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A toast to organic wine, straight from Oregon's wine country.

Monday Nov 06, 2006.     By Julia Steinberger

Lifestyle Feed

Organic wine gets a bad rap. Even at Chicago's "City in a Garden" show last May, a wine rep told me organics just didn't cut it next to their conventional counterparts (granted, he didn't have any to sell me).

Many imply that organic wines are wimpier; the equivalent of Miller Lite pitted against Delirium Tremens. The commentary just didn't seem to make sense. Organic means wine is chem-free, produced by people who are just as, if not more, passionate about their grapes...all good things, right?

Trekking around Portland with my sweetie last week, I decided see if the prime wine-producing region could teach me a thing or two. We spent Saturday afternoon in the tasting room at Cooper Mountain Vineyards, an idyllic mountainside shop surrounded by golden-leaved grapevines in Beaverton, about a half hour's drive from the city.

David, a jovial white-whiskered wine devotee who said he liked the place because he'd grown up on an organic farm, manned the counter. Excited to hear that we'd come all the way from Chicago, he gave us more than a few extra pours and shared his wisdom just as liberally.

Cooper Mountain, the brainchild of a doctor who favors homeopathic disease prevention, uses grapes from four vineyards with very different climes. The winery is not only organic, it's biodynamic, a self-imposed system of lightest-footprint rules that the government doesn't issue a sticker for. In addition to avoiding chemicals, farmers don't irrigate, because water from an imported source could contain chemical runoff from conventional fields. Instead, they dry-farm, tilling the soil after a rain to trap the moisture underground. Rather than fertilizing with compost from a central location, Cooper Mountain gives each field its own compost, containing indigenous eco-waste that won't change the composition of the soil. Farmers take note of the active/inactive cycles of the vines (they mirror the cycles of the moon), fertilizing when roots are growing and hungry, and pruning only when vines are dormant.

As we swished the wine around in our mouths (nibbling on a bar of Dagoba ultra-dark organic chocolate between glasses), we noted the differing flavors, from the clean, mineral notes of the old-vine Pinot Gris to the knockout punch delivered by the imported but equally organic Malbec. These wines don't suffer at all from being chemical-free. So, I asked David, what's the deal with people who think there's a difference?

It turns out that the flavor that drinkers find lacking in organic wine isn't the flavor of wine; it's the flavor of preservatives. Organic wines lack sulfur dioxide, known as "sulfites," which are added to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria in the wine as it ferments. The average organic wine contains about 30-35 parts per million of the compound, while conventional bottles contain as much as 100-150.

The reasoning is simple: Put pesticides on your grapes, and you'll need to add more chemicals to the wine to kill the bad stuff. If your grapes are clean, you don't need to worry as much. At Cooper Mountain, in fact, the fermentation tanks are scrubbed by hand with little more than hot water. "I think they get cleaner that way, since you have to pay a lot more attention when you scrub than when you just spray Lysol on everything," says David.

If you want further proof that sulfites aren't necessary for good wine, another shopkeeper let us on to the fact that most wineries in wine-conscious France operate on biodynamic principles—this is not strictly the domain of snooty new-agers. And why should it be? Wine is old; pesticides are relatively new. I'll stick with tradition on this issue from now on. As for the common rumor that no-sulfites means no-hangover: Unfortunately, it's just a rumor. Make sure to swill some H2O before hitting the sack, even if your bottle says "organic."

Want a bottle of your own? Try these picks in the area:

At Sam's Wines and Spirits, Mas de Gourgonnier Les Baux-de-Provence 2003, a choice blend from one of France's eco-minded wineries, is a value at $13. The warehouse even sells organic gin!

Binny's Beverage Depot stocks several quality organic wines under $10, like the Santa Julia Cabernet Sauvignon Organica, $8.

Logan Square gem Provenance Food & Wine doesn't stock any bottles that bear the "Organic" sticker, but they do have a selection of equally-earth-minded biodynamic wines, including Didier 2004 Syrah, $10, and Marcel Deiss Pinot Gris, $18.

Other good places to look include: Sunflower Market, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Wild Oats and World Market.

After four greener-than-average college years as a co-op dweller-turned-aspiring-permaculturist, Julia Steinberger finds it hard not to feel guilty about her one-bedroom apartment, daily commute and indulgence in the occasional dollar burger. She'd like to dream that she could live in a tent/treehouse/rabbit hole, but the truth is, she'd rather stay in the city while doing her best to leave a lighter footprint on the earth. You can contact her here.