In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night.

What the hell is biodynamic wine and does it taste any better than regular wine?

Jeff
Colorado

Dear Colorado Jeff,

I appreciate the way you get to a point fast, so I’ll try to do the same. This is unlikely, given my digressive style, but who knows — optimism is back in style in America once again.

The wine of which you speak is made from grapes that were grown in accordance with biodynamic farming practices, which are based on the ideas of Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner (whose theories also gave birth to today’s Waldorf schools). These wines meet organic standards, but they get Super-Extra Bonus Points in terms of sustainability. BD farmers are strict and meticulous stewards of their land, which they tend to view as a single, living organism (a sort of Gaia hypothesis in micro).

They are likely to make their own soil treatments such as the infamous manure-filled ram’s horn, and they believe that a good wine “starts with compost.” Their approach is decidedly holistic and unconventional: Farming is influenced not only by the seasons, but also by lunar and planetary phases. For more info, go here.

Does it sound a bit eccentric to you? It certainly did to me, but I had to ask myself which was nuttier: the intensively farmed, sprayed, and irrigated monocultures of conventional winemaking, or super-dedicated organic farming with a dash of mysticism?

Critics of BD wine dismiss it as witchcraft. This has been countered by pointing out that many God-fearing folks turn to the all-American Farmer’s Almanac for their astrological-gardening tips.

And, nutty or not, more and more consumers are turning to organic and BD wines, and not just for sustainability, but also for taste…

Full Story: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/11/19/92223/962?source=food