Which regulations are necessary for organic and biodynamic wine?

About a year ago, we at “i vini biodinamici' believed we had been very lucky, that we had narrowly avoided the risk of having “chemical” wine passed off as organic by law. It is not at all true that the European Commission withdrew (rejected) the organic wine regulation or failed to issue the standards regulating organic wine. The European Commission rejected the standard for a wine very, very similar to conventional wine.

It is also not true that the controversy was about the levels of sulfur dioxide allowed in wine: this aspect has been cleverly presented as the source of disagreement between Northern European producers and Italian purists and “good guys.” But why make such a simple matter so confusing? Even the discussions about sulfur dioxide aimed, for the more attentive, to push the allowed levels to 100 ppm for reds and 150 ppm for whites. Even the Italians, under this shameful threshold, did not want to go lower.

At the same time, there has never been a regulation aiming at zero sulfites. But apart from sulfur dioxide, what do we do about all the other substances allowed in this hypothetical organic wine? After all, biodynamic wine, as defined in some private standards, follows the misstep of organic wine and does not differ much from it.

In truth, it would be very simple to implement a standard for biodynamic wine and, by extension, for organic wine, which could be summarized in this reflection: use only what is necessary to transform grapes into excellent wine. Here, the decades-long experience of producers and technicians who know how to make organic wine comes into play. Over the last 20 years, starting from the principle “only what is necessary,” through trial and study, they have arrived at the need for “just a pinch of sulfur dioxide,” resulting in a product that today competes (often excelling) with the best wines made by enologists.

Had the organic wine standard been approved as presented to the European Commission, it would have discredited the work and established practices of this small group of pioneers. It would have been a colossal deception for the organic wine consumer.

So, what remains necessary to turn excellent grapes into excellent wine? Today, only small doses of sulfur dioxide (to be declared on the label).

Unfortunately, this did not happen. There was an attempt to approve a very artificial and redundant organic wine standard, in which all conventional wine producers could fit, and we ask: WHY? A dear friend whispered to me—though I distance myself from this pessimistic thought—that the market for controlling organic production is profitable for the companies involved, and they certainly do not want to cut the branch on which they live, placing very tight restrictions. The same friend added that even the costly research—often conducted by those who do not know how to make organic or biodynamic wine, funded by the European Community and lasting years (others of the same kind are ongoing)—which should have demonstrated the scientific validity of organic winemaking, has produced more approximate assumptions than incontrovertible truths, spreading inexplicable alarms about difficulties, such as achieving regular spontaneous fermentation, or proposing unnecessary and outdated alternatives to sulfur dioxide, such as lysozyme (a known allergen).

Now let’s look at what the last draft standard discussed and rejected by the European Commission provided: see Annex VIII bis.

Given what can be “used with impunity”? It is clear that no one could find any difference from the winemaking practices of NON-ORGANIC wines currently on the market. So why was this unnecessary standard requested?

It seems specious and contrived to think that with everything that can be added or removed in this so-called organic wine, only sulfur dioxide is the “killer.” It is certainly not harmless, but it cannot appear as the only culprit on which to focus attention, ignoring everything else (let us not forget that we often consume more by eating, for example, pre-cleaned supermarket shrimp, richly treated with metabisulfite). On the other hand, it is a very subtle technique, also used by marketing strategists, to concentrate attention on a perhaps minor detail (sulfur dioxide), making it the focal point of the problem and distracting from the rest of the substances, which are, to say the least, “culpably” allowed.

In the media, the idea of eliminating sulfur dioxide seems to gain a lot of traction, but what modified environments and more or less legal products should be used in its place? Renouncing sulfur dioxide, without valid alternatives, could produce inferior wine, to the benefit of detractors of this excellent winemaking method.

A separate consideration concerns biodynamic wine and production, for which no regulations exist, only private standards. Examining some of these, we see the same pattern. Perhaps here too arises the suspicion (again, my suspicious friend) that tightening the rules would prevent many “cheaters” from entering the system, causing obvious economic damage to those whose livelihood depends on certifications and inspections.

Even in these private standards, yeasts and bacteria can still be inoculated; musts can be acidified or deacidified; alcohol content can be corrected; clarification and filtration can be done; activated carbon, copper sulfate, yeast lees, bentonite, micro-oxygenation, and so on can be used. For those familiar with biodynamics, this is an admission that the natural elements’ actions are not fully understood, and instead of the grape’s metamorphosis into wine, we rely on the biodynamic chicken and its clarifying egg.

In the end, we must shout: there are already many wines in the world—even successful ones—that use many legally allowed substances and rely on the “necessary” use of synthetic chemicals, physics, machinery, and microbiology to produce them. But if a law were created for organic wine or a private standard for biodynamic wine, DO YOU WANT TO REGULATE A WAY OF MAKING WINE AT LEAST DIFFERENT FROM CONVENTIONAL METHODS?