WORDS: Liz Longden

W hat does it take to make a first-class wine? Years of tradition and expertise, favourable climatic conditions and ... an understanding of lunar

rhythms? Fertiliser fermented underground in a stag’s bladder? Unlikely though it may sound in today’s technology-driven age, a growing number of wine producers are entrusting their vines to an approach which shuns conventional science and instead embraces spirituality and cosmic forces. They call it ‘biodynamics’ and its value is increasingly dividing the wine community.

Biodynamics is based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, an early 20th-century Austrian polymath who wrote on topics ranging from education to architecture, medicine and social reform.

To say that Steiner was an original thinker is a bit of an understatement. A self-professed

clairvoyant, he believed in a spiritual ‘realm’, which contained a collection of the thoughts and consciousness and experience of all life on Earth. He called this the Akashic Records and believed it could be accessed by certain people skilled in meditation. He also believed that he was one such person and that he dipped into this astral consciousness regularly. From it he learned the history of the ‘Lemurians’, jelly-like creatures with psychic abilities whose descendants lived on the ill-fated Atlantis. Atlanteans, in turn, developed a whole civilisation, including airships, powered solely by the life-force of germinating seeds. He also claimed that earthquakes and volcanoes were caused by a build-up of negative energy provoked by human passions and the evil behaviour of mankind.

In 1924, despite never having himself farmed, Steiner delivered a series of lectures on agriculture. It is this short course that is the basis of today’s biodynamics movement, which, depending on whom you speak to, is either the most revolutionary or most ridiculous of the modern age.

Biodynamics has been described as ‘a spiritual–ethical’ approach to farming. Its premise is that the observable, material world is only

part of the picture and that the Earth, its soil and everything in it is linked to and influenced by non-material, cosmic forces. To achieve the best from a farm and to truly foster living and life-giving soil, the land must be worked with respect to and in harmony with the universe’s natural rhythms.

Is biodynamic wine proof of omnipresent cosmic influence or just a spectacular fraud?

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‘Preparation 500’ consists of cow manure which must be fermented in a cow horn

and buried in the ground over the winter

What does this mean in practice? Much of what biodynamics preaches overlaps with organic practices – avoiding the use of synthetic chemical pesticides, encouraging biodiversity within the farm, employing the use of crop rotation and avoiding large-scale monocultures – and biodynamic supporters are keen to present Steiner as a founding father of the organic movement.

It goes much, much further, however. A biodynamic farm should be a self-contained, closed system. Fertiliser, even organic, therefore ought not to be brought in from ‘the outside’. Any planting, sowing and treating of the earth must be carried out in accordance with the complex rhythms of the moon. Lunar and cosmic rhythms are also alleged to influence how things taste, creating ‘fruit’,

‘leaf’, ‘root’ and ‘earth’ days. (‘Fruit’ days are when you should be drinking wine.) They are also important for ‘peppering’, the preparation of biodynamic insecticide, according to which insects are oven-roasted and their ground-up ashes spread across the earth.

Perhaps most controversially of all, the doctrine prescribes a series of ‘special

preparations’ which, it claims, when added to soil, vastly improve its health and fertility. ‘Preparation 500’ consists of cow manure which must be fermented in a cow horn and buried in the ground over the winter. This is then dug up and mixed with water, ‘dynamised’ by rhythmic stirring, and both sprayed on the soil and mixed into compost. Other preparations include flower heads of yarrow fermented in a stag’s bladder and oak bark fermented in the skull of a domestic animal.

Wali Via, writing on the Biodynamic Association website, describes the preparations, which are all ‘made with a sensitivity to the rhythms of the sun and Zodiac’ as ‘healing remedies for the Earth’. He adds that one quarter of a teaspoon of one particular preparation, diluted in one gallon of water

‘can treat up to 15 tons of material as the “work” is being done by non material means. Higher potency homeopathic remedies are similar in that the physical atoms of the “mother” material are no longer present, but the effect of the forces are present and strengthened.’

It ought to be enough to set alarm bells not just ringing, but clanging furiously against the skull of anyone with even a basic knowledge of and trust in modern science. It reeks of super-charged occultist quackery, completely at odds with current scientific knowledge. And yet within the wine industry, an industry nurtured on the scientific principles of viticulture, interest in biodynamics has been growing steadily since the 1990s.

Today, according to Elizabeth Candelario of Demeter USA, which certifies biodynamic

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modern science by declaring itself to be a belief system. “I’ve always said, ‘Look, if you want to call it a belief system or a religion, I’ll pack my tent and go away,’ because everyone’s entitled to their belief system,” he says. “But you can’t compete in the real world and make claims in the real world, and then duck out of it by saying, ‘Oh it’s a belief system and you can’t challenge my belief system.’”

Robert Karp, co-director of the US Biodynamic Association, denies, however, that biodynamics is solely a belief system. Instead, he says it is “based on a very real science”, but one which “looks at reality through a wider lens”. He explains: “Modern materialistic science is based on the idea that the physical world consists of purely material processes – basically that the whole world is just a big machine. And Rudolf Steiner came along and said that approach to science is no longer helpful, that we need to develop a science which comes to terms with the non-material aspects of reality as well as the material aspects.”

So if it’s a science, can he prove the claims that biodynamics makes? The Biodynamic Association website has some links to independent research on the effects of biodynamic farming. The results are tantalising, but ultimately unsatisfying. One paper published in 2000 by researchers

at the University of Bern appeared to at least partially validate the case for ‘special preparations’ by suggesting that there is indeed evidence that plants can react to homeopathic levels of substances in the soil, especially if the plants in question have been poisoned. Another, by a team from Washington State University, also from 2000, concludes that biodynamic preparations were shown to effect ‘discernible changes’ in compost.

On the other hand, the same team of researchers found that there were ultimately no significant differences between organic soils treated with biodynamic and non-biodynamic compost and concluded that use of biodynamic preparations did not produce any greater benefits than standard organic soil management. Another 2005 comparative study between organic and biodynamic methods found that while biodynamic preparations appeared to result in ‘better balanced’ vines in terms of fruit yield to vine

growth, the effects were small and unlikely to have any impact on grape quality. And in 2004, Dr Linda Chalker-Scott, Associate Professor of Horticulture at the University of Washington published a ‘myth-busting’ literature review of biodynamics, stating that there were ‘currently no clear and consistent effects of biodynamic preparations on organically managed systems’. She also pointed out that many elements of biodynamics, such as the importance of ‘cosmic rhythms’, were, by their nature, almost impossible to study rigorously, and that, since elements of organic farming which were not part of Steiner’s original philosophy had been incorporated into biodynamics, there was some blurring between the two.

But hard science aside, there is one irrefutable fact: biodynamics is growing in popularity. Monty Waldin is a wine producer, critic and star of Channel 4’s Chateau Monty, which documented his attempts to get a

“If Rudolph Steiner is accurate and is truthful in all of this, then he would be the most important person to ever exist on the face of

the Earth”

businesses, there are currently 70 biodynamic vineyards and wineries in the US alone “and it’s getting bigger every year”. In Europe, meanwhile, it is some of the most prestigious wine regions, such as Alsace and Burgundy, which have taken the biodynamic lead. Wine critics, meanwhile, have, on the whole, been rather open-minded, not least because anecdotal accounts abound of how biodynamic wines are better, more interesting and more expressive. Is it a case of ‘the Emperor’s new clothes’, or have winemakers stumbled upon the universe’s best-kept secret?

One person firmly of the first view is Stuart Smith, co-manager of the Smith-Madrone winery in Napa Valley, author of the blog www.

biodynamicsisahoax.com, and one of biodynamics’ most strident critics.

“For a long time I tried to ignore them,” he says. “But then they started coming out and saying publicly, on a rather frequent basis, that only biodynamic wines expressed true ‘terroir’, meaning that all the other wines were inferior, and that only vineyards farmed biodynamically had soils that were alive and healthy. And I took exception to that.”

Smith says he decided to do some research, reading about Steiner and his writings (“I suspect I’m one of the few people who’ve actually been able to read Steiner’s ‘Agriculture’ cover to cover”) and came to the conclusion that it was “gibberish”. “As I said somewhere in my blog, if Rudolf Steiner is accurate and is truthful in all of this, then he would be the most important person to ever have existed on the face of the Earth.”

Chief among Smith’s accusations is that biodynamics does not stand up to scientific scrutiny, and that it both presents itself as a rational, logical methodology, while also sidestepping the searching examination of

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biodynamic vineyard going in France. He is bullish in his views both on what he believes is the absurdity of modern, conventional, non-organic farming techniques, and on the superiority of biodynamics as a self-evident fact.

One of his strongest arguments is that the adoption of these practices by so many well-known producers is in itself evidence that it works. He gives the example of former Formula 1 racing driver-turned-biodynamic farmer Jody Scheckter who allegedly analysed manure buried in a cow horn over a number of months and found “that the microbiology in there was not only far superior to what you’d expect from normal soil or normal cow manure, but it peaks at six months, exactly as Steiner said it would”. “He’s not a weirdy-beardy leftie loony,” Waldin adds, “he’s a businessman.” He lists other vineyards, respected producers, who have switched because, he says, they have seen the positive effects in other properties. “Some of these people have got million-dollar businesses and they’re not going to do it if they don’t think it works,” he says.

He’s got a point and it’s not just those growing the vines who are buying into biodynamics. Some people may be surprised to learn that both Marks & Spencer and Tesco only hold tastings on days when the lunar and cosmic calendar tells them their wine will taste best (see ‘DIY biodynamics’).

Waldin believes 100 per cent in the philosophy behind biodynamics – “It’s absolutely not a ‘leap of faith’ at all for me. It’s empirical. It works. I’ve seen that it works. I’m not going to start running around and getting up at five o’clock in the morning to go and stir some cow shit in a bucket of water if I didn’t think it worked,” – but he accepts that not everyone who practises biodynamics buys into “the whole voodoo side of things”. Rather, he says, they do it in spite of their scepticism, because “they can see that it works”.

Stuart Smith has an alternative explanation: “It’s a complete marketing scam. You don’t see biodynamics in corn or broccoli operations, you find it in wine grapes, [an industry] where you’re trying to find your place in the sun and have a competitive advantage.”

It is difficult not to be sceptical about biodynamics. The science is at best inconclusive, at worst dismissive, and although there are many anecdotal

accounts of how biodynamic wines are better, no one has been able to name any independent, double-blind tests for which the results can be recreated with consistency. There is also the issue of how Steiner arrived at his ideas, not through trial and error, but via ‘spiritual inspiration’ – it is hard to have a critical discussion about ideas mined from the astral plane. But it is equally true that something can work without us fully understanding why and that failing to find hard proof for something is not the same as proving that it doesn’t exist.

Ultimately it comes down to a question not of faith, nor science, but of taste. The only way to decide whether biodynamics is the real thing or a psychological con trick is to taste for yourself. Just make sure you take cosmic rhythms into account. n

DIY biodynamicsIf you’re unconvinced about the merits of biodynamics, why not try for yourself at home? According to biodynamic theory, days can be divided into four categories: ‘flower’, ‘fruit’, ‘earth’ and ‘leaf’, according to the movement of the moon across the constellations of the Zodiac. These days allegedly influence how good a wine tastes. In a nutshell, wine tastes better on a ‘fruit’ day, while some aromatic whites can also be good on a ‘flower’ day, but drinking on ‘earth’ and ‘leaf’ days should be avoided.

Download the app ‘When Wine Tastes Best’ for iPhone or visit www.rhythmofnature.net to check the lunar calendar.

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