Our vacation was spent, mainly, in our van travelling from Ireland to Switzerland through France. The goal was to combine pleasure with a bit of work - where work would be the driving and pleasure the visit to different wine makers.

Our first stop was in Orschwihr, Alsace at the Domaine Valentin Zusslin, www.valentin-zusslin.com. Rain prevented a visit to the vineyards but certainly not to the cellar. Marie showed us the new cellar which will have more room for the aging of the wines and is situated just below the presses to allow the transfer of the most from the press to the vats by gravity. The idea is to streamline the process of winemaking from the vineyard to the bottle with as few interactions as possible. This means hand picking the grapes into small crates, a second examination of the grapes before crushing, pneumatic pressing and transfer to the vats for the fermentation. Generally, Zusslin's attitude is that wine does not improve when handled too often. There are still a few things that need to be done but everything will be ready for the new vinteage.

With all this care it is no wonder that the wines from Zusslin get better and better. With the experience and knowledge of three generations in the vineyards and cellar a lot of knowhow goes into the wines. Now having produced biodynamically for well over 10 years the rhythm of this way of prodcution is internalised not only in the vineyards and cellar but in dayly life.

The wines I personally like best are: Riesling Grand Cru "Pfingstberg" 2001, Riesling Clos Liebenberg 2002, Muscat Cuvee Marie 2001 and as an aperitif the Cremant d'Alsace made with Riesling and Auxerrois grapes. There are still a few more to discover, especially the late harvested ones, and I will approach those one by one as my palate is getting more educated.

What is organic wine?

Organic wine is made from grapes grown without the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, fungicides and who knows what other potentially poisonous delights designed by chemists to keep Nature at bay. It is a little realised fact that conventionally grown grapes (including those grown for eating) are amongst the most sprayed crop in the agricultural world. They are sprayed from one end of the year to the next and the residue remains on the grape so that you too can enjoy the benefits when you drink the wine!

Organic vineyards produce a smaller yield, but the quality is much better. The terroir is allowed to come through (the French word terroir refers to a combination of factors important to give character and flavour to grapes: the type of soil, where the vineyard is situated i.e. on a hillside or flat, when it gets the sun and the micro-climate in that particular spot). This is what gives a wine its character and why the same appellation can vary from year to year.
Of course the work in the cellar is also of vital importance, but you'll pardon me if I use a very inapposite comparison and suggest that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear! If the grapes are of poor quality it is impossible to make good wine. Well, no actually. If you produce conventional grapes of poor quality, you can use genetically modified yeast to speed up the process of fermentation (because the natural yeasts have been destroyed using fungicides), flavour enhancers, wood chips and enough sulphur to light up a town, so that the end product approximates wine. These practices are not carried out with organic wines because the grapes are well-flavoured and retain natural yeasts. Sulphite is added, as it is fairly difficult to preserve wine without it, but in much smaller quantities than conventional wine. Sulphites may be the culprit when people get headaches from drinking wine.

The differences between organic and conventional wines could run into a very long essay. I have just covered some main areas very superficially, simply to introduce the subject. I'll introduce some organic wine producers in my next posting.

This is the blog site for Vendemia Organic Wines. Why a blog site when we already have an official site? Well, basically we want to share with you organic fans out there all sorts of interesting facts about organic wine and its producers that won't fit on the web-site. We can also answer questions which you might have, because there are a lot of misconceptions about organic wine and, indeed, wine in general.