Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The biodynamic preparations smelt so pleasant I enjoyed Sean making his concoctions in
the kitchen. Systemic chemicals, on the other hand, smelt so toxic I could not be outside
when farmers were spraying miles away. Favoured for their long-term effectiveness, sys-
temic chemicals are toxic to the person applying them plus they enter the plant's system
rather than operating by contact, thus leading to chemical residues in the fruit and in the
resulting wine. My sceptic's heart was being convinced by hard evidence. Biodynamics
smelt good and it worked.
We decided to farm organically because we believed it was the route to great wines. There
again, we had to question the financial wisdom of organic. It produced cleaner wines but
it was labour-intensive and offered lower yields than conventional. It was early days but
we were getting despondent. Unlike organic vegetables, where people expected to pay a
premium for a healthy product, it seemed that wine lovers would not pay more for organic
wine.
Studies had shown that polyphenolic substances, the natural flavour compounds found
in wine, were higher in the organic wines than in conventional wines. Not only was the
flavour better, but organically farmed wine was also higher in antioxidants, the wonderful
little critters that fight cancer. My stress-busting dark chocolate was also packed with them.
Hand me another slab and a large glass of organic red wine, please.
Through our journey as a producer I realised that organic was more important than it
seemed from afar as a consumer. It was more than quality, taste and health; it was funda-
mentally important for the well-being of the land. Farming chemically set off a series of
imbalances that could only be adjusted by yet more interventions. Chemical farming leads
to erosion from herbicides, toxic salinity in the soil from chemical fertilisers, long-term
build-up of chemical residues and lack of biodiversity.
At the same time as Sean and I were weeping over the cost of organic farming, a number
of chemical products for use in vineyards were banned in the EU because of health risks
for the people spraying them and also for the final consumer. And yet these EU laws only
affected farmers in the EU, not wine producers in the New World. The EU happily con-
tinued importing low-cost wines farmed with these chemicals. It was two-faced and wine
farmers were rightly up in arms. A holistic policy would have banned products using these
chemicals from being imported too, thus offering wine producers a level playing field.
For us it was a wake-up call about the dangers of agricultural chemicals. Sean's health
was priceless. I read that the level of cancer among vineyard workers in California was
four times the normal rate and it had been linked directly with vineyard chemicals. Organic
farming was more labour-intensive and costly but its health benefits more than com-
pensated. We knew the flavour of our wines was much better too, but right at that moment
it didn't make the hard economic reality any easier. We had to keep the faith that the quality
of our wines would shine through and help us get the prices we needed to stay in business.
