Beyond Organic Wine

I’m thrilled to announce that my first book is officially available for pre-order! The book is called Wine Liberated: The Ecological Revolution and the Vintners Inspiring Change.

The heroes of Wine Liberated are people who I met through this podcast, who took the time to share their knowledge and inspire me and listeners around the world with their cou…

A big thanks to our special sponsor for this episode: Shifting Gears Travel

My guest for this episode is Tim Jordan, who is a co-founder of and winemaker and consultant for Common Wealth Crush. From overseeing winegrowing brands Star Party and Midland in Augusta County, to his winemaking and vineyard responsibilities at Common Wealth Crush, Tim has his finger on the dynamic pulse of Virginia wine. Born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley, he holds a PhD in entomology from Virginia Tech, with a focus on grapevine insects. This specialized knowledge and passion for Virginia winegrowing has propelled him through numerous roles in the industry over the years, including as vineyard manager for Michael Shaps Wineworks, winemaker at Barren Ridge Vineyards, consultant with Shenandoah Vineyard Services, and now co-founder of Common Wealth Crush. Tim is also part of the grape breeding program in Virginia, in collaboration with the USDA, that is developing new grape varieties that can successfully produce delicious wine within the unique regional limitations and challenges that grapes face in Virginia. I wish every state had one of these programs.

I have a special relationship with Virginia in a way. Virginia is the setting for the first episode of the Beyond Organic Wine podcast (which I highly recommend listening to if you haven’t), and it’s the setting for Chapter 1 of my book, Wine Liberated. That’s because Virginia is one of the oldest wine regions in the US, and it’s simultaneously one of the most difficult places to grow wine on earth. So the lessons we learn from the folks growing wine there organically, ecologically, or regeneratively – and there is a growing group of winemakers who are – these are lessons that can be applied broadly across most of the winegrowing world. But Virginia is also a place where Vinifera Culture has been, and continues to be, heavily invested in. Enormous amounts of resources are given every year to trying to produce wine from Vitis vinifera in Virginia. This is a product of a colonized wine culture that defines wine as the fermented juice of varieties of Vitis vinifera only, and it’s time we call this what it is… utter and unsustainable folly.

Yet, as you’ll hear, this is what most people learn as we begin our journey with wine. And so Tim’s journey began by planting and growing vinifera in Virginia. But twenty years on, Tim has learned too much to go back. He won’t plant vinifera again for his wine, and he’s setting an example that I hope more and more growers in Virginia, and around the world, follow. This theme is merely background, however, for an in-depth look at a thoughtful, community focused, ecologically informed journey to grow wine in one of the most challenging wine regions on earth. Enjoy!

My guest for this episode is Daniele Delaini who owns and farms and makes wine for his family winery Villa Calicantus near Lake Garda in northeast Italy. He grows most of his grapes on cement pergola, what they locally call “pergola veronese,” and farms local indigenous varieties of grapes biodynamically and makes wines without adding anything to nor su…

As a younger man, Patrick Pierquet found the wild grape that became the Frontenac grapes (noir, gris, and blanc). He tells about his experiences discovering the wild parents of several of the North America’s most popular, commercially used wine grapes, as well as the practical aspects of what it takes to breed new varieties of grapes. He also tells stories of Elmer Swenson, with whom he got to work.

I recorded an entire episode while picking one of Patrick’s grapes:

Fearless Wine

Patrick also mentions Tom Plocher, who was also influenced by Elmer Swenson, and you can hear Tom’s episode here:

Tom Plocher

And if you want to learn more about how important grape breeding is to the present and future of wine, check out my episode with the most famous European grape breeder:

Valentin Blattner

This month we, in California especially, will be inundated with reminders that 50 years ago this May a few pioneering California winemakers beat the French at their own game in a blind tasting that came to be known as the Judgement of Paris. The rise of California wine on the global stage began when French judges preferred California wines to their own Bordeauxs and Borgognes. California won, and the golden age of California wine followed for the next several decades. At least that’s been the doctrine for the last 50 years.

Let me suggest an alternative perspective on this historical event: The French won.

“But,” you’ll insist, “They didn’t! It’s a matter of historical record.”

It depends on which game we think was being played. If we think the game was, “Who makes a better Cabernet or Chardonnay?” Sure, California won that game. But was that really the most important game that was being played that day in 1976? I don’t think so.

I think the more important game being played 50 years ago was, “What is the global benchmark for fine wine?” It was a game the French couldn’t lose no matter what wines the judges picked. The French won the Judgment of Paris merely by agreeing to the tasting because it positioned California wines, and any other would-be wines of global importance, in the position of imitating French wines.

California only won at being the best imitators of French tastes in wine. But the French won the bigger prize. They showed that if you wanted to be taken seriously, you had to emulate them. You had to follow their lead. The Judgment of Paris created the dynamic that established the French as the arbiters and definers of taste in wine. They became the producers and directors of the game, and the rest of the world became mere players.

And so for 50 years California wine has not been Californian. It has mostly been French wine made in California. We even aged our Judgement of Paris-winning wines in imported French oak. Outside of Europe, nine varieties of grapes account for over 50% of the global wine vineyard area, and most of those grapes have French names. Most people in wine are so inculcated in this way of thinking that it’s probably hard for them to imagine a different kind of wine world. That’s how total the French victory was: We can’t imagine wine without French grapes.

California has essentially never even tried to develop its own wine culture… despite the fact that there are three species of grapes endemic to California. That’s three times as many species as the French have, but we never even tried to build our own wine varieties from them. Do you know any named wine grape varieties that have Vitis californica genetics?

A century before the Judgement of Paris, a wine made from America’s oldest wine grape, Norton, won the award for “best red wine of all nations” at the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873. Yes, an American wine made from an American hybrid grape won a tasting that compared it to the best wines from all over Europe. Why didn’t we celebrate the 150th anniversary of that victory three years ago?

While there’s a certain amount of pride to be taken in beating someone at their own game, it’s still their game. The greater pride comes from building your own game that represents your tastes, your culture, your grapes, and your ideas of what wine can be. Everywhere can do this, and will do this differently, leading to a diversity of amazing wine cultures around the world.

I think it’s time for another tasting. This time the rule is that your wine has to be your own, from your local grapes or other indigenous fruit. And I have a prediction of the outcome: We will all be winners.

My guest for this episode is Joseph Wiens. With his wife, Jasmine, Joseph founded and makes wine for Lost Ranch Winery in Temecula Valley California. If you aren’t from Southern California, you might not have heard of Temecula. There are many reasons for this, some we discuss, some historical, some justifiable, and some not. Whatever the reasons, Joseph and Jasmine are giving everyone a reason to take notice, to reconsider this historic wine region, and to discover the next generation of Temecula wine and the new wave of California wine.

As a second-generation winemaker, Joseph was steeped in vineyard and cellar approaches that were considered to be best practices. But he didn’t see his values represented in the status quo conventional approach and began planning Lost Ranch. He and Jasmine think ecologically and guide their farming and winemaking by regenerative, organic values, while practicing very low-intervention yet non-dogmatic winemaking. The results are wines of outstanding quality that reflect their region beautifully and uniquely.

Some highlights from this include how they use prickly pears in their winemaking to make a stunning wine called Les Cactus. How they incorporate a diversity of genetics in their vineyard, including Italian, Greek, and American genetics, to deal with the climatic and insect-spread disease factors of their region. How they make wine by listening and letting the land and their community determine wine style, resulting in a very delicious and bee-friendly rosé. How they make a wine from 100-year-old grapes, some of which might be hybrids misnamed as Mataro. How they used their sheep’s wool to insulate their chicken mansion. And much more.

Temecula Valley is a hot climate wine region that is one of California’s oldest, with records of vineyards from the early 1800’s. It is named for one of the original peoples who made it their home before the arrival of Europeans. Their name meant “Where the sun breaks through the white mist.” Some of these original people still live there, and there are ancient grapevines growing on the nearby Pechanga reservation. Temecula Valley is 22 miles from the Pacific Ocean, around 1500 feet in elevation and at the base of mountains that rise up to 11,000 feet. As the afternoon sun hits those mountains and heats them, the valley gets cooled as ocean breeze gets pulled through the Rainbow Gap in the coastal hills. By night the air on the high mountain peaks spills down to cool the valley further. For these reasons, Temecula has a climate similar to regions several hundreds of miles further north in California, like Calistoga and Lake County. Unlike those regions it brings in over a billion dollars in wine tourism revenue each year…. So yeah, maybe it’s time we give it some much deserved attention.

Lost Ranch is giving us some incredibly delicious reasons to take this region seriously. This is the new California wine. Enjoy!

My guest for this episode is Marc-André Selosse. He is a professor at the Musée national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris and at the universities of Gdansk (Poland) and Kunming (China), where he heads research teams. He has taught in Brazil and is a lecturer at Ecole Normale Supérieure and Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC). His work focuses on the ecology a…

Happy Earth Day!

If you don’t know the history of Earth Day it’s worth checking out at least the Wikipedia entry about it. We recently had what was considered to be the largest single-day protest in US history for the No Kings protest on March 28th, 2026. An estimated 8 million people protested that day. On the first Earth Day in 1970, over 20 million pe…

My guest for this episode is Rebecca Sweet, owner of Buzz Cover Crop Seeds in Oregon. Yes, the last few episodes have been focused on folks doing inspirational work in Oregon, because I’ll be going back there soon… to the Organically Grown Wine Conference on April 20-21.

Cover crops have become a sort of no-brainer for any responsible perennial agricultu…

This episode features Adam Rack, the Co-founder of Revino, the company that is taking the lead in wine glass bottle re-use in the US. Based in Oregon, Revino has recently received funding to open a bottle re-use facility in California, and is helping to build re-use infrastructure and in both states… and thinking globally about the glass bottle ecosystem for wine producers and consumers. Revino has signature, elegant, embossed bottles already in use by quite a few Oregon wine producers, and I’ve had some delicious wine poured from several of their bottles.

Bringing awareness and support to wine bottle re-use has been important for me for years, and this isn’t the first episode I’ve done on the topic. That’s because the use of new glass bottles is the single largest source of carbon emissions for the wine industry. Yet we know glass is a vital part of wine. If we want to avoid plastic and the limitations of cans, glass is pretty much inescapable. It has amazing qualities of non-reactivity and durability and beauty. That’s why re-use has to be the way forward for a sustainable wine culture built on ecological principles.

We take some time to get to specifics about what Revino does, and I began to realize this is because, as Adam helps us see clearly, to get to the actual part where we, you know, re-use glass bottles, many systems must first be established. Bottle drop-off and collection sites, washing facilities, transportation systems, laws must at times be changed or established, and then there are the bottles themselves: standardization must be adopted, label adhesives must be made washable. And everyone needs to be educated about these processes as well as the enormous benefits that make these changes not only worthwhile, but urgent. First, and maybe most importantly, we need to begin a mindset shift away from seeing wine bottles as single-use disposables, to cherishing them for their unique qualities… not the least of which is their incredible ability to be re-used many many times. We will need to shift away from valuing pretty, shiny, new bottles to taking pride in a scuffed and worn bottle with what Adam calls an “environmental halo” of wear from being part of a re-use ecosystem.

These are changes we can start at our wineries today, and Adam gives practical steps to begin to prepare for bottle re-use at your winery, even if the infrastructure wont be available for a few years where you are. And compromises are necessary. We can’t have everything we want if we want important change to happen. But we can change what we want.

These changes take time, and they remind us that we are building the infrastructure for the wine culture that future generations will see as normal. We are transforming outdated values to the values that will be the cultural foundation for new wine lovers in years to come. This conversation gave me not only practical ideas and resources, but hope that my individual actions are important to a better future.

Resource Links:

Porto Protocol

Bottle Reuse Guide

Glass Recycling Foundation (US recycling map)