Ten years ago, buying organic wines was a vocational choice. Most of them smelled a bit musty and tasted pretty rough. But you sought them out because you believed they were more natural and better for the environment. Happily, things have improved enormously in the space of a decade. There are now some delectable organic wines available, many of them at reasonable prices.
In actual fact, organic wine is a misnomer. What we’re talking about is wine made from organically grown grapes. In other words, viticulture that does not employ industrially synthesized compounds as additions to the soil or vines to increase fertility.
The same principle also applies to the addition of sulfites as a preservative. Wines bearing the organic label are allowed half the residual sulfites permitted in non-organic wine. Since it’s largely the sulfites that give drinkers a headache, hardly surprisingly the demand for organic wines is on the increase. People drink to enjoy, not to suffer.
While many of the organic producers operate on a smallish scale, this isn’t always the case. The Terre Cortesi Moncaro co-operative winery in the central Marche region manages 1700 hectares of vineyard, of which 100 are cultivated organically. This experience has taught them how to reduce pesticide use throughout their vineyards and to reduce sulfite levels within organic parameters even for their non-organic wines.
Terre Cortesi Moncaro pay their 1200 cooperative growers according to a sliding scale in relation to the quality of the grapes they bring in, and then add a further 20% to those whose fruit is organic. They find that 90% of the demand for their organic wines comes from abroad, in particular from Germany, Holland and the UK. For the Waitrose chain of supermarkets in Britain they are bottling two excellent products that have met with widespread acclaim: a delightfully fresh organic white based on Verdicchio grapes, and a well balanced, fruity organic red made with Montepulciano and Sangiovese grapes.
“Growing grapes organically is not difficult, but it does require particular attention to the health of the vinesâ€, explains Roberto Di Filippo of the Italo Di Filippo winery near Cannara in Umbria. “You need to know every inch of the terrain, to understand how it reacts to different weather conditions and how these will affect the vinesâ€.
The Di Filippo winery is a family-run estate that produces a wide range of wines at affordable prices, including the enticingly apply Grechetto, a white with an agreeable aromatic persistence, and an intense, fruity Sagrantino, the spicy red with distinctive flinty undertones for which the neighboring town of Montefalco is renowned.
In regions where dry heat is the norm, wineries that focus on low yields and high quality do not need to use pesticides during the growing season. “It’s not the fact of being officially organic that appeals to visitors to our wineryâ€, declares Concetto Lo Certo of Antica Tenuta Nanfro near Caltagirone, in southeastern Sicily, “it’s the clarity of the air up here at nearly 400 meters above sea level, the breeze we enjoy even at the height of summer, and the gentle lie of the land. Of course these factors all facilitated our conversion to organic growing in 1999â€.
The 35 hectares of vineyard belonging to the Nanfro winery produce, among other wines, a vibrant red, the Cerasuolo di Vittoria, and an attractive white made from late harvested Inzolia grapes that marry freshness with a hint of honeysuckle.
While most organic wineries will plant a mixture of grasses and legumes to enrich the soil with nutrients, especially nitrogen, very few are prepared to let the yeasts naturally present on the grapes and in the cellars take command when it comes to fermenting the must to turn it into wine. Instead they add a particular strain of cultured yeasts that guarantee smooth, predictable fermentation. Not to do so, they feel, would be an unconscionable risk.
Lionel Cousin, a Frenchman who makes organic wines of great elegance and depth near Montalcino in Tuscany, goes against the stream. At his Cupano winery, fermentation is entrusted to the natural ambient yeasts, which appear to behave admirably. The Cupano Brunello di Montalcino, the Rosso di Montalcino and the Sant’Antimo appellation that blends Sangiovese red grapes with some Merlot speak eloquently for sensitive empirical individualism.
Surrounded by several hundred hectares of organic arable farming and woodland, the 35 hectare Cupano estate currently encompasses three and a half hectares of vineyard densely planted on slopes that embrace both sandy, clayey soils and stony terrains.
“I believe that as a society we’ve become too interventionistâ€, Cousin declares. “Constantly having your nascent wines analyzed in laboratories is rather like obsessively measuring blood pressure. The pharmaceutical and chemical industries have vested interests in promoting both. But without all this you can still tell when your vines are suffering, just as you know when you are not feeling well. I don’t believe in preemptively taking medicines in either caseâ€.
British-born Kate Singleton has lived in Italy for over 35 years, mostly working as an editor, writer and translator.
