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Earth-friendly Wines

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fresh grapes

Biodynamics: good stewardship yields great flavor

By Amy Paturel, M.S., M.P.H.
EatingWell March/April 2008

In a ceremony on Sonoma Mountain in spring, the Benziger family buries a cow horn packed with a homeopathic paste of silica (a pale pink compound found in sand and quartz), vineyard soil and water. They unearth the cow horn in the fall, mix the silica from the horn with water, then mist the air at sunrise to enhance photosynthesis.

This is just one ritual in the exacting art of biodynamic agriculture. Based on a series of lectures in 1924 by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Waldorf schools, the practice of biodynamics views the vineyard (or farm) as a whole, with the soil, vines, plants, animals—and even the cosmos—all interconnected. Like organic farmers, biodynamic growers avoid artificial fertilizers and pesticides. But biodynamic agriculture goes further, requiring farmers to plant, prune and harvest according to celestial activity, taking advantage of the natural rhythms of the Earth and cosmos, with a final goal of healing their land.

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