Sheep mind the vineyards at Navarro of Mendocino County, CA

When the average consumer thinks of ways to live a more sustainable and energy-efficient lifestyle, it’s doubtful that goats or sheep come to mind first.  However, for many vineyard owners, there’s a clear new trend towards using the prolific grass and weed-eating animals to more effectively and responsibly keep their acreage properly trimmed.

Philo, California’s Navarro Vineyards began using goats and sheep in June, with the primary purpose of reducing the use of tractors as well as manual labor.  Santa Cruz’s Bonny Doon Vineyard, a producer of biodynamic wines, recently introduced 800 goats to their new vineyard, an event chronicled in a very entertaining YouTube video.  They both join a bevy of producers, many of whom are organic or biodynamic, that have already been following the practice to avoid not only the use of gas-powered machines, but the use of herbicides that can easily enter the water table.

Time will tell if this trend, currently more popular on the west coast than east, will expand to vineyards on a wider scale.  In addition to being more ecologically prudent, goat and sheep farming sure sounds more rewarding to us than riding your average John Deere tractor.

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.

Beckmen Vineyards (Santa Ynez Valley, CA)

Qupe (Los Olivos, CA)

Radio-Coteau (Sebastopol, CA)

Reeds Lane Vineyard (Lyle, WA)

Wildridge Vineyard (Yakima, WA)

Reeds Lane & Wildridge join Grandview’s Wallula Gap Vineyards, and Walla Walla’s Cayuse Vineyards as the only Demeter-certified biodynamic wineries in Washington state.  Good to see the biodynamic movement in the U.S. grow beyond California’s cornerstone regions of Mendocino, Napa, and Sonoma.

Cooper Mountain's 'We Love Dirt' Promotion

In celebration of soil preservation through biodynamic and organic farming, Oregon’s Cooper Mountain Vineyards will be featuring a special tasting and promotion over the Valentine’s Day holiday on February 14th & 15th.  Visitors to their Beaverton tasting room can enjoy special tasting flights featuring strawberries drizzled in Cooper Mountain balsamic vinegar.  For $25, you can purchase their ‘We Love Dirt Package’, which features two flights of both red & white wines, along with two logo wine glasses.

No word on whether the worms or manure-filled cow horns will cost extra.  Either way, we appreciate a clever marketing campaign when we see one.  If you’re in the Portland area, sounds like a lot of fun to us.

For their part, Demeter USA expects to certify at least 20 additional wineries this year.  All but only a select few of the presently certified wineries hail from either California, Oregon, and Washington, undoubtedly the heart of the American wine industry.  We hope to see increases in the number of biodynamic producers from not only the organic hotbed regions of Mendocino and the Willamette Valley, but in areas further east such as New York state.  Only time will tell if 2009 is to be a significant year for growth in biodynamic winemaking.

Southbrook just officially opened in June of this year, and more recently received their biodynamic certification from Demeter.  They appear to be the only winery in Canada at present to receive this distinction.  Achieving LEED Gold and Demeter certification just months apart is a double-feat you don’t see very often in the industry, so we pass along to them our congratulations.  We’ll be featuring more Canadian organic and biodynamic winemaking efforts in the first-half of 2009, so stay tuned.  Incidentally, Southbrook informed us that they hope to offer U.S. distribution for their wines early in 2009 as well.

LEED Gold-certified Southbrook Vineyards Hospitality Center (copyright Southbrook Vineyards; used with permission).

For More About Organic and Biodynamic Wines, Visit DrinkTheEarth.com

Entrance to Robert Sinskey Vineyards, located in Napa, California

Having regrettably never made it to Robert Sinskey Vineyards in previous visits, my wife and I sought out this Napa institution which has been farming organically since 1991, and more recently received its Demeter biodynamic certification.  Our pleasant tasting experience was chaperoned by Susan, who started working for the winery earlier in the year.  Somewhat unique to many of our other winery visits, Sinskey offers an hors d’oeuvres pairing to go along with each wine on their tasting menu.  You can purchase the aptly-named ’Gluttonous Flight’ for $20 ($15 is refunded with a two-bottle purchase), which on this day included four wine and food pairings.  The pairings are heavily influenced by Robert Sinskey’s wife Maria Helm Sinskey, a well-known chef and cookbook author.  Susan explained to us that Sinskey wines are made from nearly 200 acres of vineyards in the Carneros region of Napa, located in the southern part of the county.  Most of their vines are not actually in the immediate area surrounding the majestic tasting room facility, built into a beautiful hillside off Napa’s famed Silverado Trail.

As the tasting menu was dominated by reds on this day, we started our experience  with the 2006 Los Carneros Pinot Noir, which Susan explained was the most widely distributed Sinskey wine made and produced from a blend of grapes farmed across multiple vineyards.  We followed the ‘06 Los Carneros with the 2005 Four Vineyards Pinot Noir, which is aged in French oak.  Perhaps due to being a year older, we preferred the Four Vineyards to the Los Carneros, although both appeared well suited to pair with a good wild salmon steak.  Susan explained that they try and stay away from high alcohol levels, opting for more acidity to pair with food.  Next, we tried the 2005 Los Carneros Merlot, which we found very light and fruity, especially on the nose.  We ended the tasting with the 2005 Marcien, a proprietary red that is aged for 20 months in French oak.  Intrigued by our liking of the two Pinots we tried, we opted to blindly buy a bottle each of 2005 Capa Vineyards Pinot Noir, and the 2005 Vandal Vineyard Pinot Noir, neither of which were being poured in the tasting room that day but were recommended by Susan.

The final day of our trip happened to be Thanksgiving, and following a recent tradition, Healdsburg’s Porter Creek Vineyards was one of only three wineries open for business on that day.  Their modest, rustic tasting room was nearly filled with those getting an early start to the holiday festivities.  Guided by Mike, our tasting room experience started with the 2007 Timbervine Ranch Viognier, one of the few Viogniers we had a chance to taste on this particular trip.  We also tasted their 2006 Estate Pinot Noir against the 2006 Fiona Hill Pinot Noir, the latter of which is named for the 5 1/2 year old daughter of Alex Davis, Porter Creek’s winemaker.  While we liked both, we slightly preferred the Fiona Hill.  While teasing us by pouring an otherwise unavailable 2004 Zinfandel, we asked Mike about the vineyards located out the back window of the tasting room.  He explained that they in fact belonged to the massive E&J Gallo Winery, and were not part of their estate.  Since Porter Creek is certified biodynamic and Gallo does not practice organic farming methods, Gallo is required to maintain at least a small separation between their vines and those of Porter Creek.  Mike also explained that Gallo is not permitted to spray pesticides or other chemicals when the wind speed is above a certain threshold, a situation Porter Creek understandably monitors closely.

We left with a bottle each of the Viognier, as well as the 2006 Old Vine Zinfandel, which Mike assured us is likely on the same tasting path as the 2004 we tried (we hope he’s right!).  If you’re looking for a biodynamic producer with a versatile lineup of very good wines, Porter Creek is a great stop.  We look forward to getting back when there’s less of a crowd to spend more time asking questions about their winemaking practices.

Organic farming sign as posted outside Porter Creek

Next Up: Details of our tasting room visits to certified-organic producers, including Frog’s Leap Winery.

For more about biodynamic and organic wines, visit DrinkTheEarth.com.

Quivira, Puma Springs, Porter Creek, and Truett-Hurst, along with CCOF-certified organic winemakers Michel-Schlumberger and Preston Vineyards, all hail from the Dry Creek Valley, a relatively small appellation that comprises approximately 9,000 of Sonoma County’s 60,000 acres of vineyards.  This collection of wineries form an up-and-coming hub of organic and biodynamic winemaking that serves as a nice complement to Sonoma’s biodynamic counterparts in Napa, such as Sinskey, Grgich Hills and Benziger. 

As one of the true pioneers of the grape responsible for putting California wine on the map, Mike Grgich of Grgich Hills is known throughout the valley, often wearing his signature beret.  As we stopped in mid-day to sample wines from his Rutherford tasting room, Sinskey himself appeared briefly from the back room, where we were told a VIP tour had wrapped up just minutes earlier.  While there, we were given an excellent overview of Grgich’s wines by Hank, who intertwined stories about Grgich, a longtime friend of fellow wine pioneer Robert Mondavi, with food pairings for many of the wines we tasted.  After fielding several of our questions his eyes lit up as I asked the differences between aging biodynamic wines, which contain no sulfites, versus ones that do.  After joking that sulfite-free wines will not give you nearly the hangover of their sulfite-ridden counterparts (a claim that has many other believers, if a recent Google search is any clue), he suggested that biodynamic wines are like a living organism, and will frequently change complexion over time.  He referenced Grgich’s Merlot, of which some tasting room visitors have reported taking on certain properties of a fine Cabernet upon aging. 

Starting our own tasting experience, we began with a wonderfully crisp Fume Blanc, which Hank assured us was a terrific seafood pairing, adding, “anything you can serve with a lemon, this wine will work.”  We then tried a nice ‘06 Chardonnay that even my wife, who typically dislikes Napa-made Chardonnay (usually too much oak), especially enjoyed.  After moving into the Reds, we tried a Zinfandel much smoother than its 14.9% alcohol might suggest, and the aforementioned Merlot.  We ended on an actual Cabernet, then promptly left with a bottle each of the 2006 Grgich Napa Valley Chardonnay, and the 2006 Grgich Napa Valley Zinfandel, both of which are certified biodynamic.

Moving along on our trip, we visited Healdsburg-based Quivira, another biodynamic producer whom we had visited on our wine trip a year earlier.  Amongst the items for sale in their solar-powered tasting room were organic cotton t-shirts, estate olive oils, and natural fig jams (the latter made from the signature tree of their Fig Tree Vineyard).  Our tasting experience was led by Rod, Quivira’s Hospitality Manager, who eagerly shared with us details of Quivira’s farming efforts upon learning about DrinkTheEarth (he also issued to us our first challenge – to research where Rudolf Steiner himself learned the biodynamic farming techniques he first espoused in the early 1900’s). 

Highlights of our 2^nd-ever Quivira tasting room visit included sampling a nice, dry Rose, a relatively low-production wine with only 446 cases produced, along with another lower-production wine, their Petit Syrah, which Rod explained can be aged for up to 20 years.  We were also told about their Steelhead Wines, named in honor of the wild trout that return to Wine Creek on the Quivira property each Spring.  Supporting Trout Unlimited, a donation is made for every bottle sold.  Before leaving the tasting room we bought a bottle of the 2007 Quivira Grenache Rose, and later followed Rod’s advice and picked up a bottle of the 2006 Steelhead Zinfandel from the Safeway in Santa Rosa (it is also available in various Vons locations).

NEXT UP: Part II, detailing our tasting room experiences at Robert Sinskey, and Porter Creek Vineyards.

For more information, visit DrinkTheEarth.com