DrinkTheEarth.com Blog

From time to time we’d like to share with you our thoughts on books that are relevant to the organic food and wine industry.  One recent such read was Paul Dolan’s True To Our Roots: Fermenting a Business Revolution, published by Bloomberg Press.  OK, so maybe this isn’t exactly a new book (it was released in 2003), but it is remarkably prescient given that it was written largely ahead of the current eco-trend of today.

The former CEO of Fetzer Vineyards, Paul Dolan is known as an American pioneer for making wine following organic and sustainable principles.  The book chronicles his tenure at Fetzer, first as a young head winemaker, then later as its CEO.  It would be easy to imagine a large, mega-winery like Fetzer to create wine using whatever chemicals or energy-intensive machinery it needed to keep prices under $10.  After all, many people perceive organic or biodynamic wines to be crafted only by boutique wineries who are small enough to do everything by hand.  Fetzer went down a very different path, and made a deliberate decision to make sustainability a part of every process at the company.  This included the creation of a new organic label, Bonterra, that eventually spun off as its own brand as detailed in the book.   They really challenged the old perception that profits and sustainability couldn’t coexist.

The book itself is more about socially responsible leadership than it is about organic wine, even though a fair amount of time is spent explaining the viticultural decisions Fetzer made, and how and why specific sustainable practices were implemented.  Some of our favorite parts of the book centered around how various departments at Fetzer surprised even Dolan with their interest in finding ways to be more environmentally friendly, down to procuring the corks, and preparing the wine barrels.  Definitely worth a read, and readily available at Amazon (or possibly your local library, where we were able to get a copy).