Excerpts from a major series exploring biodynamic wine, which has its genesis in a feature Jamie Goode wrote for Harpers, the UK's leading wine trade magazine. Says Goode "My hope is that this will represent a thoughtful, critical and fair appraisal of this complicated and rather controversial subject." With special thanks to Jamie Goode, www.wineanorak.com.

Back in 1997, the sales team and directors of Corney & Barrow visited Domaine Leflaive in Burgundy. Anne-Claude Leflaive poured them two wines, blind, and asked them which they liked best. 12 out of the 13 preferred the same wine. What was the difference?

Well, both were technically the same wine: her 1996 Puligny Montrachet 1er Cru Clavoillon. But the wines were made from adjacent plots of vines, one organic, the other farmed with biodynamics, an alternative system of agriculture that represents the focus of this new series. This latter wine was the one that the Corney & Barrow team had singled out almost unanimously as their favourite. The following vintage Domaine Leflaive went fully biodynamic.

Anecdotal observations like these don't constitute hard scientific data, but they are common enough - and come from people making serious enough wines - to merit proper attention. Indeed, the roll call of biodynamic producers forms a star-studded list, and one that is growing steadily.

The goal of this new series is to capture the essence of biodynamic viticulture, and answer some key questions. First, how does biodynamics differ from conventional and organic agriculture? I'll explore the sorts of practices and philosophies that set biodynamic practitioners apart from their peers.

Then we'll meet some of the people involved in biodynamics, including Nicolas Joly, Michel Chapoutier and Alvaro Espinoza.

A crucial question is whether it actually works, and if so, how? I'll also address whether biodynamics can be reconciled with a scientific understanding of viticulture.

It is helpful to think of biodynamics not primarily as an agricultural system, but rather as an altered philosophy or worldview that then impacts on the practice of agriculture in various ways. In other words, to farm biodynamically, first you have to think biodynamically.

It has its roots in a series of lectures delivered by Austrian philosopher-scientist Rudolf Steiner in 1924. Steiner's life mission was to bridge the gap between the material and spiritual worlds through the philosophical method. To this end, he created the 'spiritual science' of anthroposophy, which he used as the basis of the Waldorf school system that persists to this day.

It was only quite late on in Steiner's life that he turned to agriculture: his eight lectures, entitled Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture, were delivered just a year before his death, but they remain as the foundation of biodynamic farming. Modern biodynamic practice is built on top of Steiner-inspired theories, but it is important to emphasize that there are a number of growers who practice biodynamics but who would distance themselves from Steiner's beliefs and teachings.

Key to biodynamics is considering the farm in its entirety as a living system. To this end, biodynamic farms are supposed to be closed, self-sustaining systems. Biodynamics also sees the farm in the context of the wider pattern of lunar and cosmic rhythms. In this holistic view, the soil is seen not simply as a substrate for plant growth, but as an organism in its own right. The idea of using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides is thus an anathema to biodynamic practitioners. Instead, they use a series of special preparations (see Table) to enhance the life of the soil, which are applied at appropriate times in keeping with the rhythms of nature. And disease is seen not as a problem to be tackled head-on, but rather as a symptom of a deeper malaise within the farm 'organism': correct the problem in the system and the disease will right itself.

The different biodynamic preparations
Preparation	Contents	Mode of application
500	Cow manure fermented in a cow horn, which is then buried and over-winters in the soil	Sprayed on the soil typically at a rate of 60 g per hectare in 34 liters of water.
501	Ground quartz (silica) mixed with rain water and packed in a cow’s horn, buried in spring and then dug up in autumn	Sprayed on the crop plants
502	Flower heads of yarrow fermented in a stag’s bladder	Applied to compost along with preparations 503-507. Together these control the breakdown of the manures and compost, helping to make trace elements more available to the plant
503	Flower heads of chamomile fermented in the soil	Applied to compost
504	Stinging nettle tea	Applied to compost. Nettle tea is also sometimes sprayed on weak or low vigour vines
505	Oak bark fermented in the skull of a domestic animal	Applied to compost
506	Flower heads of dandelion fermented in cow mesentery	Applied to compost
507	Juice from valerian flowers	Applied to compost
508	Tea prepared from horsetail plant (Equisetum)	Used as a spray to counter fungal diseases
Note: All these preparations are diluted and then activated or energized by a special stirring process known as ‘dynamization’.

Biodynamics is in effect a supercharged system of organic farming. Where biodynamics differs significantly in practice from organics is in the use of these special preparations and the timing of their application-in other ways the techniques employed are quite similar.

As I've talked to various biodynamic winegrowers from around the world, one thing has become clear. While they tend to agree on the big details, each has their developed biodynamics to suit their own particular situation. Winegrowers drawn to this philosophy tend to be inventive types, always experimenting and refining their practices to see what works best. As a result, there are many different flavours and variations around this common theme, and it's hard to define biodynamics in any sort of rigid way.

In later parts of this series we'll explore in greater depth exactly what applying biodynamics to a wine estate would involve, and take a look at a biodynamic property in operation.

What better way to try to catch the flavour of the underlying philosophy of biodynamics than to attend a Nicolas Joly seminar? Joly, who owns Coulée de la Serrant in the Savennières region of France's Loire Valley, is probably the leading proponent of biodynamic viticulture. He regularly conducts seminars for winegrowers, which are in high demand. Indeed, the roll-call of attendees at an average Joly seminar reads like a who's who of old-world winegrowers. His seminars usually last for a few days, but we were treated to the abridged version - not enough to answer all our questions, but sufficient to provide an overview of his philosophy.

'I was trained to be a banker, but I turned out to be a winegrower', he says. Joly had a career in finance, which involved spells working in the UK and USA. When he returned to his family's estate in the Loire in 1977, he decided that he wanted to make wines that expressed the 'spot' of Coulée de Serrant. Early on, he was visited by an official from the chamber of agriculture. 'They told me that my mother had been running the estate well, but in an old fashioned way, and it was now time for some modernity. I was told that if I started using weedkillers, I'd save 14 000 Francs.' Joly took this advice, but soon regretted it. 'Within two years I realized that the colour of the soil was changing; insects like ladybirds were no longer there; all the partridge had gone.' Joly likened the state of the vineyards to a perpetual winter, devoid of life even in the summer.

Then fate intervened. Joly read a book on biodynamics. 'I wasn't attracted to the green movement, but this book fascinated me, and I had the crazy idea of trying to practice this concept'. As a result, Coulée de Serrant has been run along biodynamic lines since the early 1980s. Joly emphasizes that this has been a learning experience, and his practice now is quite different to what it was then.

Joly's prime emphasis is on living forces, and the correct timing of viticultural interventions. 'The soil has to be alive. Organic manure is from different animals. Each animal produces very different manure. Some animals are dominated by heat, like a horse. If you force a cow against its will it will go down - the earth forces dominate. Wild boar and pigs feed on roots, so their manure will work on the roots. All these different fertilities are essential.'

He continues, 'Spring is good for us. For a vine, spring is the victory of sun forces over earth forces. In autumn, the law of death comes into force: the law of gravitation comes into force and leaves begin falling. Look how tired we get in the evening. On the first day of spring the days are a bit longer than the nights. The sun attraction is stronger than gravitation.'

'The vine is one of the few fruit trees strictly linked to the season. The vine is dominated by the earth forces. It goes downwards so it has immense strength in its roots and only goes up a little bit. It couldn't flower in the spring like the cherry or the apple. The more a plant leaves its gravitational forces, the more it can develop its flowers.'

Natural timing and the rhythms of nature seem to be key here. 'The vine is waiting for sun to land on earth. This is what happens at the summer solstice. It withholds its flowering process for the time when the sun lands on earth. The summer solstice is a very important day for a vine. If you taste wines where they flower too early, they have a very good first mouth but a bad second mouthful. The vines flowering closest to the solstice produce the best wines.' Clearly, this is bad news for winegrowers in hot regions!

So what is the difference between biodynamics and organics? 'In biodynamie we are connecting the vine to the frequencies it needs-like tuning a radio, we are tuning the plant to the frequencies that bring it life. Organics permits nature to do its job; biodynamie permits it to do its job more. It is very simple.'

What does Joly make of inorganic fertilizers? 'Fertilizer is a salt. It takes more water to compensate salt. You are forcing growth through water: the plant has to over-drink, so it grows, and carries on growing after the solstice. The process of growth ends up conflicting with the plant's act of retiring to seed and fruit. The result of this is rot, so you need to counter this with lots of chemicals.'

And disease? 'Disease is a process of constrictive forces and contractive forces. Disease itself doesn't exist. The living agents that bring diseases are just doing their duty. There is no point in fighting hundreds of new diseases. '

Joly's biodynamic philosophy extends to winemaking, too. 'The more you help the vine to do its job, by means of a live soil, proper vine selection, and avoiding poisonous treatments, the more harmony there is. If the wine catches this harmony well you have nothing to do in the cellar: potentially it is all there.' He chooses to use natural yeast, rather than inoculating with yeast cultures: 'Re-yeasting is absurd. Natural yeast is marked by all the subtleties of the year. If you have been dumb enough to kill your yeast you have lost something from that year. '

Very quickly, I realised that Joly is taking an approach to agriculture that is at odds with my training as a scientist. He is using an altogether different way of describing natural processes - a 'picture' language that jars alarmingly with the western rationalistic worldview. This is more the language of religion than that of scientifically based viticulture. Yet at the same time I have immense respect for the vision of viticulture he is expounding. It has a life and vitality of its own, which exposes the intellectual and environmental bankruptcy of chemical-dependent conventional viticultural regimes. Above all, he is making profound, interesting wines.

Other ideas that Joly expanded on included terroir and grape varieties. 'Different artists paint the same landscapes in different ways. It is the same with vines expressing terroir. This is why it is absurd to have created clones: the repetition of one specific vine a million times. Clones are a lie to the diversity that each specific vine expresses. Taking the "best" clone and producing millions of samples is absurd. This understanding of the "best" is absurd.' In Savennières, Chenin Blanc is the only permitted grape. What does he think about it? 'Chenin Blanc is like a difficult child: they will go on to be either a genius or a terrorist. Too often we see the terrorist version of Chenin.'

One interesting piece of information is that Joly is beginning to experiment with using clay amphorae. These are currently being used by Josko Gravner, in Friuli, who has just taken delivery of some. Apparently they are hand made in Georgia. 'I am experimenting with replacing wood by clay. Clay can cure; it is strongly linked to the sun. Amphorae can be an alternative to oak barrels,' says Joly. He still likes barrels, though. 'There is an enormous wisdom in the shape of a barrel. Ask your dog. Put a barrel beside the kennel and in 12 hours the dog will have chosen to sleep in the barrel. The barrel is in the shape of an egg, and has the shape of life forces.'

For a Chilean winery, Viñedos Organicos Emiliana is unusual. It is dedicated to producing environmentally responsible wines, initially organically, but then the goal is for it to adopt biodynamics. The man at the helm of the project, which started in 2000 with the backing of parent company Vina Santa Emiliana, is Alvaro Espinoza, formely winemaker with Carmen. Alvaro is a true pioneer, and has been single-handedly responsible for introducing biodynamic viticulture into South America. Santa Emiliana selected three farms in the regions of Maipo, Casablanca and Colchagua, totalling a substantial 240 ha, to form the basis of this project, so it is a serious commercial operation and not just a token green-friendly PR gesture. I met with Alvaro at Ransome's Dock restaurant in London to hear about this new project, listen to his views on biodynamics, and to taste the wines.

It's clear from the outset that Alvaro Espinoza isn't your average Chilean winemaker. 'Traditional viticulture artificializes the vineyards, creating an artificial medium', says Alvaro. 'the result is that the wines are similar to those from other places'. His view is very much that organics and biodynamics facilitates the expression of 'terroir' (site-specific flavours in wine), which isn't a word you hear very often in Chile.

He also eschews the besetting varietalism that has become an enduring facet of new world winemaking. 'I am not aiming to make another Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile. Blending can add character; that is why we are planting a whole range of varieties.' This sounds promising.

So what is the story behind VOE? Initially, one of the owners of Santa Emiliana was interested in integrated pest management (IPM), a scientific approach to reducing chemical inputs by targeting interventions just where they are needed. From here, they progressed to organics in 1998 when plots from three farms were selected as an experiment. Then, in 2000 Alvaro Espinoza was hired to be responsible for this project.

Alvaro had previously worked for 8 years at Carmen. He first became interested in organic viticulture in the mid 1990s through links with Fetzer - a Californian winery who pioneered organics in the USA. He decided that conventional viticulture had some severe limitations. 'I'd lost my idealism and my connection with the vineyards', he explained. Through 1995 he had lots of contact with the Fetzer and Bonterra team, and started to do some work with Carmen later that year, putting some of their Maipo plots into organics.

In 1998 Alvaro had a sabbatical that proved to be very significant: he went to Mendocino in California and spent 6 months working on viticulture with the Mexican vineyard workers at Bonterra. While he was there he had lots of contact with the Fetzers and Alan York, a well known Californian biodynamic consultant. Alan York gave him Rudolf Steiner's book, which 'changed my views about nature', he says. 'Steiner's views seemed very logical', and Alvaro's return to Chile, with its environmentally unfriendly industrial-scale viticulture, proved to be a big shock.

He left Carmen in 2000 to work for VOE. At VOE, three farms were put completely into organics and biodynamics, and they are being treated as closed units of production. There are three main pillars to the vineyard work. First, they aim to increase the biodiversity of the farms, with cover cropping and biological corridors. 'Monoculture helps to develop pests', says Alvaro. Second, there is composting: adding fertility to soil and preserving healthy plants with natural nutrients. Finally, there is alternative pest management work with compost teas, and biological products such as Bacillus subtilis and Trichoderma (a fungus that has antibotrytis and antioidium action). Alvaro is leaving an increasing amount of flowers in the vineyards to encourage insects. This has the side-effect of making the vineyards look pretty!

Currently VOE are just using selected plots from their farms for their wines. They have lots of new plantings, and they sell off many of the grapes from the youngest vines. The whites aren't ready yet.

The move to biodynamics has proven to be a complicated process. 'In 2000 we started to be in contact with Demeter', says Alvaro. In Chile there is no biodynamic association, so Alvaro has had to make all the biodynamic preparations himself, a challenging task. Initially, he had a problem getting yarrow, which isn't native to the wine growing regions of Chile. More complicated was getting the bladders of red deer, used to ferment some preparations: there aren't any red deer in Chile. 'Now we have enough to sell to others', Alvaro says. 'For me the main view is the sustainable view of the farm, seeing it as an organism'. With this goal in mind, he's bringing animals to the farms to close the cycle of nutrients, so he can producing his own manure and compost. Recycling is important and for their cover crops, VOE collect the seed and re-use it.

Biodynamic wines:
Interview with James Millton

JM: Esoteric aspects? Well, they give answers to the questions that enlightened 'organic' growers are left with when dealing with the commercial problems that the chemical inputs from former practices have created. They can see that certain things can be 'gotten rid' of. However, they are there because of an imbalance and (after seven years) bio-dynamic activity will help to bring about that balance without the need to ash, etc. The planets? One can read it on the calendar, look at it in the night sky and then feel it, as one's relationship with the land strengthens. The planets are very important and we are most probably the only mammals who do not 'feel' these activities. Why does NASA spend trillions of dollars searching for life out there when everyday a biodynamic practitioner works with the life they know that exists. If they could take just 10% of that budget and put it into research for health, education and nutrition of our children, what a better 'life' we would all enjoy.

JM: To be a good biodynamic farmer one has to be a very, very good farmer.

JM: Scientifically trained mind? We are born with innate abilities. Present education reduces our senses and makes us dumb. Science therefore is always innocent until proven guilty. The results of what is experimented with in the laboratory are totally different when put out into the kingdom of nature. My response? Look at the big picture (professional networking) and continue to understand before monitoring the single reaction in order to make a conclusion. What are the results of all this research for? Are they making the world a better place? If one has a health problem, science will fix it from the front, but seldom asks what it is that this person may have done to incur this problem in the first place and adjust these inputs.

So far in this series I have explored several aspects of biodynamics. One gritty problem remains, though. It seems to be in conflict with mainstream science. A literal belief in what biodynamic practitioners propose would entail any adherent to jettison large chunks of scientific understanding. Given the strong antiscience movement that is emerging in western cultures, there are probably some who are prepared to do this. But can't science and biodynamics be reconciled?

Michel Chapoutier, in France's Rhône valley, began farming biodynamically in 1991. All 250 ha of Chapoutier's vineyards are now farmed this way, making him the largest biodynamic winegrower in France by some distance. Unlike many practitioners, he thinks that understanding the science behind biodynamics is important. 'Biodynamic culture has an interesting future if we have an open attitude to fundamental science'. Chapoutier suggests that unless the observations of the effects of biodynamics are underpinned by a theoretical science understanding, biodynamics is in danger of becoming a sect. To this end, he is keen to understand the scientific explanations behind the various treatments. 'Steiner had the genius of finding a great idea', he explains, 'but he is considered so highly that people think he got everything right, even the details. People like Steiner are good with big ideas, but not so good with the details'.

Certainly, a scientific underpinning to biodynamics would aid its wider acceptance by people currently deterred by its rather esoteric, cultish image. This would probably be seen as undesirable by many practitioners of biodynamics: to them, conventional science only offers a limited perspective on the natural world. However, scientific respectability could potentially improve the take-up of biodynamics dramatically.

However, rigorous research on biodynamics faces a number of obstacles. First, because biodynamics sees the whole farm as a single 'organism', the idea of separate, adjacent plots being farmed by different methods, in a trial-type scenario, doesn't really fit. A second difficulty is persuading research funding agencies to pay for these studies. Professor John Reganold, a scientist at the University of Washington (Pullman) who is one of the leading authorities on organic agriculture, told me that some of his research proposals have been vetoed by funding agencies because they have contained the word 'biodynamics'. 'Many scientists who won't even look at biodynamics', he reports.

Despite these problems, proper studies have been carried out, and generally they seem to suggest that biodynamics really does work. In 1993, Reganold and colleagues compared the performance of biodynamic and conventional farms in New Zealand, a report published in leading scientific journal Science. They found that the biodynamic farms had significantly higher soil quality, with more organic matter content and microbial activity. In 1995 Reganold published a review of the different studies that have examined biodynamics and have met basic standards for scientific credibility. The conclusion was that biodynamic systems had better soil quality, lower crop yields and equal or greater net returns per hectare than their conventional counterparts. But what could the mechanism be? A tantalizing clue is offered by some experiments carried out by a graduate student of Reganold's, Lynne Carpenter-Bloggs, on the effects of biodynamic preparations on compost development. In an experimental setting, biodynamically treated composts showed higher temperatures, faster maturation and more nitrate than composts that had received a placebo inoculation. Reganold is clearly impressed: 'Of all the farm systems that I've seen, biodynamics is probably the most holistic.'

In May 2002, the results of a 21 year study comparing organic and biodynamic farming with conventional agriculture were published, also in respected journal Science. A group of Swiss researchers, led by Paul Mäder of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, showed that while biodynamic farming resulted in slightly lower yields, it outperformed conventional and organic systems in almost every other case. The biodynamic plots showed higher biodiversity and greater numbers of soil microbes, and more efficient resource utilization by this microbial community.

So, biodynamics seems to work. By and large, wine growers operating within this rather unusual philosophical framework are making interesting, personality-filled wines-something the world desperately needs more of. And the limited scientific studies that have so far addressed biodynamics have come down in its favour. But it's an open question as to exactly how biodynamics has its effects, and by extension it is therefore unclear which elements of its theory need to be adopted by vignerons in order for them to accrue its benefit. So will biodynamics continue to increase in popularity? I'll let Michel Chapoutier have the final word: 'the future of biodynamics will be limited only by the ability of the consumer to appreciate complex, sophisticated wine.'