Beyond Organic Wine

This episode features a conversation with Adam Tolmach of Ojai Vineyards, and it’s located not too far from Los Angeles in distance. Adam Tolmach lost his estate vineyard a couple decades ago to a vine disease that is endemic to Southern California. This disease has become a serious problem for anywhere in North America that has mild enough winters… and that area is steadily creeping north. This v...

My guest for this episode grows and makes wine on one of the most popular island vacation spots in the Mediterranean Sea: Mallorca. His name is Tomeu Llabrés, and his winery is C’an Verdura. You might be surprised to find out how much of an impact Mallorca has had on the world. You might be less surprised to find that the local, indigenous varieties of grapes that Tomeu works with out-perform on s...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com What does an ecological approach to winegrowing and wine making look like? This episode looks at two brilliant and unique approaches to growing and making an ecological wine business. It is meant to excite and tempt and titillate you about how we could have a very different experience with wine. This episo...

This episode is a conversation I got to have with Ariana Ross and James Sligh. Ariana you may remember from an earlier episode in which I talked to her about her treatise, Wine’s Way To Art, and James is the creator of and educator at The Children’s Atlas of Wine. This conversation is about what we talk about when we talk about wine, and it includes philosophy, history, politics, social justice, a...

My guest for this episode is Steve Matthiasson. This is the second time I’ve interviewed Steve, so I highly recommend listening to the first episode from about three years ago if you haven’t. Steve is the eponymous dude behind Matthiasson Wines, and maybe dude is the wrong title for Steve. He might be more of a punk rebel organic evangelist operating from inside the Cabernet Curtain in the heart o...

How do we reconcile the need to take life in order to grow life and survive?  What are the consequences of not growing wine ecologically, first? What does a vole infestation tell us about the human story? What role does death have in our winegrowing? Should regenerative viticulture, regenerative wine growing, attempt to reduce the amount of killing necessary to produce wine? This episode and the o...

Do humans have a vole infestation or do voles have a human infestation? This and other questions from this episode may haunt your dreams and have you wondering if maybe "regenerative winegrowing" is an oxymoron.  The big question of Part 2 of the Death In The Vineyard mini-series is "What are the regenerative solutions to all the things that want to eat our wine crops?" In trying to answer this qu...

In this episode I get to talk to Abbey Chrystal, Ken Swegles & Cole Thomas of Madson Wines and Rhizos and Skyline Viticulture and a few other ventures. If you haven’t heard of the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, you’re about to be introduced to a wine region unlike any other. I didn’t realize how special it was until Abbey, Ken, and Cole began describing it, and they may know it better than anyone e...

We’re going back to Michigan for this episode to talk to Andrew Backlin, the production mangager / winemaker of Modales Wines in Fenville, Michigan. You may have heard Andrew’s voice already if you listened to the first part of my special Death In the Vineyard series. Andrew introduced me to a little known fact outside of Michigan. Michigan farmers produce over 300 different kinds of crops, making...

I experienced a vole infestation in a vineyard for the first time, and it has devastated my understanding of regenerative viticulture. In this first of a multi-part series called Death In the Vineyard, I talk to experts and winegrowers from all over the US about this adorable little creature, the vole, and the massive impact it has had historically and ecologically in our wine landscapes. As I fol...

“Thinking like a vine,” is a motto that Paul Rolt and Jemma Vickers of Hebron Vineyard in Wales, UK farm by. Hebron Vineyard is the first vineyard in Wales — and the UK — to be Certified Regenerative by A Greener World (AGW). Paul and Jemma use no sprays or off-farm inputs to grow their vines – zero zero farming which preceeds the same kind of zero zero, raw and living winemaking. To do this they...

An epic conversation with David Bos of @BosWine in Michigan, so I’m going to keep this intro short. Dave is a fantastic ambassador for Michigan wine, and yet he spent more than a decade growing and making wine organically and biodynamically in Napa Valley first. So his enthusiasm seems well informed, and I hope you find it as infectious as I did. Seen through Dave’s eyes, Michigan sounds pretty ex...

I’m delighted to share this conversation with Eduard and Stephanie Tscheppe of Gut Oggau in Burgenland in Austria. 17 years ago they started making decisions about how to farm and make wine that were not popular or even understandable to most of the wine world. It was a huge risk, maybe even a little foolish, and because of it, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say, they became one of the most...

Shelby Perkins farms grapes beyond organically in the Eola-Amity Hills of Oregon's Willamette Valley, and makes thoughtful wines of place. And speaking of thoughtful, Shelby seems to have lived several lives already. In one life she worked for the US Department of Energy doing technical research related to nuclear weapons and waste clean up. She was also once Science Policy Fellow at the National...

It’s my pleasure to present this conversation with Robin Snowdon of Limeburn Hill Vineyard. Limeburn Hill Vineyard is an innovative, ecological vineyard near Chew Magna on the edge of Bristol. It is the only biodynamic vineyard in the south west of England, and one of only a handful in the UK. In addition to farming biodynamically, Robin and his partner Georgina Harvey have a vision of their farm...

I’m really excited to share a conversation I had with Ariana Ross, a certified sommelier and the author of the book: Wine’s Way To Art: A Treatise on Wine as Art and Why Art is Something We Need to Be Human. It is such a pleasure to talk with Ariana because she has the unusual ability to entertain ideas and argue a perspective without getting her ego involved. Conversation is a tool that she uses...

Esther Park leads Cienega Capital, a private investment company that invests in food and farming enterprises that are helping to build a regenerative food system. This episode is about the unique criteria and ways of investing that Cienega Capital uses, and why it shouldn’t be so unique. If you are a regenerative farmer or if you are helping to build a regenerative food system – and I think Esther...

This episode is about growing Vitis vinifera wine grapes without sprays. Yes, it is possible. My guest is Paul Vandenberg of Paradisos del Sol Winery in Washington state in the US’s Pacific Northwest, and he has been growing about 5 acres of vinifera with zero sprays since 2012. Beyond this pretty amazing achievement, Paul has a remarkable wine career. He started by making wine with blackberries,...

My guest for this episode is Megan Bell of Margins Winery near Santa Cruz California, and this conversation may cause you to have strong emotional reactions at times. That’s not a trigger warning, it’s a tease. Megan has hot takes on just about every topic related to wine, and I’m not shy about asking her some big questions. Most of all I think you’ll come to love Megan’s honesty and openness abou...

Daniel Hess is the owner of Convivium Imports, which has one of the largest Swiss wine portfolios in the US, as well as unique wines from lesser known producers practicing organic viticulture (at minimum) in lesser known regions all over Europe. The wine he imports to the US reflects his multi-cultural background and his desire to represent a greater diversity of producers who put great farming fi...

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...

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 eff...

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...

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...

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 ta...