Good organic practice respects the environment and promotes biodeversity and sustainability. All organic growers agree that respect for the soil is paramount. Only vines growing in a living soil full of worms and bacteria can draw a maximum of mineral elements from the soil.

Without these mineral elements vines are unable to mature and remain disease-resistent, and they are unlikely to produce a complex wine. Organic growers improve soil structure and fertility by adding organic compost in winter, and also by sowing cover crops (peas, barley, flowers, herbs) between the vine rows in spring. Cover crops create biodeversity. When cover crops flower they bring colour landscape and beneficial insects into the vineyard. These 'beneficials' help control pests (like vine spiders and weevils) naturally, rather than chemically. This 'treat the cause, not the symptom' approach contrasts sharply with conventional methods that draw the vines into a vicious chemical circle of dependence because their defences have not been naturally built up. 

Bob Blue, winemaker for Bonterra, asks his California grape growers to plant plum trees around the edge of the vineyard to attract Anagrus wasps which eat the tiny - but immensely destructive - vine leafhoppers. Of course it would be wrong to suggest that organic vineyards are spray-free. If problems do occur, natural bio-degradable sprays are used, as are biological controls (planned releases of ladybirds which eat vine aphids, for example). Other permitted treatments include the use of salts (copper sulphate) and elemental (not man-made) sulphur to control mildew.

Is it Really Organic?
What are Vegetarian and Vegan Wines?
Organic Wines Versus Wines Made From Organically-Grown Grapes
What is Reconversion?
What are Biodynamic Wines?
GMOS in Wines
To Yeast or not to Yeast, That is the Question