Beyond Organic Wine organicwinepodcast

My guest for this episode is Ben Falk. If you don’t know Ben, he’s the author of The Resilient Farm and Homestead, 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design, which I would describe as THE homesteading manual and is the result of decades of Ben’s life in Vermont designing, implementing, and maintaining regenerative polycultures systems.
Ben is very well known in the permaculture world, but isn’t known so much in the wine world… which seemed a shame to me, as he has immense practical knowledge to share that would be useful to those of us growing wine. We cover many topics, as usual, in this conversation. From the state of the world, to learning how to design your life to be able to spend more time working in the land. And we get practical about many aspects of growing and maintaining fruiting perennials… which is my catch all term for grapes, apples, pears, berries, etc that we use to make wine.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how owners of smaller vineyards can incorporate grazing, since the larger ruminants like sheep and cows are difficult to keep in any significant numbers without a good bit of land. Ben loves working with cows more than sheep, as it turns out, and has some great suggestions about how to protect your fruiting perennials from them. But we also dig into geese, which are also amazing grazers for smaller vineyards and orchards, and have their own nuances, as well as ducks, chickens, fencing, livestock guardian dogs, and more.
Also, Ben has some beautiful things to say about mead making and has very much inspired me to consider mead making.
Ben asks us to consider resilience in our winemaking. What kind of winegrowing and making can we continue to do indefinitely? What kind of wine makes our land continually healthier and more lush? What kind of winemaking makes our lives happier and more energetic? What kind of winemaking can continue to nourish us regardless of the changing whims and trends of the wine market? I think you’ll find that Ben has some great insights into answering these questions.
https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/
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Beyond Organic Wine
Sponsor:
Centralas Wine

If you haven’t heard of Dr. Jonathan Lundgren and Ecdysis, you’re in for a treat. Jon is from the middle of this country and has seen the return of dust storms to our farmland. He was one of the most preeminent scientists in his field, but when he looked around at the farmland he passed as he drove through the Midwest, he saw that none of his achievements were making a difference. He wanted to effect positive change. Like most of you listening who see what is happening to your world, he wanted to make it better. So he did. I don’t want to over-hype him or the work he’s doing, but it may be unique in the history of the world. Ecdysis is undertaking one of, if not the largest science projects of its kind ever. Known as the 1000 farms initiative, the folks of Ecdysis visit and collect data from what will soon be over 1000 farms, including vineyards and orchards. Of course he isn’t doing this work alone. There’s a team of passionate, intelligent people who make this project possible.  This data he has been collecting shows the ecological, economic, environmental, sociological, and psychological results of different types of farming practices. And as Jon and the Ecdysis team collect more and more data over more and more years, the results provide an avalanche of evidence that not only makes it clear that regenerative agriculture is the solution, but also provides the basis for policy and laws to change and adapt to the undeniable evidence.
https://www.ecdysis.bio/
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Beyond Organic Wine
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Centralas Wine

My guest for this episode is Nick Hillman. Nick has worked with vineyards on three continents, including all across the US. Nick now lives in Texas where hed does vineyard and farm consultation with his company Regenerative Agriculture Solutions. Nick has been on a journey that led him from conventional, recipe-type viticulture to a transformed regenerative outlook and approach. He tells us about the ideas and experiences that began to make him ask harder questions, the things that didn’t make sense or seem wise. We get technical about Integrated Pest Management or IPM, as well as the pros and cons of VSP versus high trellis systems, dormant spraying for the most effect with least impact, and Texas AVAs. Along the way, Nick digs into what regenerative viticulture is all about, and why it has grabbed him and led him on this journey.  
https://www.regenerativeagsolutions.com/home
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Centralas Wine

What if everything you ever heard about foxy wine is a lie?
Wine’s F-word is the word "Foxy," and I have been on a journey over the last few years to discover the truth about this word. It has been a surprising and surprisingly impactful journey because it turns out that this word is tied up with almost everything that is currently and perennially relevant to the wine industry because it has to do with deeply held prejudice. And that’s why I believe it’s important to understand what’s going on with this wine term. I don’t know of any journey that is more important than freeing ourselves of prejudice. Liberating our minds from the tyranny of misinformation and our own psychological hang-ups may be, I think, the only way that we will be able to adapt, evolve, and survive on a planet that is wired with a nuclear self-destruct button that has been entrusted to the care of chest beating apes.
 In other words, Free your mind, and life will follow.
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Sponsor:
Centralas Wine
 
Some links for research:
 
The red-white wine tasting test: https://web.archive.org/web/20070928231853/http://www.academie-amorim.com/us/laureat_2001/brochet.pdf
 
A History of Wine In America, Thomas Pinney 1989
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft967nb63q&chunk.id=d0e11447&toc.id=&brand=ucpress
 
“foxy” study
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41438-020-0304-6?fromPaywallRec=true
 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41438-019-0163-1
genetic basis of grape wine aroma
 
 
 

Meet Charlie and Josh of Sylvan Farm and Cidery. They do such an excellent job of introducing themselves and their story, that it would be redundant for me to pre-introduce them here. But I will tempt you to listen on by saying that they talk about harvesting wildish fruit – you know wild is an illusion, right? So maybe feral is more accurate - and making wine cider from it. Or cider wine. They talk about Queer ecology, and living and growing on the feral side of agriculture. They talk about how they’re integrating tree breeding and selection and adaptive un-farming into their orchard program. And they talk about what they’ve learned from getting this thing started over the past couple of years. Now Sylvan Farm & Cidery is new, and I love the ideas and intentions behind it and through it because I think we’ll all be able to learn some really valuable things along with Josh and Charlie as they explore these ideas in their farming. Oh and they may be making some of the most deliciously interesting perry that come from a grove of wild feral trees that may actually be one tree, like one super organism tree, so I’m excited for you to hear about that and for us all to taste their first vintage soon!
https://sylvanfarmandcidery.com/
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Sponsor:
Centralas Wine

Winegrowers around the globe have made it their goal to grow grapes without sprays. Not only are they succeeding, they are reshaping the way we think about wine