While it’s been slower to happen than it did with food, “natural” and “organic” are becoming major buzz words and talking points in the wine community these days. We’ve learned not only that natural wines deliver less of a hangover, but that most readily available wines are often full of nasty pesticides, fungicides, and fertilisers. Alcohol doesn’t, in fact, kill everything; it’s a bit of a kick in the teeth to think that whilst we’ve been making a conscious effort to buy all organic meats and vegetables, we’ve likely been drinking harmful toxins for several years.
So, what goes into wine?
Ideally, very little should go into the wine. Sulphites have been used for centuries in very small amounts to stabilise finished wine and, though not strictly necessary, most winemakers use commercial yeast cultures to ensure that they get consistent fermentations. The reality is, though, that most wine today is produced on an industrial scale, which obviously comes with accompanying industrial processes. If you’re picking a bottle off a shelf in the supermarket, chances are that it’s made from grapes that were sprayed heavily with pesticides and fungicides, to keep labour costs down and minimise the risk of crop loss, then treated with any of dozens of allowed chemical and biological agents to give it specific flavours and textural qualities.
What’s the difference between organic and biodynamic?
For many wineries, they don’t feel that simply farming organically goes far enough. Biodynamics is a more rigorous and holistic approach to farming that incorporates elements of homoeopathy and even a little bit of astrology. It’s a little kooky and considered to be very controversial, but it’s growing more and more popular among ambitious producers. Producers must be certified by an organisation called Demeter to be able to label their wines as being Biodynamic. Organic certification varies slightly in different countries, but wines labelled “Made with Organic Grapes” are free from toxic chemicals in the vineyard. Wines labelled as “Made with Biodynamic Grapes” are even stricter with what they allow.
Is natural wine the same as biodynamic?
Natural wine is a loosely organised movement of people who believe that wine should be made without any chemicals in the vineyard or additions in the winery. The idea is that all the ingredients for wine are already present within the grape itself, so the most authentic wine is the one that has been manipulated the least. There is no certification or organising body and there can be a lot of infighting over the purity of principles but, since it’s so difficult to know for sure how wine was made, it offers a kind of guarantee of credibility.
The wines vary enormously in quality—many of the best wines in the world are ‘natural,’ but there are some awful ones, too—and you usually have to look for them in specialist shops and restaurants, though they are becoming more and more common.
Will natural, organic or biodynamic wine make us less hungover?
Natural wine tends to be lighter in style than industrially manufactured wine so, generally speaking, it has a lower alcohol content, which means you can drink more without getting a hangover. The science is still firmly out on whether other additives in industrial wine make hangovers worse but, if you ask people who have converted to only drinking natural wine, they’ll undoubtedly tell you that they feel much better in the morning than they used to!
