Want to enjoy wine cultivated and produced with nature in mind?
With so many wines on the market, picking the perfect bottle to pair with a meal or give as a gift is already hard. Choosing responsibly made wines helps narrow the selection — making deciding easier.
You don’t have to be a master, sommelier or connoisseur. Just know that traditional winemaking methods are often best — for product quality and the environment.
What are wines made with organically grown grapes?
Wines with this label have a minimum of 70 per cent organic grapes, but are not the same as certified organic wines. They’re often processed using the same equipment and in the same facility as conventional wine, and may contain sulphur dioxide.
What’s certified organic wine?
Producers use 100 per cent organic grapes and can’t use toxic pesticides, herbicides or synthetic fertilizers. They fertilize with compost, compost teas, green manure and cover crops.
They rely on mechanical weeding, mowing around the vines, mulching and companion planting. To avoid using insecticides to control cutworms, they let chickens graze under the vines or handpick worms off leaves.
Certified organic wine doesn’t use genetically modified organisms or contain sulphites (conventional wines use GMO yeast).
What’s biodynamic wine?
Biodynamic producers cultivate grapes without pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers or growth stimulants, and often meet or exceed standards and regulations for organic-certified farming.
They follow a calendar that emphasizes nature’s interconnections via the elements of earth, fire, air and water. They harvest grapes and drink wine on “fruit days,” water the plants on “leaf days,” prune the vines on “root days” and leave the vineyard alone on “flower days.”
What’s natural wine?
Producers that don’t add anything to grape growing or winemaking processes are considered natural winemakers. Because they don’t filter, most of their wines are cloudy or retain sediments. The wines are often effervescent and may take on unique flavours.
Not all organic wine is natural, but all natural wines are made with organically or biodynamically grown grapes (typically hand-harvested).
What’s vegan wine?
Traditional fining agents classify some wines as not vegan. To remove tiny particles of sediment that can’t be removed by basic filtration, some producers add egg whites, casein (a milk protein), bone marrow, chitin (fibre from crustacean shells), fish oil or gelatin.
To achieve the same results, some winemakers use fining agents that aren’t animal byproducts, such as bentonite or kaolin clays, limestone, carbon or plant casein. European Union and United States regulations don’t require wineries to list fining agents on labels. But many wine retailers and producers highlight vegan-friendly wines.
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