Continuing education: Morella and the task of biodynamic farming
We do wine sessions on Monday. My colleagues pick the topics, I pick wines and prepare notes. It forces me to learn. I’m very lazy and an unwilling student, but I’m mortified at the thought of sharing my ignorance over Zoom for 90 minutes with coworkers that I admire. So I do research, sometimes at the 11th hour, but always exponentially more than I’d tackle without the threat of wine school revealing chasms in my knowledge.
Pretty sure I was standing in front of a classroom 15 years ago talking to the general public about biodynamics. I had the confidence of early adulthood on my side. I’d read several books on the subject, therefore I’m an expert!
Repeated trips to biodynamic farms on three continents eroded my confidence. Being home for a year eroded my confidence in speaking intelligently on any topic. I needed ballast and a dose of courage, so I called up Lisa Gilbee from Morella. She’s been using biodynamics on her farm in Manduria, Puglia for over a decade. And Lisa’s a practical person with a good sense of humor, unlikely to mock my ignorance. I needed her first-person, on the ground perspective. I’d been reading the compelling works of Nicolas Joly, Loire valley’s foremost evangelist of biodynamics, and my head was a little lost in the constellations.
“It’s about learning to interpret your vineyard,” Gilbee said. “The process of change is gradual.”
When Lisa and her viticulturist husband Gaetano started down this path in 2009, they enlisted the help of Ukranian-Australian biodynamics guru Alex Podolinsky to guide their farming. Born in 1925, Podolinsky was an early adopter of Steiner’s farming principles. After World War II he moved to Australia, and successfully adapted biodynamics to the work on a farm he established outside Melbourne. Eventually he would found the Biodynamic Agricultural Association of Australia. Over the course of several decades Podolinsky saw his ideas applied to thousands of hectares of farmland from Victoria to Western Australia.
Lisa Gilbee and her daughters and Alex Podolinsky
Podolinsky told Lisa and Gaetano to start by applying heaps and heaps of horn manure (preparation #500) to their vineyards. Gilbee explains that the vineyards weren't dynamic yet, and that these preparations (along with their other biodynamic endeavors) were to stimulate the whole farm. Nicolas Joly writes at length about the importance of returning plants to an optimal state where they are ready to receive solar radiation, to get them “on the same wavelength” as the universe. In his essay The Rebirth of Appellations, Joly writes, “This is what so deeply shocks our materialist counselors, who still have yet to understand that since life is a frequency, it is not to be measured quantitatively.” In the race to sell herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers and more, agricultural consultants failed to mention to their farmer customers that along with the reduced need to work in their fields, these products would bring about a decimation of the microbiome of the earth, effectively tethering vines to purchased synthetic additives, plants on a toxic life support system. We see the downstream ramifications of the wholesale adoption of chemical farming in every part of our environment. No river, delta, or estuary has escaped their terrible impact.
Rudolf Steiner and the people who elaborated on his farming ideas in the last century saw their work as a rebalancing of plant and nature, drawing connections from life on earth to phases of the moon, the sun, and positions of constellations. If that sounds kooky, consider that over 90% of a plant’s vegetative growth in a viticultural cycle comes from the energy of photosynthesis. Far more of a plant’s weight is soaked in from the sun than pulled up from the soil. Solar radiation, and being dialed in to recieve it, is an important goal of biodynamics.
Another element is interactive viticulture. Watching, learning, adapting. Biodynamics remains rooted in practical concerns. “Biodynamic fruit should taste better,” according to Lisa. “You must make better grapes. Because the vines are in better equilibrium. They should be more lively, more vibrant in color and flavor.The plants should be strong, vertical. If a winery is using nitrogen-based fertilizers, the plants can become droopy, the wrong color.” So #500 was the key for Morella. It brought energy back to their parcels of ancient bush-trained biodiverse Primitivo.
Lisa has a background in science, I trust her lens on the very expansive subject of biodynamic agriculture. “If you have a bad vineyard, biodynamics won’t make it a good vineyard,” she said. “But it can give you an edge. It will make it a better bad vineyard by creating a modest, correct yield. You’ll spend less on chemicals, but more on people.” Biodynamics returns farmers to their fields, to do the work chemical companies promised their products would allow wineries to skip. Short cuts often lead to dead ends. Or dead fields.
Specifics: the very amiable Gaetano must use a specially designed plow to hoe around his vines in spring and autumn, an implement that doesn’t compress the soil or generate much shearing force. It aerates, turns the soil, to close in on itself. Slicing, counterbalancing the normal compression that occurs from walking, even from rain falling on fields.
Sometimes Lisa and Gaetano will spray preparation #501 (silica) if they have a pest infestation. “You have to go look in the vineyard,” Lisa said. “It’s not a formula.” She believes the mentality of conventional (and even organic) producers is too proscriptive “like a doctor” and that they don’t spend enough time on observation. “Biodynamics is to support the whole,” She said. It’s not solely about creating a marketable end product.
Armed with this information, false confidence and a half case of fancy european biodynamic wine, I signed in to the Zoom class. I shuffled through the basics, the calendar, root and fruit days. I listed the practical vineyard treatments. Colleagues asked questions. I tried to talk about energy and the cosmos. My coworkers were patient. At the end, we tasted the wines. And I came to the same conclusion that led to calling up Lisa in Puglia. Biodynamic wines taste better. A tiny percentage of the world’s vineyard acreage is biodynamic, but a disproportionate number of the qualitatively best wineries are biodynamic. But is it because they are biodynamic? Or is it because of who is drawn to adopt this far-out, very labor intensive farming philosophy? Does the reason matter?
At first sip of wine #1, a 2017 Nicolas Joly Vieux Clos Savennieres, the reaction on the faces of my coworkers told the story. They were shocked, and impressed. It was hard to capture the swirl of flavors, layers both bright and exceptionally deep, multi-faceted. I could break out a few components, but my professional wine person vocabulary was hopelessly insufficient. Even-keel, low drama Mandy really liked it, I can’t remember her being so effusive about a bottle before. Wine #2, a 2019 Huet Vouvray Le Mont Vouvray continued the love fest. It was completely different, but no less expressive. Angular, mineral, high-toned, the idea that both wines were Chenin felt almost absurd given their aesthetic differences. Le Mont was followed by a 2017 Fattoria Casellina Solare Vermentino, a wine that veers really close to perfection and that only modesty prevents me from declaring it the equal of the previous (more expensive) duo (we import the Solare.) Subsequent bottles from Les Maisons Brulees and Carussin were ripe and fruity, articulate.
At the end of the wholly captivating tasting I carried an open bottle of 2016 Morella La Signora Primitivo with me to the kitchen, to enjoy with a “simple meal” of bacon-y red beans brought over by friend and neighbor Phoebe Lawless of Snack Service fame. Comfort food for a winter’s night of the highest order, and a wine that shows how harmony and balance are possible in hot climates and high alcohol reds. I love that I live in a community with a world-class cook/baker just down the street, and that I can call up one of Puglia’s best winemakers simply to chat about farming. I feel surrounded by smart, talented people, and that brings real comfort.
Sources.
The Rebirth of the Appellations by Nicolas Joly
Wine from Sky to Earth by Nicolas Joly
Materialism and the Task of Anthrosophy by Rudolf Steiner
Bio-dynamics and the Future of Agriculture by Alex Podolinsky