Beyond Organic Wine

Anna and David Delaski are my guests for this episode, and they are the owners of Solminer in Los Olivos, California. These guys are doing SO MUCH COOL STUFF, we barely covered half of it in this interview. Anna and David are making natural wines with Austrian grapes in Santa Barbara county, and they’re doing it with amazing farming that is certified biodynamic and organic and will soon be Regener...

On this episode of the Organic Wine Podcast we take a journey to far north New Hampshire to talk to Michael Phillips. Michael Phillips is a farmer – or a cultivator of fungal ecosystems, as he might put it - and he’s the author of the books The Apple Grower, The Holistic Orchard, and most recently, Mycorrhizal Planet. If you’re an orchardist or vineyardist all three books are must reads. But Mycor...

On this episode we’re going to talk about some of the problems with organic viticulture. And I know this may be shocking coming from me, but yes, organic has issues. That doesn’t mean organic viticulture is bad, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, and that doesn’t mean it’s pointless. On the contrary, I’ve never been more committed to organic viticulture as the best form of viticulture, and I be...

Professor Maggie Delmas refers to most of us as “convenient environmentalists” – that is, our self-interest is still the number one priority when making environmentally positive consumption decisions. In other words we buy wine because it tastes good to us primarily, and it’s a great bonus if it was also grown and distributed in a way that benefits the environment. Professor Delmas’s book is calle...

Krista Scruggs has a simple story. She followed her passion for winegrowing and winemaking to learn as much as she could. But like the best stories it’s only simple on the surface. Beneath the surface, her life is connected to ancient lands and ancient seas that traveled and flowed around the world to become fertile islands of wild grapevines, and her life is connected to ancient people who were e...

It is my honor to have Steve Matthiasson as my guest for this episode… and what I have recorded for you is a comprehensive instructional on how to farm grapes organically. Steve uses his over 25 years of professional experience as a viticulturalist to take us through an entire year of farming a vineyard. This episode is not so much an interview as a master class. Steve Matthiasson is a 6 time Jame...

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Organic Wine Podcast featuring James Endicott of Vinocity Selections. I’m your host and creator, coming to you from Los Angeles, Adam Huss. James created Vinocity Selections with his partners to leverage wine to tackle climate change by revolutionizing the supply chain. Vinocity Selections is a wine importing, distribution, and retail hub all in one. The...

My guest for this episode is Nathan Stuart, and he’s got one of the rarest and coolest jobs in wine. He’s the in house shepherd for Tablas Creek Winery. If you don’t know Tablas Creek, suffice it to say that if you had to pick the greatest wineries in the US, by almost any measure Tablas Creek would be in top 5 on that list. Tablas Creek introduced many of the Rhone varieties of grapes to the US,...

Ann Thomas is the cofounder of Wester Reserve Distillers, a craft distillery located just outside of Cleveland and Ohio’s only certified organic distillery. With her husband and son, Ann makes a full array of award winning spirits from all organic ingredients, including local organic non-GMO, heritage seed stock grains for their whiskies, gins, and vodka, organic Louisiana molasses for their rum,...

Wine and winemaking are having a renaissance in Los Angeles. And Lindsay Williams and Belen Arredondo are making sure that South Central is part of that renaissance. Lindsay is a doctor of nursing, a frontline worker during the pandemic, and the founder of the South LA Wine club. Belen is a South LA garagiste, literally making a ton of wine in her garage, and joined Lindsay as a co-operator of the...

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This is an important mantra and one that we’ve all heard and applied in some small or large way at home. But for my guest for this episode, this was more than a good idea – it was her career, and it led to her starting her winery. Lisa Bauer is the owner of Yamakiri – a winery she started when she discovered a feral sauvignon blanc vineyard full of grapes that were going to...

Today we take a trip to the country to meet Craig Camp, the General Manager of Troon Vineyard in the Applegate Valley AVA of Southwest Oregon. Troon is a certified organic and biodynamic winery and estate vineyard that focuses on blends made from the grapes of Southern France, which seem to do extremely well in this northern area with a hot Mediterranean climate. Craig was brought in to regenerate...

This episode highlights one of the new winemaking teams that are part of the Southern California Wine Rennaissance. Herrmann York is the brand new winery that is a partnership of three young gents: Dustin Herrmann, Garrett York, and Taylor York. They all originate and make wine from a part of California that is often both over-looked and unfairly maligned as a wine growing region: southern, specif...

Matt Niess discusses his winery slash cidery, North American Press, which is a California winery dedicated to native & hybrid grapes, heirloom apples, and native ingredients. Matt forages wild grapes to blend with heirloom apples to make cider. He farms and makes wine from a small Baco Noir vineyard on the Sonoma Coast that is own-rooted in clay, below the fog line, and is not tilled NOR SPRAYED....

Laura Brennan Bissel is the owner of and winemaker for INCONNU. She built her career, INCONNU, and a new project in the Columbia Gorge, by following her curiosity, her drive to find an occupation that allowed her to express her innate creativity, all while being guided by her love of wine. As you’ll hear, Laura is beautifully articulate about some of the most important aspects of wine – its abilit...

My guest for this episode is Alice Anderson. Alice is the vigneron for Amevive winery, based in Santa Barbara County. Alice leases the Ibarra-Young vineyard in the Los Olivos district and farms it with regenerative organic and biodynamic viticulture in partnership with animals and the native flora and fauna. In this interview we really dig into the winegrowing and winemaking specifics of how to cr...

There is a lot of confusion about the term "organic." These misunderstandings lead a lot of people to be incorrectly dismissive or critical of “organic” foods and practices.  This is a short episode to clear up these misunderstandings about "organic." Adam Huss, host and creator of the Organic Wine Podcast, discusses exactly what Organic does NOT mean, and what it actually does mean.  This is a pu...

Nadine Brown’s story is in many ways a classic American tale. Nadine is an immigrant. She came to the US to study and work, and when plans didn’t work out, she found herself applying for a job as a restaurant host in Washington DC. She had no previous restaurant experience and had every intention for it to be a temporary position. However, she fell in love with the hospitality industry. In restaur...

Dr. Andrew Smith is the COO and Chief Scientist for the Rodale Institute. The Rodale Institute the non-profit that was the birthplace of the organic movement. It has been the global leader at the forefront of the science behind organic agriculture. The Institute has conducted decades-long comparative studies on the results between organic farming versus conventional farming. The Rodale Institute h...

As a young US diplomat working in Switzerland, Sandra Taylor fell in love with wine while visiting the nearby Burgundy region of France. Sandra is now CEO of Sustainable Business International, a consulting business that assists clients at various stages of environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practice, primarily in the food and beverage sector. Sandra has studied...

Roni Selects is a preeminent importer and distributor of natural wines, based in los angeles. And Roni Ginach is its founder. She was the former wine direct for the renowned restaurant Michael’s of Santa Monica until she was given the opportunity to help distribute wine for California’s Grandfather of Natural Wine – Tony Coturri. From there a new career was born. Now Roni represents winemakers fro...

Pamela Marrone is the Founder of Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc. and multiple other companies dedicated to finding, developing and distributing Biological Pesticides. Her companies have been responsible for several of the most widely used organic pesticides in the wine industry today, including: Serenade, Sonata, Regalia, Grandevo, and Venerate. Pam is on the boards of several institutions, companie...

Ricky Taylor worked in an office in Houston Texas and one day decided to plant a regeneratively farmed vineyard 600 miles away on a mountainside in the middle of nowhere in far west Texas at over a mile high in elevation. What Ricky and his partner, Katie, are doing with Alta Marfa – their vineyard and soon to be winery outside of Marfa, Texas - is something that essentially hasn’t been done befor...

Among several other things, Jeff Lowenfels is the author of a trilogy of books that should be required reading for everyone on the planet, but especially those of us who work in wine. His books are titled: Teaming with Microbes, Teaming with Nutrients, and Teaming with Fungi Be warned – your mind is about to be blown. If you haven’t been exposed to the soil food web, it’s likely that everything yo...

Brook Williams used to be an accountant, and yet he still made the seemingly crazy decision to get into the wine business as a biodyanmic grape farmer/ vineyard owner. How did he justify such a potentially economically risky decision to the accounting part of his brain? His answer to this will give anyone with a dream of owning a vineyard some practical financial ideas about how to make vineyard o...