Organic Wine and Food Matching

Anne-Claude Leflaive. Wine Spectator Magazine. There are many skeptics and wine geeks who do not quite see the value of some of Rudolph Steiner’s original formulas for enhancing the life of vineyard soil; such as “fermenting” cow manure in cow horns, then burying them over winter, and applying them as tea sprays in the spring (other applications are derived from ground quartz packed with rain water in cow’s horns, and flower heads of chamomile, stinging nettle, dandelion, valerian and yarrow). But if you asked longtime winemakers such as Mendocino Wine Company’s Paul Dolan, it is not a question of leaps of faith, it is the fact that these preparations do, indeed, work; reportedly, more effectively than other organic formulations, and certainly far better than synthetic fertilizers.  What is even more sobering is the fact that some of our greatest, most coveted (and expensive) wines in the world – like that of France’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Zind-Humbrecht, and Quintessa an...

  “Trying to uncover what a vineyard is trying to say,” says Steven Canter, winemaker of Quivira Vineyards in Sonoma’s Dry Creek Valley, “is like an archeologist brushing away the sand.”  Plucked by Quivira three years ago from the celebrated Torbreck Vintners in Barossa Valley, Australia, Canter is an American who had come to Sonoma in a roundabout way: first inspired by Kermit Lynch’s earthy, terroir driven imports from France, then wandering the world looking for the vinous meaning of life while picking up jobs as a cellarer in California, Oregon, Italy and South Africa.  The Quivira estate would make a particularly interesting Rubik’s Cube for any winemaker, as it sits on the gravelly, well drained yet fertile loam that has long made Dry Creek Valley a quintessential source of California style Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel and Petite Sirah.  Planted and replanted over a course of fifty years, according to Canter, “we could see what people were doing in the ‘70s, ...

It’s good to know there are still visionaries walking among us. In the late 1960s, armed with little more than the determination to grow a Pinot Noir as great as any found in France, Richard Sanford wandered up and down the coast of California before settling on a north facing slope in Santa Barbara (in what is now the Sta. Rita Hills AVA ), with the porous soil, chilling winds and cool, extended growing season that he deemed “perfect” for this fickle grape. Establishing his vineyard (originally called Sanford & Benedict) in 1970, Sanford toiled for years in virtual solitude, because it would be many more years before other vignerons would catch on and start to plant nearby. Call it luck, or call it prescience (in 1970, for one, who could predict Santa Barbara being called the Pinot Noir lover’s “Holy Land” in a multi-award winning movie?). To this day, Sanford’s original vineyard remains a quintessential American Pinot Noir: as spicy, zesty and finely textured...