Why Do I Care So Much About Farming?
I could write a book about the answer to this question. I won’t because others have done this far better than I could ever manage. Instead, I’ll muse about it a little bit here. There are two fundamental reasons I care about farming: quality and responsibility. Farming affects the overall quality and expression of a wine most, and how we choose to farm overwhelmingly affects the health of the biome, both locally and globally.
Sustainability in farming is the idea that the people working the land put more life into it than they take out. This is an important consideration when growing wine grapes for several reasons. On a purely practical level, a healthy vine growing in soil and within a biome teeming with life will experience less disease, fungal, or nutrition pressures. Additionally, it will be better able to dig for water and find a much more diverse and complete set of nutrients available. Simply put, in these conditions, the vine will produce more interesting grapes capable of making a more complex and expressive wine. Less obvious is how this lively biome will affect the wine-making process. Lively soil leads to an atmosphere with a healthy microbial community. This means there will be an abundance of healthy yeasts adapted to the fruit of those vines available when the grapes arrive at the crush pad. A complex spontaneous fermentation with yeasts from the vineyard will add another element of terroir expression to the finished product.
Contrast that with conventionally farmed grapes (or even large-scale organically farmed grapes, but that’s a whole other article). They are sprayed frequently with fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides to ensure nothing is competing with them for resources. They are fed with synthetic fertilizers providing massive amounts of macronutrients but little or no trace nutrients. The soil between rows is usually bare with little life in it. The vines are orderly and productive, but the grapes they give are monolithic in flavor and not very interesting. They must have factory-cultivated yeasts added to them to ferment properly. The wines are very consistent and tend to be cheap due to the amount of mechanization and automation involved, but they express little or no sense of place or identity.
Obviously, there are different degrees to which sustainable and conventional farming practices are applied. But the more a farmer invests in the life of the biome, the more that biome rewards them with high-quality produce, grapes, or otherwise. Also important to consider are the ethical and environmental effects of farming decisions. Everyone feels the effects of farming practices. Holistic, regenerative farmers invest in life. Plant life, microbial life (SO important for everyone’s health!), animal life, and biodiversity above all. The fact is that a more biodiverse farm grows healthier plants requiring less intervention and input. Wine growers, competing in an industry that places a premium on quality over quantity more than other agricultural sectors, have become innovators in finding ways to farm in cooperation with natural processes rather than in opposition to them. As a result, they have become potent voices in support of sustainability in agriculture.
As we gradually all become more interested in where our food and consumer goods come from and how they’re made, I encourage everyone to ask about farming, production, and even shipping practices. Not just because it’s better for people and the planet, but because, in nearly all cases, it leads to better quality. And isn’t that really the point?
Happy drinking!
