Happy International Day of Poo to Bio D wineries

Tom Wark is on the case:

http://fermentation.typepad.com/fermentation/2010/09/wine-celebrates-the-international-day-of-poo.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Nothing like a chest full of fresh Scat to earmark the day!!

I’m seriously surprised this didn’t get more reaction. Are we beyond that now?

I guess a lot of people just don’t give a shit. [drinkers.gif]

And besides, this has absolutely nothing to do with wine retailers. The post should be moved to Cellar Rats. neener

Randy, You’re right, I put it in the wrong forum, but there IS a strong feeling amongst some that sommeliers and retailers care more about Bio D and “natural” wines than winemakers do, no?

Priceless.

Monte

Stu Smith is on top of things too: http://biodynamicshoax.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/why-is-today-different-from-all-other-days/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A Biodynamic practitioner obtains a cow horn, stuffs it full of cow manure and buries it on or around the autumnal equinox. On or around the spring equinox, it is dug up and the “horn manure” is made into a highly diluted (homeopathic) spray that when applied to your fields enlivens it with cosmic forces. It’s all bull manure to me, but Biodynamic farmers like Mike Benziger claim they use Preparation 500 “because it works!”
(…)But first, a note for Americans by Herr Steiner when he was asked the following question following the lecture:

“Where can we get the cow horns? Do they have to come from Eastern or Central Europe?”

Steiner: “Life in Africa, Asia, and Europe has a totally different significance than life in America. So it is possible that horns from American cattle would have to be treated somewhat differently to make them effective.…” (Most cows after three or four years of living in one place) “belong to that land, unless they are Western cattle.”³ Note 3 says “Western cattle may adapt more slowly because their bodies are especially “dense”; the bodies of human beings in America are described by Steiner as being “very, very, dense” (1921, Jan. 6).”

I take a more nuanced view of this:

No one disputes that Mayan astronomers knew more about the movements of objects in the solar system and beyond than Europeans did at the same time (and maybe for a good deal of time later). The fact that they thought they were literally tracking gods in the sky (which they anthropomorphized into various personalities) and not aware that celestial bodies were, in fact, huge balls of thermonuclear reacting hydrogen and giant pieces of rock or masses of gases (in the case of planets and moons) doesn’t negate their observational powers.

You’re comparing hundreds of years of astronomical observation with the writings of one German in the 1920s? I think the difference is that Mayan astronomers made testable hypotheses out of their observations, while Steiner made a living by making stuff up.

No, I am comparing those Mayans to the thousands of generations of farmers who observed things that Steiner in turn observed from them but THOUGHT were caused by things that he evidently picked up from stray magnetic fields in the fillings in his teeth. He WAS a nutjob, I said that already.

But SOME of what he organized in to a system of agriculture SEEMS to be good for the plants and is definitely good for the soil. Channeling some of our Orthodox Marketologists, if this system did not provide results or add value why would so many serious wineries use it? They ENJOY throwing away money and stirring deer urine?

Product positioning and market differentiation. “We make good cabernet” sounds like 2,000 other wineries. “We use a special biodynamic process that hardly anyone uses” is a differentiator. Especially in ultra-premium wines, there are so many manufacturers and so few customers that just about any credible-sounding marketing idea – no matter how objectively goofy – can reach enough people to move 5,000 cases a year. It’s a product feature that promotes marketing even if it doesn’t demonstrably improve the usability of the product.

I spent 25 years in the software business. Every product release I ever did was a combination of features that would genuinely improve usability combined with features that customers either thought would make the product better (even if they were demonstrably useless) or would look good in a marketing/sales/PR campaign. The former we called “user features” and the latter “trade show features.” I haven’t seen any evidence that biodynamics is anything other than a trade show feature.

I don’t think we need to discuss the general public’s inability to understand science or the difference between an anecdote and empirical evidence, do we?

Roberto,
Thanks for the links. Fascinating stuff. I think the whole question can be aswered simply by knowing which wines Tom Cruise drinks.

Roberto,

I agree with you partially. I come back to Bob Fleming’s story about how he and a neighbor both planted one year. She planted according to, I think, the phase of the moon whereas he planted when he wanted. His crops were devastated by pests, hers were not and they were next to one another. Seemingly, planting by the phase of the moon resulted in a better outcome. Is there a scientific explanation for it? Sure. Probably has something to do with the lifecycles of the local pests vs where the vegetables were in their lifecycle. But to get the results, you didn’t need to know that, you just needed to know what to do.

Bio D seems to have a lot of things you need to do but with many of them not backed by observation. If you advocate a bunch of practices some of which make a positive difference and some which do nothing at all then doing them all will, on balance, help. But so would doing just the ones observed to help. I suspect that’s what is happening here - some things help, few or none hurt, some don’t matter. Do them all and you net out ahead.