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Holy Saviour's Wine Club
Feb. 3rd, 2007 06:06 pmLast night we were invited by our friend Helen Savage to join her at Holy Saviour's Wine Club for a tasting of organic and biodynamic French wines. There's a fine poetic connection in there somewhere, but I can't quite put it together, so rather than stare at the screen until it's time to go out, I shall acknowledge it, and move on.
Helen is just back from an organic wine fair in Narbonne, and had clearly had a wonderful time meeting the growers, visiting the vineyards and - well, yes - tasting the wines. Most of the wines we tasted last night came from one particular producer, the Domaine de Clairac, near Béziers, a domaine which has been producing organic wines since 1966 (indeed, I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler and I used to buy their wines from Vinceremos - who still stock them - twenty or more years ago), but is now converting to biodynamic methods.
I don't know if this is a French thing, or a wine thing, or if it is generally the case, but biodynamics seems to be seen as super-organic, organic but more so - and I don't understand why, the two seem to me quite different approaches. They are not so much opposing as at right-angles one to the other. Organic producion is about the use of physically healthy methods, the avoidance of chemicals which are at best unnatural and at worst toxic; bio-dynamic methods aim to be spiritually healthy, and are - I'm trying to avoid the word "loopy" here, as it isn't polite, and anyway some of the results are excellent - not obviously rational: the enrichment of the ground, for example, by stuffing cow manure into the horn of a cow, burying it and leaving it to decompose. BD production avoids chemical fertilisers and pesticides, but it doesn't so much build on organic production as agree with it on this particular point.
( Tasting notes )
Helen is just back from an organic wine fair in Narbonne, and had clearly had a wonderful time meeting the growers, visiting the vineyards and - well, yes - tasting the wines. Most of the wines we tasted last night came from one particular producer, the Domaine de Clairac, near Béziers, a domaine which has been producing organic wines since 1966 (indeed, I think
durham_rambler and I used to buy their wines from Vinceremos - who still stock them - twenty or more years ago), but is now converting to biodynamic methods.I don't know if this is a French thing, or a wine thing, or if it is generally the case, but biodynamics seems to be seen as super-organic, organic but more so - and I don't understand why, the two seem to me quite different approaches. They are not so much opposing as at right-angles one to the other. Organic producion is about the use of physically healthy methods, the avoidance of chemicals which are at best unnatural and at worst toxic; bio-dynamic methods aim to be spiritually healthy, and are - I'm trying to avoid the word "loopy" here, as it isn't polite, and anyway some of the results are excellent - not obviously rational: the enrichment of the ground, for example, by stuffing cow manure into the horn of a cow, burying it and leaving it to decompose. BD production avoids chemical fertilisers and pesticides, but it doesn't so much build on organic production as agree with it on this particular point.
( Tasting notes )
