Eco-friendly wines are better for the planet and taste better, too
Next time you’re looking for a tasty wine pairing, skip the reds, whites and rosés and just go for the green. An analysis of more than 74,000 wines found that those made with certified organic grapes got higher ratings from experts than those produced using conventional methods.
“I was surprised by this,” said study leader Magali Delmas, an environmental economist at UCLA’s Institute of Environment and Sustainability.
California produces 90 percent of the wine made in America and had 550,000 acres of vineyards last year. About 2 percent of them grew organic grapes, which are raised in ways that limit the use of synthetic pesticides and emphasize the importance of a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.
In grocery stores, “organic” is usually seen as synonymous with “higher quality.” Organic apples cost about 30 percent more, and organic milk carries a 72 percent markup. But when it comes to wine, an “organic” label is often a turn-off.
In a 2015 study that asked consumers to select a wine based on its label, organic options were chosen over conventional ones only for wines from a region believed to produce low-quality wine.
To get around this anti-organic bias, about two-thirds of the certified wineries in California opt not to display the organic label on their bottles, Delmas said. But experts see things differently. Delmas and her colleagues gathered reviews from Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate and Wine Enthusiast for tens of thousands of wines produced between 1998 and 2009. The wine came from 3,842 wineries and varied by region, age and type. Only 1 percent of the wineries in the sample were certified organic. Each publication performs blind tastings and assigns a score.
When researchers compared the scores of wines of similar vintages and varietals, they found that wines produced from certified organic grapes scored 4.1 points higher, on a 100-point scale, on average, than wines from conventional grapes.
There could be a biochemical explanation, Delmas said. Conventional grapegrowing practices use pesticides that can reduce the tiny microbes in soil. Vineyards that follow organic practices might be allowing more of the regional characteristics to get into their bottles.
A study published in June by the American Society for Microbiology suggested that these microbes can contribute to the traits of the region, soil and climate that help give each wine a unique taste.