Earth Day Twitter Facts
For those of you who didn’t catch up to our Twitter posts, below are the six organic beverage facts we sent out earlier in celebration of Earth Day. We hope you took a chance to reflect on our planet’s future on this important day of awareness and appreciation.
Earth Day Fact #1: Milwaukee’s Lakefront Brewery lays claim to the first U.S. certified organic beer, an E.S.B. made in 1996.
Earth Day Fact #2: Nearly all wines contain some sulfites naturally, including those made following organic or biodynamic practices.
Earth Day Fact #3: The USDA National Organic Program was implemented in ‘02, although other certifications have been around much longer.
Earth Day Fact #4: Approx. 70% of all Demeter-USA certified biodynamic wineries are in CA. Nearly 20% are in Ore., with the rest elsewhere.
Earth Day Fact #5: N. Dakota has been called the ‘Napa Valley of Rye’, and is where several organic distillers source rye for their vodkas.
Earth Day Fact #6 (and last): NYC’s GustOrganics is the only organic bar certified by the USDA.
Next up: Look for a write-up from our Earth Day Organic Vodka tasting coming soon. We tasted three organic selections, Crop, TRU, and Rain, against a well-known non-organic offering. How did the ‘green’ options fare? Find out shortly.
DrinkTheEarth.com Adds Wine of the Week, Beers/Spirits of the Month
New editorial features!
Need a fresh suggestion for an organic wine to pair with your next dinner? Want to impress your friends with knowledge of the latest eco-friendly cocktail on the market? We’ve recently added some new editorial features to DrinkTheEarth.com, including a weekly organic/biodynamic wine selection of the week, as well as organic beers & spirits of the week. Wine selections will be updated every Monday on a weekly basis, while we will be featuring new beers and spirits each month. These will include new-to-market beverages, as well as those that might not be easy to find at your local corner wine and beverage provider. Oh, and we’re also open to recommendations. As much as we’d like to, we can’t possibly spend all of our time searching the web for the latest in organic drinks.
Still confused about what makes a beverage organic, or what those certifications really mean? We’ve also made enhancements to our online Resources, including several new organic beverage FAQ’s. There’s a lot of confusion still out there, so we’ll be adding to our list of questions in the coming weeks or months. Have a suggestion for what else we should include? Feel free to let us know.
Sustainability Efforts Part II: The Hops
In our last post, we talked about the sustainability efforts many wineries have undertaken who are otherwise not ‘certified’ organic. A lot of non-certified wineries we’ve spoken to are either slowly moving towards eco-friendly farming practices, like pulling back on chemicals used in the vineyard, or are taking steps to become more energy efficient in other aspects of the business, such as using solar power. We recently interviewed Dan Del Grande of Bison Brewing Company (article to appear on the site soon as our next Eco Chat), who made an interesting comparison between the wine and beer markets.
Dan said that brewers can learn a lot from their wine brethren, many of whom are pursuing sustainability for what he considers the right reasons; to protect the environment, be carbon-neutral (or at least get closer to carbon neutrality), and perhaps most importantly, because they think it’s best for the consumer. From his perspective, some beer makers who are either brewing organically or are considering it see organics as simply a market niche; they aren’t as sold on whether it is best for the end customer. Whether it’s because organic wine has received more publicity or the winemakers simply view their businesses differently, many of them have already made that leap. Assuming he’s right, it will be interesting to see if the relatively nascent organic spirits market follows a similar evolution.