Voodoo Vintners: Oregon's Astonishing Biodynamic Winegrowers

preface

vii Preface Wine writers play two roles: that of the reporter, and that of the critic. We are expected to publish reliable information as well as knowledgeable opinions. So let me begin by informing you what this book is not: it is not a review of wines or a compendium of useful information, such as you might find in a wine guide. Instead, it is an examination of an inscrutable topic. I first became aware of biodynamic viticulture sometime around the year 2000, when I moved to Oregon and began tasting local wines. I remember being struck at that time by a pinot gris that was quite unlike its peers: crisp and clean, it reminded me of the pure water you might drink from a mountain spring. I would later discover that it had been made from biodynamic grapes. A couple of years later, I met the charismatic Jimi Brooks, a figure who appears repeatedly in the following pages, and whose riesling, at that time, had that same mountain-spring purity that I had noticed earlier in the pinot gris. Brooks was one of those wickedly funny, effortlessly likeable people who could convince just about anyone to try just about anything. As vineyard manager and winemaker for Maysara Winery and Momtazi Vineyard as well as for his own eponymous label, Brooks, he pursued biodynamic viticulture with his typical enthusiasm. Jimi convinced me and many others to take a closer look at this unusual style of agriculture. Touring Moe Momtazi’s property with Brooks, I was struck by the tumbledown appearance of the place. It looked wild and alive—so unlike the neighboring estates, with their neat vine rows of brown-and-green corduroy. As I wrote at the time, “The access road was hemmed in by swampy ditches and weed-laden mounds of percolating manure; farther up the steep, rutted alleys of Maysara’s Momtazi Vineyard, sheep, chickens, cows, and horses ambled through untamed fields. Patches of brambles and poison oak harbored coveys of quail. And rambling rows of vines were accented by corridors of crimson clover and purple vetch.” I was shocked to find Brooks carefully tending stands of nettles and horsetail—in my estimation, noxious weeds. I thrilled to see him voodoo vintners viii stirring these weeds into teas, using a witchy-looking twig broom, with a mischievous grin on his face. But this was Oregon, where it’s typical for a local to complain that she’s having a bad day solely due to the position of Saturn in the sky. In the Oregon wine community, Brooks was just one of many off-thewall characters making wines in an unconventional way. Then I began reading more about biodynamic viticulture. I learned that some of France’s most respected vintners were pursuing the practice, and that the goddess-like Lalou Bize-Leroy, of Domaine Leroy in Burgundy, had spoken on the subject at the International Pinot Noir Celebration in McMinnville, Oregon, in 2001. Could biodynamic viticulture be a serious, worldwide movement? Burgundy’s best vignerons were doing it. So, increasingly, were Oregon’s best. I discovered that the headquarters of the American biodynamic movement, Demeter USA and the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association, are both based in Oregon. (An aside here: Demeter USA has trademarked the words “Demeter” and “biodynamic” so that they don’t become diluted in the manner of fuzzy terms such as “green” and “natural.” These registered certification marks protect consumers, biodynamic producers , and it goes without saying, Demeter USA. If estates without Demeter certification market or label their wines as “bio-dynamic,” they risk legal action for trademark infringement. I have attempted to make clear in the following pages which properties are Demeter certified and which are not. However, executive director Jim Fullmer has been kind enough to grant me fair use of the terms “biodynamic” and “biodynamics” to generally describe the farming techniques associated with this practice.) In the ensuing years, I found myself repeatedly defining and describing biodynamic viticulture for the benefit of fellow wine lovers. Their questions and interest sent me searching for books on the topic. To my dismay, I found very few. There were gardening manuals, a valuable but encyclopedic tome by the British wine writer Monty Waldin, and the original transcripts of Rudolf Steiner’s 1924 lectures on the subject. There were, also, ruminations by the quirky Loire Valley vigneron Nicolas Joly, who has been an effective spokesperson for the movement, but whose baroque verbal stylings do not...