This is pretty wild...

The following is a quote from The Great Organic Wine Guide by Hilary Wright (her chapter on Biodynamics [aka BioD]):

"The use of cow manure is widespread in biodynamics, valued for the effect the cow's slow digestive process is held to have on the "digestive process" of the earth, linking the vein roots to the soil. Vines, after all, grow where little else will; indeed, you don't want a rich soil or they"ll overcrop like mad things. Joly has experimented with the effects of manure from different animals. Local people told him that if you are replanting vines, pig manure is best. He realised that pigs root for food underneath the soil, so this would give the vine roots a tendency to burrow deep. On the other hand, he said, you"ll miss out on elegance in the wine: "a pig is a pig after all, you can't change that.""

So....by that logic, I should get brooding Halloween wines if I use bat guano, light airy wines if I use pigeon guano, etc. That's so simple-minded I'm embarassed for her, especially since she's writing it in such earnest, and apparently Msr. Joly is in earnest as well...
Now I had doubts about his hold on the scientific method after reading his Wines from Earth to Sky book, and this quote is just another nail in that coffin.
Notice too the point of vines growing "where little else will"...a point I just discussed in the Yield & Quality post the other day.

Here are yet more nuggets from Ms. H. Wright:

“The moon
If the sun controls the light and heat on earth, the moon controls water – and not just the tides. Humans, grapes, all plants and animals, consist mostly of water. We spend the first nine months of our lives suspended in it so it's not surprising it's familiar.
The moon moves through several simultaneous cycles each month, each taking more or less 28 days, all of them weaving around each other. The first and most obvious lunar cycle is the waxing and waning moon. The effects of the round full moon are clearly experienced by many. Police, bar staff, nursing staff in mental hospitals can all attest to differences in human behaviour when the moon is full (and of course we all know about werewolves.) More babies are born just before a full moon than afterwards. [see link /StV] Repeated tests have shown it's best to sow seeds shortly before the full moon, in the second quarter of the lunar cycle, and weed or prune in the "rest period" of the fourth quarter.”…

At first I thought she was joking about the werewolf thing...but as I read more I became less sure of that. And what about those repeated tests she mentions - who's performed them? Actually, I believe that the "link" between the moon and purported increases in odd human activity has been disproven time and time again. And if it's a "rest period" why am I out weeding and pruning? Superstition reigns supreme here.

"Each year, biodynamic experts issue planting calendars telling vineyard workers what to do when, because it's quite complicated. And each year, the calendar says do nothing at all to the vines on Good Friday and Easter Saturday. Some say that this is because Christ's suffering is so deeply imprinted into the earth. Others point to the adverse planetary arrangements on those two days. I just think it's really interesting that it should be so, year after year. And what about that old folk wisdom that says the best day to plant your potatoes is Easter Monday?"…

Fascinating, I'd have expected the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday to be a 'do nothing' day also - wasn't Christ suffering that day also?
She hovers for a moment at the brink of questioning "what the hell are they saying?", but stops shy of going there. And here's an example of one such calendar from Boisset [click image for larger view] :

Hilary continues with...

“Take picking, for instance. If you hire a team of grape pickers it can take them several weeks to move through the vineyards, depending on size of plot and team. Yet in the calendar you only have three picking days each cycle – fruit days during an ascending moon, to be precise. So what do you do? Hire a huge team and pick then, regardless of conditions? Watch the weather and pick when the climate is right irrespective of calendar correctness? Or maybe bring out the picking machine and get it comfortably done in the lunar time frame, and worry about soil compaction from the machine's tyres later.”…

A point I've made before. The system's just not designed for modern life, and is fraught with contradictions and forced compromises to follow it's dictates...[link here to read what the Grgich's have to say about the proper day for picking]

"The planting calendar extends into the wine cellar, too. You should bottle the wine on a fruit day in a descending moon, because, as Veronique Cochran of Chateau Falfas in Bordeaux explained, if you bottle during an ascending moon all the aromas that belong in the bottle will leave the wine and fill the cellar. If you bottle during a descending moon, she added, you keep the aromas where they belong. In the bottle.”…

Ha ha ha ha!...Whew! My sides hurt from laughing...

"The planting calendar can act as a wonderful motivator for the experts at procrastination among us. Noticing that you can only prune the vines in the next four hours or you"ll have to wait until next month (which will be too late) concentrates the mind wonderfully, and out come the secateurs. As James Millton in New Zealand points out, however: "it does tend to intrude on the pleasures of life and although work is pleasure we still need to eat, drink, talk and be merry."…

Ohmygawd! Tante grazie! I haven't laughed that hard in a long time...

This system also begs the question of when you can rack wine, top it, blend it, etc.,... I mean do you really only have a few days per month that bottling is allowed on as well?

And William (Caveman), you seem to be right... I looked over the calendar, and there's no dates for acid, malo-lactic bacteria or yeast adds, so I guess they can't be made after all....I think it's about as useful as the Old Farmer's Almanac calendars [see here to discover how to predict the weather using a pig's spleen (no, I'm not kidding...)].