To certify or not to certify. This has become an increasingly hot topic of discussion in the wine industry. Especially as this wine niche has continued it's strong growth cycle.
Consumers care about not only what they put into their bodies, but just importantly, they care about how the surrounding earth and waterways as well.
I have always had a healthy anti-authoritarian streak and have therefore been sympathetic to winemakers who have chosen not to certify. I enjoy many of their wines and I trust that they are making them without chemicals, even without a piece of paper to prove it.
However, I do understand the need for proof and certainty that a product is truly what it claims to be.
I asked a few wine industry leaders for their view on this thorny subject:
Alice Feiring, well known wine writer
Randall Grahm, owner and winemaker at Bonny Doon Vinyards (and recent published author as well)
Joseph Kaulbach, head buyer for N California Wholefoods
Alice Feiring said, "Slippery.
The anarchist in me says no. The public advocate in me says yes. At least it gives the consumer some direction."
Randall Grahm had this to say, "I am utterly torn on the subject. The deepest, most soulful, Nietzschean part of me resists the whole idea of certification with every ounce of his being. Certainly the certification practice can only address the most superficial aspects of one's practice and largely speaks to the things that one hasn't done (pesticides, exogenous, synthetic materials, additives, etc.) than to what one positively has done. Those who publicly parade their virtue seem to me to be nothing more than Pharisees, money-lenders in the Temple. (Note that we at Bonny Doon do this as well.)
And yet. There are certainly any number of people who would happily assert their "green," organic or even "biodynamic" credentials in the absence of any real practice that supported these characterizations in any way. For that reason, some form of certification seems useful, at least on some level, at least to exclude the most obvious charlatans from insupportable claims. The downside of certification is that it can be relatively expensive, especially for very small growers. Going through the certification process as a cynical marketing ploy is not, as it turns out, a particularly useful strategy. The customer is still not quite ready to pay the premium required for this level of diligence. And, as I have said more than once, being certified, either biodynamic or organic is not in itself a guarantor of positive qualities; if the practice is done right, it is a very good thing for the planet (and for the practitioner as well). But wine quality, grape quality is determined by so many factors (not the least of which is the quality of the site, and the skill of the farmer) that all we can truly say about a "certified" wine is that it will do no its consumer no harm."
I also asked Joseph Kaulbach, Head Wine Buyer for Wholefoods N. California, and this was his response, "A lot of wineries claim to be terroir-driven, sustainable, green, etc. Those of us in the wine industry go on tours of cellars, eat grapes from the vines, and talk with the winemakers directly.
The public is left with our word, a story, or a wine label. Biodynamic and organic winegrowing certification adds legitimacy to the claims of connection with nature. If a winery believes organic farming is important, then they should get organic certification and put it on the label. How would their customers ever know about their commitment with it?"
What do you think? Is certification important for organic and biodynamic wines?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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11 comments:
There's something I don't get about biodynamic certification. For example, I've seen two Rieslings from the same vineyard and one says biodynamic, the other doesn't. Isn't one of the criteria for biodynamic that the farm be a closed system? I've read a lot about biodynamic farming, but I certainly could've misunderstood that aspect. Or have the certifiers chosen less restrictive rules? Kind of like chicken farmers being allowed to use non-organic feed and still call their birds organic if the price of organic feed goes above a certain threshold (I know that was later removed, but it was in the bill at one point). My point is, slapping "organic" on something doesn't mean it's sustainable (or better). I once got a press release touting a winery's green practices along with a sample bottle that weights 6 pounds. Thus does a body move slightly toward the cynical.
It is indeed a confusing and complex topic. Certification gives a higher level of credibility or certainty. However, for the small farmer, the cost and paperwork takes away from their resources necessary to do the job.
I recently visited a farm and noticed there were no signs claiming organic on the food being sold in their market. When asked about that, the owner of this farm (in business since the 60s) said they never used pesticides, etc. Too much time and money to prove what they'd been doing for decades. The 'proof' in the taste. guess we may need to allow for that with wine as well.
Plus certification does not guarantee a wonderful wine. Maybe there should be an integrity test?
JR,
Hard to answer your question without knowing more about the actual producer. There are multiple reasons why two wines from the same producer might not have the same certifications. Perhaps one wine was made from actual estate grapes and the other was made from purchased grapes. But yes, biodynamics does propose a holistic farming practice that involves the entire property.
There are actually two certifications for biodynamics. One is 'biodynamic wine' and the second is 'made from biodynamic grapes'.
I think that you bring up a great question. We all want to celebrate the wineries who have been taking the steps to think more about the world we live in but none of us want to be lied to either. Also, many programs talk about the environment but it seems they leave out the human piece. For this reason I’ve always been a fan of sustainable wines, they seem to actually think about the whole farm in a realistic manner. There is a great new set of wines that are just now hitting the market that have been SIP™ (Sustainability in Practice) Certified and have a seal on the label to communicate this certification to their buyers. In order to put the seal on their labels bottles have to be made up of at least 85% fruit from SIP™ certified vineyards. When assessing sustainability SIP™ looks at their vineyards from a comprehensive point of view; growers have to prove their continuing commitment to environmental stewardship, economic vitality, and social equity. Energy conservation, water quality, pesticide management, and continuing education for employees are just a few things that the growers are evaluated on in order to earn their SIP™ certification. Next time you find yourself staring down the wine aisle wondering what which wines paid a bit more attention to the affects of their actions, remember to keep an eye out for the SIP™ certified seal.
For more information about SIP certified wines visit www.sipthegoodlife.org.
Certification is an issue in all food&wine related matters; biodinamic, organic, ogm-free, fat-free, are all and only relevant in today's market place while meant nothing 50 years ago, or earlier. Certification is a business - undifferent from rating agency in banking - and even when it is meant to certify for good it does not lose its rational and the mechanism inside the product life cycle in which certification takes part. Let me add it is not about 85% or 95% or 99.99%; those are simple criterias of another market segmentation. My opinion about all this is that we, as consumer, we have the final choice: if we like (or we cant avoid) to choose from a shelf we need to get used to certification like we should be to rating agency when we pick an investment in our bank; if we believe we have the option to look for our food in a different way we need to "invest" our time in looking for "sustainable in practice FARMERS"... the process migh take a lifetime but you could find out it is well diserved. Ciao a tutti, Livio
Thank you Livio. Great point. Consumers can either invest extra time to investigate the producers they want to support or they need to invest trust in the certifying bodies to do this in their stead.
Amy - I believe that the whether a producer has a committment to practices ranging from sustainability through biodynamics truly matters only to a small segment of consumers - consumers who do their own research and have their own committments to getting to know where their food (& wine) come from.
These comsumers are less interested in a ceritficate from some bureaucracy. I seriously doubt that "organically certified" Dole bananas are farmed in a way that meets y own criteria for sustainability and social responsibility, much less for organic practice. Corporate food has co-opted organic certification. The average consumer doesn't understand this, or care all that much. They buy "organic" because they have heard it's a good thing.
Buying wine because it says "organic" or "biodynamic" on the label is not that much different from buying it because it has a gold medal or 90+ points form so-and-so.
As a certification manager and consultant, I see a lot of confusion over the various types and uses of certification. One of the principal things I see is farms getting certified without understanding or receiving the benefits intended by the certification. With the increase in food safety issues, everyone producing food for others consumption should be getting ready to have outside inspections in the future.
My current project involves getting certifications to work in a manner it can be one program on a farm that chooses the standards they wish to use and promote in a simple system. What ever the product, certification is only a multiplier of the quality premium. If you do not produce a good tasting product, certification will be a waste of time.
I write this response as someone based in the UK who spends a lot of time traveling the globe. I am also a former wine critic who is now involved with the production and sale of conventional, (NOP certified) Greener Planet organic and sustainable wines, I am very conflicted over this issue.
Organic and Sustainable mean different things to different people. Fully organic wines - made with little or no Sulphor dioxide is, in my experience, potentially wonderful but far too often fragile, unreliable stuff. Organically-grown wines (which is the category into which Greener Planet falls) should be every bit as reliable as conventional wines, but they cost more to produce. They also require commitments that are arguably unreasonably too onerous for many producers. To abjure chemical treatments completely and in any circumstance, is a little like devout Jehovah's Witnesses' refusal of blood transfusions.
Sustainability is a term that means different things depending on where it is being used. French wine making sustainability - known as Lutte Raisonnée - is a near-meaningless concept, that dilutes the New World version to an almost homeopathic degree. (For our French Sustainable wine, we had to draw up our own charter).
And then there's biodynamics. Some people apply the Steiner rules religiously (the term is appropriate), "dynamizing" water and using of animal skulls and horns. Others simply use the preparations and respect the planetary calendar...
There is plentiful evidence that biodynamic wines are finer than conventional ones, and even (from microbiologist Claude Bourguignon) evidence that the soil benefits from the preparations, despite their ultra-dilute nature. But is the quality of biodynamic wine really attributable to the fact that water has been stirred in alternate directions for an hour, or that manure has been buried in a cow horn?
(It is worth noting at this point that Rudolf Steiner himself recommended that people try out variations on his methods. He answered a question about the use of the stag's bladder by saying ‘It is entirely possible that somewhere there is another suitable kind of animal - perhaps indigenous to some corner of Australia.’
I may have seemed to have strayed a long way from the issue of certification, but the point I am trying to make is that we are still a long way from truly defining what any of these terms - organic, biodynamic, sustainable - really means. And until we can do that, it's hard to say whether anyone should be recommending certification.
I don't think there's a 'right' or 'wrong' answer here. Each vineyard, wine, owner and target market are different and so each owner or decision-maker will have to weigh up the factors that are relevant in each case!
I suppose that the main factor in the vast majority of cases will be whether it will be profitable to certify or not. If your target market is low-income low-education, high volume, low quality, then I imagine that such a producer wouldn't certify (even if the benefits to the environment and consumers health are evident). At the other end of the scale, the decision is just as obvious. In the mid-range, it's more tricky as several factors will have to be carefully weighed up in each case, especially your marketing (ie do your customers know you and your products well enough to trust you to produce organically without a piece of paper?)
Economic considerations apart, it's also worth considering the social/political decision not to certify, ie why should organic producers pay NOT to polute? Shouln't the conventional producers/polluters pay instead?
To certify or not, from my own experience, being the first in British Columbia to attain Organic certification for a winery, Summerhill Pyramid winery in 2007, it was worth it. I believe it adds what consumers are looking for, which is authenticity.
People are tired of being duped, weather its stocks or wine. Does it make the winery more money, no, that arena lies still fully with marketing and perceived value. Certifying does take a lot of focused effort, time, resources and commitment. At the end of the day whether Biodynamic or Organic, certification by an independent certifying body to validate that standard is being adhered to is the best way to guarantee the consumer that they are not being green washed once again.
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