bear that “scarlet S” on the bottle’s label (or on the box with the plastic spigot, if you’re really classy).
But sulfites aren’t necessarily the evil-doers many people believe them to be. For starters, they are not a twentieth-century invention: sulfites have been used in wine making for centuries. They have both antioxidant and antimicrobial properties, which is why winemakers rely on them so heavily: nothing makes good wine go bad faster than rogue yeasts, bacteria or too much oxygen. (Oxidization is the reason your unfinished bottle of red wine isn’t nearly as tasty two days later as it was the night you opened it.) Sulfites are often used to clean wine making equipment, and to stop the fermentation of the wine if, for example, the winemaker wants to keep all the sugar from fermenting in order to produce a sweeter wine.
Different countries regulate sulfites in wine in different ways. In the U.S. and Canada, wine cannot contain more than 350 mg of sulfites per liter. EU wine makers cannot produce wine with more than 160 mg/L for red wine, 210 mg/L for white and blush wines and 400 mg/L for sweet dessert wines.
So why must organic wines contain no added sulfites? Ostensibly for health reasons, though there are few health issues associated with the levels of sulfites present in traditionally produced wine. Though many people blame sulfites for the “wine headache,” there is no credible evidence that sulfites cause headaches. (In fact, red wine, which usually gets blamed for headaches the most, contains fewer sulfites than white or blush wine.) While sulfites at higher levels are known to cause ill effects in about five percent of asthmatics, and there are some people who seem to have a genuine allergy to sulfites (fewer than one percent of the population, according to the FDA), they’re probably not the villains you might think.
The problem with wine with no added sulfites is that it tends to be bad wine (there are a few exceptions). Because sulfites help stop the fermentation process at the precise time the wine maker wants it to stop, and because they protect against oxidization, a lot of organic wine tends to be unstable and inconsistent ant taste slightly oxidized, if not downright spoiled. Those reputable wine makers who do not add sulfites to their wine must take extraordinary care in how their wine in stored and transported. As a result, a number of would-be organic wine makers recently lobbied the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) to change the rules to permit small amounts of added sulfites in wine and still allow it to be labeled organic. They were unsuccessful.
This means that many wine makers that follow otherwise sustainable practices – skipping the use of commercial fertilizers and pesticides in favor or organic farming techniques – but who don’t want to risk producing bad, spoiled wine and hoped to be able to add a very small amount of sulfites to keep the quality high, are unable to easily let consumers know that their wine grapes are grown free of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. In other words, wine makers are still prevented from labeling themselves something like, “Organic, with sulfites” to appeal to consumers who seek wines from wine makers who follow sustainable farming practices but don’t object to some sulfites.
“Making wine without sulfur is unbelievably risky, like walking a tightrope without a net,” notes the wine blog Vinography. “Some people succeed, and do so brilliantly, but many people don’t, or can’t. So they add sulfur. You don’t need much, sometimes just a little squirt of sulfur dioxide gas right at bottling (it gets absorbed and bound up into the wine, inert and without taste). Leaving aside the claims that these sulfites cause headaches (which has been disproven scientifically), apart from philosophical grounds held by [some winemakers], there seems no rational reason in the world that anyone concerned with the quality of wine should want to prevent the use of sulfites in the wine making process.”
Particularly as there are so many benefits from wine that is otherwise produced organically. In addition to not passing on pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers into the wine (and the wine drinkers’ bodies), there are studies that have shown that wines made with sustainable farming practices contain more tannins, phenols and anthocyanins (the components in red wine known to have multiple health benefits) than traditionally produced wines.
The result? There are a number of organic wine producers in the United States who cannot actually call their product “organic wine.” These vineyards are generally very easy to find by entering the search term “organic wine with sulfites” into a search engine.
So we know there are producers of organic wine, and we know there are producers of organic beer, but what about other holiday choices?
While the idea of organic whiskey – or any other spirit – a short few years ago might have seemed absurd: the average person who enjoys whiskey shooters is generally not stereotyped to be green-minded and sensitive to the environment but rather tattooed, covered in leather and hard-living – the organic spirit market is actually viable and growing today as more and more “artisan craft distillers” crop up thanks to some states, notably those in the Pacific Northwest, loosening their laws on small batch distillation. As more people become aware that pesticides in the products they consume can concentrate in their bodies and cause health problems, any product that is the result of large amounts of raw agricultural materials distilled into a small amount of finished product – as with spirits – the idea of organic alcohol becomes appealing.
Distilling spirits like whiskey or vodka – like brewing beer – is an energy-intensive process: it requires a lot of water and heat and produces a lot of waste materials (i.e., “spent grains”) that can be either discarded or reused, depending on the practices of the distillery. (Wine, by comparison, is a much less energy-intensive process, since little heat is required.)
Organic distillers follow a number of sustainable practices: they start out with organic grains, tuberous vegetables like potatoes (sometimes used in vodka-making) and fruits. They locate their distilleries close to the water sources, eliminating the need to pipe or truck water in. They use organic fermentation and distillation techniques (often by producing their product in a single distillation instead of multiple distillations, which they can do because they begin with organic raw materials and therefore have no toxins to remove). Next, they re-use the spent grains in some way, either recycling it as organic animal feed or using it for biomass to create energy and offset grid power use. Finally, they package their products in untreated glass and skip using paper boxes or cellophane shrink wrap.
In the case of many organic spirits, such as Scottish single-malt whiskeys, the idea behind organic distilling isn’t entirely about eco-responsibility. As more impurities and chemicals have crept into water in the last hundred years thanks to toxic run-off and polluted rain, and raw materials crops contain more pesticides, chemical fertilizers and other nasties, distilleries – particularly centuries-old ones – are aware that these factors have fundamentally changed the taste of their finished products, and not for the better. Many organic distillers say their goal is to make whiskey taste the way it did when they first opened their doors, and the newer entrants hope to make whiskey that tastes the way it did to their great-granddads.
So whether it’s for reasons of taste, eco-responsibility or an excuse to buy more alcohol (“But honey, I’m being green”), let’s raise a glass to a future of more eco-friendly booze.
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