wine and health

Whenever the topic of biodynamic winemaking comes up, I can’t help but remember a line from Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast: “They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.” Many consider biodynamics to be a joke, with its cultish origins and literal reliance on manure (packed into a cow’s horn, which must be precisely oriented to “preserve the etheric and astral force that the horn was accustomed to when it was on the cow,” buried over the winter, then sprayed on the vineyards in the spring). Nevertheless, biodynamics has been adopted by wineries worldwide including a few top labels, and some superb wines come from biodynamic vineyards. Is there a kernel of truth germinating beneath the pile of plop? Biodynamic winemaking's controversial past If biodynamics were as simple as using natural fertilizers and fostering a healthy ecosystem ...