Jancis Robinson has written that she believes the biodynamic movement "just makes for better tasting wines". If that is true, then certainly anyone would find a biodynamic wine better regardless of their experience with wine in general. What I mean, of course, is that if two wines are served to a group of people, one biodynamic and one non, the biodynamic should be clearly favoured, should it not?
A couple of weeks ago I pitted two wines against each other in a tasting. One of these wines was a biodynamic wine from Tawse Winery, a 2009 Sketches Chardonnay. The second wine was a Burgundy sustainably produced Chablis, 2009 Domaine Louis Moreau Chablis 1er Cru Vaulignot. The people tasting were the usual group of friends some with a greater wine appreciation than others, but none with any expertise claimed or imagined. They certainly would not have a prejudice toward one form of farming over another. No mention was made before the tasting of one of the wines being a biodynamic wine.
To my thinking, if a biodynamic wine is superior because of its method of farming it should be favoured by people who like wine regardless of experience or the wine simply does not live up to the marketing hype. Furthermore, if the wine is not the clear winner and you maintain that these methods result in the best examples of wines from any region, you must then concede that your region is not as suitable for wine making. Or, you have to admit that there is far more involved in making wine than the position of the planets or the burying of a bovine head for a specified period of time during a specific phase of the moon. And, let me nip in the bud this next argument, if only experts can tell the difference, you must concede that your methods hold no relevance to the average consumer and labelling is irrelevant.
So, who was the clear winner? Eight people were asked to pick their favourite wine and what region they thought the wine came from. Two people picked the Tawse as coming from Niagara and one person guessed the Chablis as coming from France. As for preference, 3 people declared a preference for the biodynamic wine and 5 preferred the sustainably grown product.
Ok, this is not the most scientific test in the world, but I bet I could run the tasting a thousand times with different people and get the same statistically insignificant result. There is no discernible difference in taste from biodynamic processes, in my opinion. If the claims of superiority were true, I would have expected, even in this small sampling, to have seen some indication that people preferred the Tawse Chardonnay. Almost everything about these two wines was the same: vintage, bottle size, price, amount of oak and soil type. The only clear difference, aside from the influence of the wine maker, was the approach toward vineyard management. This clearly was not enough to overcome the winemaker's expert touch.
Does this mean I no longer love Tawse? No. I think they make great wine and I think they will get better at it; I just don't think that their biodynamic approach will have anything to do with it. While we were tasting wine at Tawse we were told that, during harvesting, workers were instructed to discard any bunches of grapes that had any unripened fruit. Not just the unripened berries, but the whole bunch was to be discarded. This kind of attention to quality is what will make or break Tawse and, regardless of whether or not the "moon is in the seventh house, or jupiter is aligned with mars".
I plan to write more about organic and sustainable farming in future posts, in the mean time you can read this blog to give you an idea of the criticisms of biodynamic farming.
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