The organic wine does not exist : there is no regulation for the wine making and only the grapes can be produced in an organic way. We can only talk about "wine resulting from grapes produced in organic agriculture". The regulation is pressed on the schedule of conditions of the vegetable productions which you can find in the part appendix.
What differentiates primarly the wine produced thanks to the methods of organic agriculture, it is the word respect : Respect of the ground on which is planted the vine, respect of the vine, respect of the rules of organical methods, all this for the respect of the environment and the respect of the customers.

The respect of the ground :

Answer Most of the operations which we saw in the previous part are carried out in a manual or mechanical way (ploughing, "decavaillonage", weeding). The weeding, by hoeing and weeding, make it possible to loosen the ground and to air it; the ground does not receive any artificial fertiliser (forbidden in organic agriculture). The contributions are done only by organic manure (horse-dung, barks of trees) and by compost.
One often uses a putting under grass (permanent or temporary) between the vines, which allows a better structuring of the ground and which is used as green manure (fatty ray, white mustard, pea clover). In all the cases, the use of the fertilisation is made in a reasoned way, because an excess of fertilisation involve an excessive strength of the vine, which harms the quality of the wine.
For more technical information, you will find in appendix the schedule of conditions of the vegetable production in organic agriculture as well as different authorised intrants.

The respect for the vine :

The majority of the vine growers in organic agriculture work with old vines (sometimes more than one hundred years). The size, very often manual one, allows to limit the production by stocks to avoid a harmful overload with quality (40 hectolitres per hectare to be compared with the 65 hectolitres on average for the whole of the vineyards).
In organic agriculture, watchword is rather prevention that processing of the diseases. The techniques of stripping, of "épamprage" allow a better air circulation and make it possible to limit the strength of the vine; they have recognised preventive effects.
Against the most frequent diseases (mildew, oïdium), the treatments with suffer and "bouillie bordelaise" (containing copper) are the most frequent and are very effective.
Lastly, by as well as possible respecting the natural balance of the vine, one can control the harmful insects of the vine. For example, to fight against the worm of the bunch, one can use a natural bacterium (the bacillus thuringiensis). A better knowledge of the natural balance (cycle of growth, diseases and natural remedies...) makes it possible to fight before the problems and to obtain good results.

The respect for the methods of wine making :

There is no certified regulation for the wine making in organic agriculture. In France the FNAB (National Federation of Organic Agriculture) carried out a schedule of conditions but it is not recognised by the European Community but applied in France.
The objectives of the wine making is as well as possible to preserve natural qualities of the grape by limiting the external intrants. The vintage is only carried out with the hand. At the time of the various stages of the wine making, no external elements is added (not exogenic yeast) and the physical processing are preferred with the chemical one. The cycle of the rest of the wine is perfectly respected with an ageing out of barrel.

On arrival, the obtained wines approach much to traditional methods, which give typical wines of the vineyards that they represent. The customer is sure that throughout the various stages, no chemical was added as well in the ground as on the vine and the wine. If the "organic vine grower" is not necessarily an excellent vine grower, he respects a certain number of essential elements for the quality of the wine. Furthermore, the quality of these wines is in strong progress because the organic vine growers became also true wine growers, recognised in the official classifications ("Guide Hachette" for instance).
Then, the organic wines do not give "hangover" because they contain only few of suffers.

Caution : the alcohol abuse is dangerous for health
Contact webmaster : vinbio@free.fr