Wine Sustainability

The story of wine and the environment is not a new one. Long before the organic movement developed its contemporary vocabulary, traditional viticulture in most of Europe operated according to principles that we would now recognize as sustainable: minimal intervention, diverse ecosystems within and around the vineyard, the use of organic matter to maintain soil health. The industrialization of agriculture in the mid-twentieth century interrupted this tradition with consequences that are only now being fully assessed and reversed.

The organic certification of a vineyard means the exclusion of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers in favor of copper and sulphur treatments, cover crops, and mechanical soil management. It is a significant operational commitment — more labor-intensive, more susceptible to weather-related failures — and the wines it produces do not invariably taste different from their conventionally farmed counterparts. What changes is the ecosystem: the soil microbiome, the insect diversity, the fungal networks that connect vine roots to the broader soil community.

Biodynamic viticulture, developed by Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s and applied to vineyards with increasing sophistication since the 1970s, extends organic principles into a holistic agricultural philosophy. It treats the farm as a self-sustaining organism, uses preparations of specific herbs and minerals to stimulate soil life, and schedules viticulture work according to a lunar calendar. Its most devoted practitioners — Leroy, Coulée de Serrant, Chapoutier, Zind-Humbrecht — produce some of the most celebrated and distinctive wines in the world.

The climate crisis has brought a new urgency to viticulture's relationship with the environment. The wineries that will define the next century of fine wine are already farming accordingly — building the sustainable foundations that great viticulture has always required.