Raise an Organic Glass of Wine to Mother Nature This Earth Day

Erin was in grade 9 when Canada’s inaugural enviro awareness party took place and remembers going walking to a downtown park in downtown Guelph (where we were raised) to take place in the community activities.

Since then both of us have been quite happy to do what we can for the environment.  From choosing to walk or take TTC when possible, to composting in Courtney’s garden, to buying local produce and humanely raised meat, we believe every little bit helps.

That comes to wine, too.  And we’re not just talking about drinking it in the park with your friends, like Erin did way back in 1990 to mark that first Earth Day.

As more and more wineries embrace the “hands off” approach to winemaking and vineyard management, a lot of buzz words are being floated around wine circles.  “Organic,” “Biodynamic,” even “Sustainable” and “Fair trade” are the monikers of the day.  It can get really complicated, so we won’t get into the depths of all the definitions in this blog, but John Szabo has a great post about it in his recent Wine Align report, which you can check out here.

In very basic terms, organic wine uses no chemical herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers and must be recognized by the Canadian organic standards or a suitable equivalent approved of by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Biodynamic wines, are like organic wines on steroids … the naturally occurring kind.  Biodynamics is a farming philosophy developed in the 1920’s by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner.  It looks at the vineyard as a whole, and in addition to organic growing practices, also incorporates farming according to the phases of the moon and even burying a cow horn filled with dung under the vines to promote vineyard health.

Admittedly, some of these methods can be a bit far out for some, but many big-time winemakers are going the biodynamic route, so there’s gotta be something to it.

Here in Ontario we have a number of fantastic wineries opting for more naturally raised wines.  From Southbrook Winery, Canada’s first certified biodynamic winery to Frogpond Farm which is fully certified organic, there are so many wineries that are employ green energy or use organic or biodynamic techniques that it would be impossible to mention them all.

If you’re looking for a great wine to toast Mother Nature with on this Earth Day, look no further than Ontario.  Here’s a quick list of some of our favourite eco-friendly wines that are grown and produced only a few hours away.