Oct/Nov 2009 Green Gauge

Max Allen | Skip to the really interesting part where he talks about the LOWE Preservative Free Merlot...

Within five year’s the majority of New Zealand’s vineyards will be certified organic. And within ten years, most of Australia’s vineyards will have gone down the same deep green path.

Wild and crazy predictions? Possibly. But I’m still glowing with wild optimism about the future of truly sustainable grape growing on both sides of the Tasman after attending two important seminars recently: the first Organic Winegrowers New Zealand symposium in Blenheim, in the heart of Marlborough, and the Australian Society of Viticulture and Oenology’s major seminar on soil health, organics and biodynamics held in Mildura, the heart of Australia’s inland irrigated vineyard country. At both events I felt that, rather than being just an alternative for a minority of growers, organics could well be on the cusp of going mainstream.

More than two hundred people attended the OWNZ symposium. This was no collection of bearded barrel-huggers: speakers included clean-cut vineyard managers and winemakers from some of the country’s largest and most famous wine companies, all enthusiastic in their support for organics. Indeed, the most passionate advocate was Jonathan Hamlet from the Hawke’s Bay vineyard of Villa Maria, New Zealand’s largest family-owned company.

‘The bottom line is that we’re all in business and organics makes good business sense,’ said Hamlet. ‘(Since adopting organics) we’re using the same number of staff as in our conventional vineyards; we’re meeting target crop loads; we’re producing high quality fruit; and it’s costing us less. We see it as future-proofing the property and responding to international market demand for truly green produce.’

Steve Wratten, Professor of Ecology at Lincoln University, captured the optimistic mood perfectly in his address to the symposium: ‘Organic viticulture rocks!’ he said. ‘It’s the future, it really is.’

The Kiwis are converting to organic and biodynamic viticulture at a frantic pace: Organic Winegrowers was formed by eight producers in late 2007, and now has more than 85 members - all of whom are certified or in-conversion - accounting for more than 550 ha of vines.

The speed of this conversion even surprises organic viticultural consultant Bart Arnst, one of the founding members of OWNZ, who has 20 clients across New Zealand. ‘I looked around the room at who’s attended this symposium,’ he told me over a post-conference beer, ‘and there’s plenty of people here today who a couple of years ago would have called us a bunch of hippies.’

Similarly, while mainstream Australian grape growers and winemakers have been cautious, resistant and even downright hostile towards organics and biodynamics in the past, the fact that 250 people crammed themselves into the Mildura Working Men’s Club for the ASVO seminar indicates that attitudes are changing fast.

‘We started planning the seminar topic late last year,’ said ASVO committee member Dr Mark Krstic. ‘And we soon realised that there is a groundswell of interest out there in managing vineyard soils better, in organics and biodynamics.’

Some resistance remains, particularly among old-school Australian academics. Soil scientist Robert White and the CSIRO’s Rob Bramley, for example, both went out of their way to disparage biodynamic growers in particular for concentrating too heavily on ‘the vibe’ of what they do rather than the science of it.

By the end of the seminar, though, the overwhelming feeling among the attendees of the seminar was positive: as Mark Krstic says, there is clearly an acceptance among many in the Australian wine industry that biological, organic and biodynamic practices aren’t just fringe activities but can offer viable solutions to the many challenges facing all grape growers.

The clincher came at dinner that evening, where only certified organic and biodynamic wines were served, including the trophy winners from the Australian Organic Wine Show which had taken place a couple of weeks before (and at which your correspondent was chief judge).

I watched as hardened vineyard managers, sceptical professors, big-company winemakers and cynical marketers sniffed, sipped and then slurped glass after glass of wines that they would probably never have bought from a bottle shop, due to the lingering, hairy connotations of the words ‘organic’ or ‘biodynamic’ on the label. I watched as one viticulturist, from a very large wine company, picked up a bottle of 2009 Lowe Preservative Free Organic Merlot: the look of deep suspicion furrowing his brow as he poured a glass relaxed into a smile of joy as he took a mouthful. ‘It’s ... good,’ he murmured, in both surprise and relief.

It’s a small but hugely important step. And it is already leading to many more, bigger steps: organic and biodynamic viticulture will feature in the main proceedings of next year’s 14th Australian Wine Industry Technical Conference in Adelaide, attended by 1,800 researchers, winemakers and journalists from around the world. And it looks like at least one member of the ASVO has ‘seen the light’.

‘I’m planning to go and visit some biodynamic vineyards as soon as I can,’ Mark Krstic told me after the conference. ‘I want to see if I can feel the vibe for myself.’