Trends towards sustainable agriculture and farming practices are increasing around the world
This is no different in the wine industry and producers in champagne are following suit, with 100%
sustainability the goal by 2025.
Sustainable viticulture aims to reduce the reliance upon chemicals in the vineyard
It can further be broken down into the practices of organic and biodynamic farming
Fundamentally the goal of organic viticulture and wine making is to produce high quality wines without using any added artificial or synthetic
products such as pesticides or fertilizers
Biodynamic practices go one step further treating a vineyard as one complete ecosystem with all aspects being interconnected and symbiotic
Where traditional viticultural practices may weaken the soil in which vines are grown, organic and biodynamic
viticulture aims to replenish and enrich these soils. These practices help replace and revive the nutrients and
biodiversity within the soils. In
particular, biodynamic farmers use a range of methods to ensure that their vineyards are sustainable and self-replenishing
These include promoting animals to live in the vineyards to fertilise them naturally as well as using specific natural
preparations such as herbal infusions to protect and nourish the soils.
These practices can be compared to the use of homeopathic remedies for humans.
As well as this,
biodynamic producers follow a specific lunar calendar for their farming and winemaking practices.
Following these practices year after year is not always possible though and in a region like Champagne, which has an extremely temperamental
climate, it can become a massive challenge
So everyone is talking about
organic wine- are you doing that?
In champagne, it's kind of very marginal production since we don't have that beautiful sunshine and weather
Every day, every year so technically they are makers of organic champagne
But it's very, very tiny production because you hardly tend to get the right
window of making every year it's mostly linked to to the climate. Okay, and in terms of percentage in
the whole vineyard? It's about 2-3%. 2- 3 percent of the whole? Exactly, all vineyards
it's increasing because the the global warming is just
providing more occasion more opportunity to go organic
But we are still in the north east of France
We've a climate that's going to bring a lot of limits. What makes a wine organic?
You have to respect a certain list of product that you can only use and you have to ban some other type of
products like the pesticides. So the number of tool you can use are much more limited
So in case of a very strong intense invasion of rot, you are in troubles, so you cannot pretend to do it year after year
Because of these challenges it's not always easy to know how a wine was produced
Look out for the symbol or words for organic and biodynamic on your champagne labels
However, it's always best to get to know your producers and their approach to agriculture
Although the methods for organic and biodynamic viticulture are not always easy to follow
viticulturist and winemakers all around the world are constantly learning and adapting to increase their efficiency in
sustainable farming year after year