An Introduction to Organic Wines

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Hello I am Ellen Collins with Vintage Wines and Spirits in Colorado Springs and today we are doing to do an introduction to organic wines. More and more people go organic. There is a temptation to think that organic is a better process. In a wine that might just is the case. Organic in a vineyard means no artificial fertilizer, pesticides and fungicide, whether they use cover crops to enhance the soil, then official insects like lady bugs and canopy management.
Canopy management means the char losing of the vines so that airflows through the vines and reduces rot on the grapes. Many wineries especially in Italy and France have always use organic processes. No pesticides in the vineyard just the way their grandparents thought them.
Some wineries though have chosen not to put organic on the label even though they use organic process because they did not want to be pigeon hold into a certain section in a wine store basic as an organic, which people thought it was possibly inferior or they do not want to pay the thousands of dollars every year to maintain a certification of said organics.
We are seen a growing trend now up to 20% a year of organic wineries coming into the market stating organic on the label. Order for a wine to be considered organic that needs some kind of organic certification on the labels. So make sure you check for that when you look for an organic wine in your store.
It is a premium producers of wine that takes special care in vineyard to make the best possible wine they are doing smaller yields. They do everything possible to make the best juice in the bottle. The larger producers making a large Jag wine are trying to produce this much wine as possible. So as a role of fun if it is in the box it is not organic.
A lot of people are moving away from sulfates in their diet. So they are choosing organic wines for these reasons. Sulfates are used to make a cleaner wine. It prevents oxidation, which affects color and freshness, also kills bacteria and wild yeast. Wine makers choose to inoculate or kill all the yeast that is wild and naturally occurring in the vineyard. And then use a commercial yeast to control all the process in the wine making.
Organic producers choose to use natural yeast either is occurring in the vineyard so that they do not have to use as much as sulfur dioxide to control the yeast and the process. It is impossible to completely eliminate sulfates. It occurs naturally on the grapes as well as other fruit products and the only way to completely eliminate it is to pasteurize the wine. Organic producers are limited to 100 parts per million of sulfates where as regular produces are only limited to 350 part per million. Sulfates are dramatically less typically in organic wines. The downside of no sulfate or lower sulfates in organic wine is it can decrease shelf life and age ability of the wine.
My favorite producer of organic wines is Fonterra. Fonterra wines have been out since the early 90s and everything about the product is sustainable and organic. Recycled paper, recycled boxes, recycled glass. Another nice thing about the Fonterra wineries they produce enough wine that are widely available so look them in your store.



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