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California’s Top Biodynamic Wine Selections: Discover the magic of California's top biodynamic wines, where holistic farming brings the vineyard to life. From diverse tasting profiles to Demeter certifications, these sustainable selections offer a richer wine-tasting experience. Embrace the essence of biodynamic wine and uncover the story of the earth, one sip at a time... The post California’s Top Biodynamic Wine Selections appeared first on Bio Wine Buzz.

Pinhal da Torre is more than a winery, it is a vision, a passion and a legacy.🥂 Our story begins in the heart of Portugal, where we have cultivated our vineyards for more than nine decades. We believe that wine is a living expression of the land, the climate and the people who grow it. That's why we practice sustainable agriculture, respecting the natural balance of soil, water and biodiversity. We also created a viticulture program called “Happy Grapes Program”, which ensures that our grapes are healthy, happy and full of flavor.🐞🐝 Our winemaking philosophy is based on biodynamics, which means we work in harmony, namely fermentation with indigenous yeasts, respecting the fruit, without pumping, etc. We use natural and organic methods to improve the quality and character of our wines, without adding any artificial or chemical additives. We also hand-harvest most of our grapes, selecting only the best bunches for each harvest.🍇 Our iconic wine cellar has state-of-the-art equipment, where we combine tradition and innovation to create wines that reflect our identity and values. We were the first in the Portuguese wine industry to use braille on our labels, as a way of making our wines more accessible and inclusive.🙏 Our wines are the result of our dedication, our creativity and our love for what we do. These are wines that speak to the senses, emotions and the soul. These are wines that embody purity, elegance, personality and sustainability. These are wines that tell the story of Pinhal da Torre.🍷 More about us in www.pinhaldatorre.com

Slavonian wines stand as a testament to the rich tapestry of Croatian viticulture, weaving together centuries-old traditions and modern wine-making innovations.

Wine news! Austria launced a new classification to identify Austrian top vineyards: Traditionsweingüter Österreich This is pretty exiting if you ask me. With the launch of this new classification there is no doubt anymore: Austria recovered fully back to a high-end wine region. The driving force behind the classification is the Österreicher Traditionsweingüter which consists of 68 wine makers and 90 Erste Lage sites. The ÖTW is a winegrowers’ association, founded in 1992 and headquartered in Krems an der Donau. According to the ÖTW charter, its primary objective is to create a classification of Austria’s vineyards. The basis of the classification system is the DAC system (the Austrian appellation). There are 18 DAC zones, including 9000 villages and 5000 cru;s. The classification is land-based and covers most regions on Austria. Which wines to try? Well I guess I need to start exploring but it Is very likely to be one of the gruner veltliners. Did you know that one third of the vines in Austria are Gruner Veltliner?  And that Austria has the largest area of organic vineyards globally? 

8 years ago Bart was interviewed by La Cité du Vin in Bordeaux about organics in New Zealand. It was a video exhibition called - Table des terroirs - It has been playing at the exhibition for the last 8 years and seen by 400,000 visitors each year. It has now been converted to a podcast. You can listen to it from the link below. It has also been transcribed if you would like to read it below: Transcript: My name is Bart Arnst. I'm an organic viticulture consultant and co-owner of the Darling Wines here in Marlborough. At present, I'm standing in the Springwood Vineyard, an organically certified vineyard, and it has been for many years. One of the unusual things about this vineyard is that it has no irrigation. And being a drought year, you can see the vines are performing very well. How do we do this? Well, we have to look after the soil. The soil is the most important thing about growing grapes. If you don't look after the soil, you have all sorts of problems in the future. We look at different cover crop species and look to enhance the biology that lives in the soil, making them happy, making the habitat that they feel best that they can operate in. By doing this, we get healthy vines. And if we get healthy vines, we get great fruit. And if we get great fruit, then we're going to make great wines. The sustainability story is very strong in New Zealand. We really are proud of the efforts we're making to lessen the impact on the environment. After all, this is a fairly intensive system growing grapes. There's a lot of work done on the ground, so we have to make sure that we're not going to ruin things for future generations. Every process we go through, we analyse it and check whether it is suitable to be doing. If it's been raining, we don't like to drive on the ground. If it's too hot, we have to do things to alleviate the damage that could be done by heavy machinery. It's all part of the New Zealand story with organics and biodynamics and sustainability. We are looking after the land to produce great wines for the world, and we hope to continue to do so. As I travel throughout New Zealand as a consultant, I get to meet many people who are following the same examples, and they are all making really good wines and very proud of what they do. We are a small nation and we have to look after it, and this is one of the ways we can do it—by really investigating the different types of methods that are required to keep the environment safe. In the meantime, we'll just keep going, making great wines and hoping you around the world get the opportunity to try them.

GRILLO – SICILY’S UP AND COMING WHITE GRAPE Sicily’s wine industry has evolved to a fine producer and exporter. While the previous "Sicilian renaissance" success of Sicilian wines a few years ago was driven by reds, particularly nero d'Avola, in recent now white wines are being perfected by young ambitious winemakers, and capital invested in new technology. More than half of the awards in local competitions this year were for premium whites using indigenous grapes—complex, profound, capable of evolving over time, and irresistibly drinkable. Among those, grillo is one of the most interesting. Born in the second half of the 19th century as a crossbreed of catarratto and zibibbo (aka moscato d'Alessandria), by Baron Antonio Mendola, an agronomist and ampelographer. Grillo as first used for fortified wines but researchers discovered that excellent dry versions could also be made, highlighting both acidity and rich fruit sweetness simultaneously. Grillo is a versatile grape that lends itself to being shaped by climate, soils, vineyard management, and wine making. Perhaps it is these complex and somewhat elusive characteristics that form the basis of its growing success, making it the most interesting white in the current Sicilian wine landscape. It is likely to appear on one of bi-weekly releases of Vintages soon. Keep looking for its appearance, especially that of Feudo Maccari.

Growing popularity in Sierra Foothills At the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California, near the Central Valley AVA, we find a wine region that was established in 1987, the Sierra Foothills AVA. The region covers eight counties and has approximately 1 million hectares of wine-growing area. This also makes it one of the largest wine growing areas in California. And thanks to the growing popularity of the Sierra Foothills, the possibility of expansion makes good sense. History Viticulture was introduced in the 19th century with the rise of the California Gold Rush. Once the gold diggers also looked for entertainment and drink. And wine and beer were of better quality than water at that time. Colonists were mainly Southern Europeans, and especially Italians. Which also explains the grape varieties we encounter here. During the 1860s the wine growing industry flourished like never before. This fueled the growing popularity of Sierra Foothills wines. However, the focus was on quantity and not quality. Which led to more vineyards and wineries than Napa and Sonoma combined! With Prohibition, many vineyards were replaced by fruit orchards. That is why the region became known as the “Fruit Basket of the Nation”. This status remained unchanged until the 1960s. Grape varieties Despite the large surface area of Sierra Foothills AVA, only 2,300 hectares are planted, mainly with Zinfandel (900 hectares) and Cabernet Sauvignon (200 hectares). Chardonnay is the most sought after white grape variety with (only) 100ha. Discover Sierra Foothills The region is characterized by its predominantly small family wineries. That makes a visit to this region so interesting, because it is smaller-scale and more intimate and the vineyards are less commercially set up compared to a Lodi AVA or Napa AVA. https://lnkd.in/g9SSezqe

I have been traveling heavily for the last couple of years to reacquaint myself with important wine regions and their producers.  Today, I am in Tupungato! It feels like the city in the sky perched here in the high desert of Mendoza’s Uco Valle.  Tomorrow, I am visiting Bodega Catena Zapata, one of the producers featured prominently by my wine program at the Red Oak Steak House.   I am a big fan of their style, but what keeps me interested is their persistent habit of building value into their wine offerings. We pour their Paraje Altamira Malbec by the glass -and with great success!  Guest love the style and recognize the quality and value.    I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Laura Catena last summer at the Master’s of Wine Symposium in Wiesbaden. She presented a 20-year-old Malbec, the 2004 Zuccardi Q Malbec (Mendoza). Which was still youthful and full of life. But the conference was less about old wine and more focused on ‘new skins’…   Primary topics includes industry diversity, regenerative agriculture, and eco-responsible practices (such as bottle weights). On all topics it seemed like Dr. Catena had a lot of offer in terms of insight and enthusiasm… in fact, enthusiasm was the thing that you remember most about her. Enthusiasm tied to boundless energy! Topics I have loaded to investigate for this trip: 1.     High altitude viticulture – I am really looking forward to learning more about mitigation of weather issues at high altitude – and why altitude is so important here. (This topic is tied in a bundle of climate related questions I have). 2.     Organic/Biodynamic/Regenerative Viticulture- as recently as 2020, there were 250 organic growers -according to Tim Atkins’ recent report, that number is already up to over 300.  What are the drivers for this growth and what are the market impacts? What are the work arounds for this arid landscape? 3.     In Atkins’ report, he also touches on new styles of wine emerging from the region along with improved quality. This has been my experience as well. New grapes, new price points, quality up to near perfection.  I tasted the Quimera Blanco recently by Achaval Ferrer (Gustavo Rearte Gil, winemaker). This was a unique barrel-fermented blend of Chardonnay, Semillon, and Viognier. Just another example of a new voice coming from these mountain valleys!  A lot to see this week, but I hope to get to as many of the independent producers as possible -  Any suggestions?   I am only here for 10 days… then on to Salta. #AchavalFerrer #CatenaZapata

Vienna Calling - the wine capital of the world and trends in Austrian wine scene It might come as a surprise that Austria’s capital of Vienna is the biggest wine-producing city in the world. https://lnkd.in/dDVmHKW6 Viennese wine is now counted among the classic wines of the world. There are 630 producers (that's one wine producer per 2,500 persons!) working 700 hectares / 1,680 acres of beautiful urban vineyards – many reachable by foot or tram. Vienna is the only capital to produce so much wine within the city limits - including famous wine destinations like France’s Bordeaux and Italy’s Tuscany. https://lnkd.in/eQcEG233 It might be tempting to consider Austria as a ‘plucky underdog’ when compared to other wine growing powers like Italy and France – its almost 45,000 hectares under vine is less than half of the viticultural area of Bordeaux – but such a view is entirely patronising: Austria has millennia of grape growing history, and has been at the forefront of many a viticultural and oenological development. Its wine scene is exciting, diverse, and ever-changing – simply put, producers from across the world would do well to learn from what is happening in Austria. The biggest development in Austrian wine, arguably this century, was last year’s approval of a new vineyard classification system. 2023 saw Thermenregion become a DAC, or ‘Districtus Austriae Controllatus’, an addition which completes the regional structuring. “We have spent the last 20 years on a really important journey, defining our DACs and the typicity of each region- Chris Yorke, the CEO of the Austrian Wine Marketing Board, said “This forms the basis of our next 20 years…now we have the ability to classify those single vineyards, as long as they fit into the DAC system.” Under the new system, individual vineyard sites can be classified as Erste Lage (effectively Premier Cru) or Grosse Lage (Grand Cru). “You have to show the historical significance of the vineyard, the homogeneity of the soil, and the international and national ratings of the soil,” Yorke continued. “Austria is the first wine country in the world to do this nationally.” When one thinks of wine regions, images of rolling hills in remote reaches spring to mind, and Austria certainly has these in buckets, but its capital is also a wine growing region in its own right, with the Wiener Gemischter Satz (or Viennese field blend) achieving DAC status in 2013. The best place to sample Viennese wines is in taverns known as ‘heurigers’. Heuriger culture - heuriger meaning a cosy tavern where local winemakers serve their produce - is still a big part of Viennese city life. The capital has over 100 of these dotted around the town. “I think it’s the only city in the world with this many wineries in it,” York remarked. Austrias most famous varieties are Grüner Veltliner, Gelber Muskateller, Zweigelt and Blaufränkisch.

For those who love Wines from Uruguay, April is designated "Tannat Month" with yesterday, April 14th being Tannat Day. Tannat was introduced into Uruguay in 1870 by Basque immigrants -- most likely collected from Southwest France. According to the seminar, the genetic origins are unclear but the first written record occurred in 1783 at Madiran in SW France. The grape has thick skins which provides a bulwark from humidity and contains 5-6 large seeds instead of the more standard 2-3 small seeds. And Tannat appears to be well adaptive the the various Uruguay climate and soils. Viticulture and winemaking with Tannat has evolved over the last 20 years with growers pluck leaves to allow more sunshine and green harvest up to 50% of the fruit in order to "balance leaf area and fruit weight for a crop that can achieve better ripeness". In the cellar, the grapes are cold macerated before fermentation and micro-oxygenation where oxygen is introduced into the wine in a controlled manner to help tame Tannat's tannins. Other new methods are the co-fermentation with Viognier as well as a judicial use of oak or even completely unoaked wines. . Tannat is also becoming established in the United States, particularly in Virginia where Tannat wines are a little bolder with more tannins and earthy notes. One excellent example is from Paradise Springs winery where their 2021 Tannat was awarded a Gold Medal in the latest Governor's Cup Competition. . @uruguay.wine @bodega_gimenez_mendez_uruguay @paradisespringswinery @ermutfloresuy @pisanowines @bodegaaltodelaballena @pizzornowines @bodegafamiliadeicas @bodegabouza . #thecompasscbf #monthlymondays #bevfluence #underthebevfluence #tannat #tannatwine #vawine #paradisespringswinery #uruguay #uruguaywine #virginiawine