Thursday, April 30, 2009

Add another voice to the lists!

I'll reprint his comment here, as it bears repetition well:
"Stuart Smith recently wrote a great letter to the editor (of the Chronicle?) responding to the Dolan-Benziger school of non-stop BD promotion, practiced with nothing but anecdotal claims of efficacy, and plenty of marketing hype. As Stu pointed out the problem with the BD promoters is that it puts the rest of us at a competitive disadvantage. There are a few accounts that won't buy anything but organic and BD wines. Those of us who are more concerned with making delicious, well-made wines are fortunate, so far, in that most people care most about wine quality, not BD hokum.

When you look deeper into BD, beyond what the winery proponents choose to talk about, you find some truly wacky stuff, as if the common BD practices aren't enough already. Steiner was a paranormal fancier and clairvoyant. There are lots of spirits of various kinds. There are sylphs and fairies that move light and water into the plant and gnomes in the earth that tell the roots and worms what to do --- I'll bet there wasn't much about that at the seminar!

Careful, minimal input viticulture ought to be the standard, but the antiscientific-religio-cultish stuff at the heart of BD will eventually send it back where it belongs .... I hope."
I'll add a quick HALLELUJAH!, and use this post as a PUBLIC CALL TO ARMS for those responsible winemakers out in the field to publicly join the crusade against this modern-day mumbo-jumbo! Make yourselves heard!!
Join the Zinquisition!

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

St. Vini, you seriously need to go walk the vineyard and relax.

April 30, 2009 5:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm out in the vineyards quite often now (especially since I got laid off from the winery I worked at)and its easy enough to check everything out while I'm walking my dog. Over all my time in the biz I think there's good evidence for bug highways and organic viticulture. but I don't see anybody with these things like bladders hanging around their vines. I really don't think there are many people out there doing this sort of thing are there?

Al

May 01, 2009 7:46 AM  
Blogger St. Vini said...

Anon,

I've been preaching that everyone should be walking their vineyards for quite some time, and I feel quite relaxed thank you.

For the benefit of both you and Al, I'd like to point out that BioD has been making quite a few inroads into popular culture for some time now. In many articles I see people refer to it as "über-organic", a sadly false claim which just minimizes the efforts that organic producers go to to deliver a great product.
No, not everyone is doing it.
At least, not yet...
That's why those who object to these superstitious practices have to make themselves known now, before BioD creeps further into our collective viticulture.
It will be much harder to weed it out if we let it take serious root.
(As Shakespeare had Brutus speak, I'll paraphrase that it is like "a snake's egg", and we should kill it before it hatches into further menace.....)

If enough GOOD winemakers who don't believe in that crap-tastic mix of occult practices and animal sacrifice voodoo, are willing to step forwards and proclaim such publicly...well, it might be enough I think to kill the movement in that direction.

In a way, its not that hardly anyone is doing it...it is that we need to do this now to quarantine the contagion!Cheers!
/V

May 01, 2009 12:46 PM  

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