Cheating in Burgundy

WINE TALK
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As linked in Terroirist, TomWark poses an interesting question:
TomWark/Cheating

about the creation of a hail shield in Burgundy and if it is, thereby, altering the sacrosanct “terroir” of Burgundy.

I find it interesting that a BioDynamic grower in Burgundy, who would be loath to add SO2 or tartaric or yeast (but has absolutely no ethical problem w/ chaptalization) to his wine endorses this wholesale corruption of the Burgundy “terroir”.
Just like in the real world around us today, it is increasingly occupied by nothing but hypocrites.

The positions that people take on this issue are utterly predictable. The lovers of Burgundy wine will shrug their shoulders and argue that it makes for better wines and, therefore, this naked corruption of Burgundy “terroir” is perfectly OK. Those others will gleefully point out that this unethical modification of Burgundy “terroir” is corrupt and evil and, gawd-forbid, if it is ever used in Barolo or SantaYnez. As for me…who doesn’t give a rat’s a$$ about Burgundy…“meh”. Of course, we’ll never know which side is “right” until SweetAlice weighs in on the subject.

Anyway…a very interesting/thought-provoking article by Tom.

Tom…in his best [stirthepothal.gif] mode. [snort.gif]

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[popcorn.gif]

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Jeez, John…I forgot to throw that .gif in as well!!
Tom

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I don’t think the OP in a pot-stirrer is entitled to use the popcorn .gif. It’s only for spectators.

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The article was neither interesting nor thought provoking, it is a snide but not very clever attack on biodynamic winemaking without substance. I did enjoy the unintentional irony of begging the question of whether hail is part of terroir in one sentence and misusing the phrase “begs the question” in the very next sentence.

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I see I was pre-empted by Mike, but I’ll make my comment anyway:

How can we take any article seriously when it mis-uses “begging the question?”

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Tom, as always, has provided us with fodder for thought. In this case, I learned that “beg the question” originates with a 16th Century mistranslation of Aristotle.

Now we return you to your regularly scheduled wine programming…

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OK you two guys are my favorite posters today. And don’t overlook the entire clumsy phrase “It begs the question if. . .”

I like TW, but this was pretty weak writing that a quick edit would have helped.

That said, the concept is hilarious. But that bio grower has a good reason for having flexible principles. He lost massive amounts of money. In the end, that’s what matters and actually I don’t blame him. You only ban what isn’t needed.

Of course, he’d have to make sure that the shield was clear - you need to keep the purported transparency of the wine.

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John - it’s a phrase from logic. They need to replace “begs” with “raises”, which is what they invariably mean.

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Hey, I was a philosophy major – I know the correct usage. I just didn’t know the origins. I thought it stemmed from the notion that a circular argument raised the validity of the very proposition it attempted to prove – begging/calling/raising the original issue. But it turns out the history of the expression is much more complicated and entertaining than that.

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+2

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So getting back to the topic at hand -

Perhaps it’s best to skip over Tom’s post and head straight to the original article:

It’s a fascinating concept and one that I hope is successful. That said, it does beg the question of how far wine regions can and should go to ‘protect’ their crops. What about irrigating places that ‘don’t allow’ irrigation in the case of a drought? What about ‘shading’ vines that are in the sun too much - as is now done in parts of Napa and Paso and elsewhere?

I do hope it is successful - and I hope it brings out more discussion about these things as Mother Nature will continue to throw ‘curve balls’ at us.

Cheers.

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The original post begs for an answer: this seems much ado about nothing. Hail isn’t terroir, it’s an unfortunate byproduct of bad weather. It’s only impact on vines and wine is its potential destructive force. So, for me, preventing a hail storm is really more about protecting the vines from physical damage, not about altering anything that would change the nature of the fruit.

Couple other ways to look at it: it doesn’t hail every year. In my mind, terroir is something that’s there every year to greater or lesser degree. A flood is not terroir. An insect infestation is not terroir. Mildew is not terroir. If those things are terroir, you have to question the legitimacy of preventing them as well.

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It’s been all down hill since they ‘invented’ phylloxera resistant root stock.

At this point, who cares, it’s all been ruined.

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Interesting read…and interesting responses.

It just seems like the biodynamic and natural argument is like politics where those inclined to like biodynamic and natural wines overlook whatever flaws in the ideology there are and those who think it’s full of manure pick any aspect of supposed hypocrisy out to trumpet around.

I have to agree that the article seems quickly written and there are mistakes in the writing for sure. However, IMO, to dismiss the conversation of cloud seeding a wine region to prevent hail over an incorrectly used euphemism seems worse than the misuse.

Silver is a heavy metal, precious or not, and Iodine is an antiseptic that is very hard on aquatic life if it makes it into the water supply.
Silver iodide is used as an antiseptic in practice. To state this slightly differently, it’s used to kill organisms that would harm us in a highly controlled and directed manner. Putting large amounts of an antiseptic into the sky over a large region, pretending that you are sure that it won’t harm anything is pretty crazy. Unless you stand to gain something from it’s use…like a whole lot of money.
For a biodynamic producer, where protection of soil microbes is a HUGE and critical part of the philosophy, and saying that spraying large quantities of an antiseptic into the sky is harmless…is hard for me to swallow. But then there’s that big pile of money…and most ideology in wine producers seems to only go as deep as the checkbook…and as a wine producer that sucks.

The idea that terroir in Burgundy is static is a bit ludicrous. As the ground changes, the farming changes, the financial gain and loss changes…so will the terroir. Burgundians have already used technology, whether trellis systems, leaf pulling, biodynamic practices, fertilizers, etc. to gain their 1-2 degrees of ripeness. A person who has been consuming Burgundy for 20-25 years can pretty much guarantee this. The wines are riper than they used to be and more accessible, and more consistent.
Cloud seeding is just the next phase, but it’s also only a conversation because of how profitable the wines have become.

It’s probably something that this biodynamic producer would be very against, if he wasn’t losing a whole bunch of money every time it hailed. I don’t think biodynamics is fake or hypocritical, but I do think a lot of producers who use it to pass judgement on other producers wines only buy in until they start to lose money.

For my money, if you want the best expressions of terroir, you have to go where the wines don’t make rich men out of the vignerons. Once the money is there, the wines change…and to be fair, most consumers would say for the better. But place and culture start to dwindle in the face of consistent and ripe(and ripe obviously has advantages over un-ripe).

May the Loire Valley never change…

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Hmmmmm…isn’t lofting all that silver iodide into the air, and then having it return to the soil, altering the terroir??

What’s interesting is that a “natural” winemaker (“nothing added/nothing taken away”), who would eschew SO2 or tartaric or yeast additions, would
permit the addition of Sodium Iodide to his environment/wine. The hypocrisy is appalling.

That is what attracted me to Tom’s article. I, like TomW, love exposing hypocrisy whenever it rears its ugly head. Having a field day in Washington nowadays!!
Tom

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Very cogent and well-reasoned response, Marcus. You know…we don’t tolerate those qualities here on WB !! [snort.gif]

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Plus 1 on your commentary on terroir not being about random occurrences.

But we tend to focus on the vines as if they were the only thing involved in producing the grapes. It’s a complete bio system, and healthy soils are something the vignerons in Burgundy have been trying to build back for decades now.

It hasn’t been that long since heavy use of man made chemicals were commonplace in Burgundy, to the long term detriment of the dirt the vines grow in.
Cloud seeding is not a simple fix, and as stated in my first post, AgI is used as an antiseptic. I don’t have a working knowledge of what it’s true ramifications are but it seems like it’s certainly philosophically opposed to any concept of “natural” or biodynamic production.

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Two answers: the amount is miniscule when compared to the air volume; and given that this would only be done during stormy weather with the threat of hail, it will mostly be blown well out of the area anyway. If you want to consider something “altering the terroir”, the amount of copper sprayed by these bioD guys is orders of magnitude more than the amount of silver that could end up in the soil.

BTW, from everything I’ve read on this, it’s not even clear that this approach works.

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I would find all of this interesting, if it were not for the fact that biodynamics is a bunch of pseudoscientific horseshit with a lot of very self-righteous practitioners. If hail is terroir, then so is phylloxera, mildew, pestilence, etc.

Honestly, burgundy is ridiculously expensive as it is. If crops were not damaged by hail two out of three years, maybe prices would not be so exorbitant