While researching last week’s column on Kosher wine, I ran across an interesting story. The Talmudic scholar Rabbi Yose the Galilean once said that if your son drinks Italian wine, then you are entitled to take him to high court to have him stoned to death. Yikes. This seems to be an ancient version of “marijuana leads to heroin”, the point being that it’s better to bring the hammer early than to give kids the freedom to grow into ax-murders all ginned up on cheap Chianti.
Today, stoning is less accepted as a parenting method, but this archaic story highlights a continuing question: are some wines more ethical than others? For Rabbi Yose, Kosher wine is more morally upright than Italian plonk. Today, the morally pure wine is organic wine.
Environmentally sustainable wine is smoking hot these days. But as with Kosher wine, there can be a trade-off between moral purity and taste. For example, the strict designation “100% Organic” looks good on a label, but it means that the wine is made without any sulfur dioxide, a stabilizing additive which prevents contamination. Wines without sulfur dioxide may be more pure, but they tend to be nasty and have no aging potential.
There are other organic designations that are less strict, such as “Organic”, which means that the wine has 95 percent organic ingredients (but may have some added sulfur dioxide). Organic viticulture requires a winemaker to avoid synthetic fungicides and pesticides, and to use natural methods to promote soil fertility. It also involves the promotion of biodiversity, wildlife habitats and watersheds.
It’s easy to support the goals of organic wine, but sometimes harder to enjoy the wine itself. The simple reason is that making top flight wine is extremely challenging. Imposing extra rules upon yourself in order to satisfy a moral code can distract from the single-minded pursuit of excellence in the bottle. Which is more important: Morality or taste?
Luckily, the question isn’t so black and white. Many of the best winemaking techniques have been “organic” before the term came into fashion: the avoidance of chemicals, the use of cover plants, and sustainable agriculture. In fact, some excellent wineries are essentially organic, but don’t employ the designation because they feel it carries the stigma of being second-rate or faddish.
My take? As more wineries adopt environmentally friendly practices, they will bridge the gap between being good (morally) and being good (gastronomically). But it doesn’t help (as some critics do) to pretend that bad wine is actually tasty just because it’s environmentally responsible. We should hold the wineries’ feet to the fire so that they give us the best of both worlds. Stay tuned next week when I review some of these environmentally friendly wines.
Matthew Sullivan is a civil litigator in Toronto. He writes a weekly blog entry here on lawandstyle.ca. The Short Cellar column appears in the print edition of Precedent. Matthew can be reached at matthew@lawandstyle.beta-site.ca