Biodynamics in the wine bottle: is supenaturalism becoming the new worldwide fad in winemaking? Here is an examination of the biodynamic phenomenon, its origins, and its purported efficacy

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Have you visited a wine store recently? Something strange is afoot. The new fad in the vineyards is a practice called "biodynamic (BD) farming": it's big and getting noticed in the bottle. Newspaper ads now extol biodynamically grown wine next to organic wines for sale in stores. Trade and industry groups organize tastings of exclusively biodynamic wines. And dozens of wineries around the world have been certified biodynamic by the umbrella "Demeter" certification bodies. These include famous names such as France's Zind-Humbrecht, Domaine Leroy, Coulee de Serrant, Chateau La Tour Figeac, Domaine Huet, and Chapoutier, as well as California's Benziger and Fetzer. Indeed, according to the most complete published account of the practice so far, "Over 10 percent of France's certified organic vineyard area is now Biodynamic" (Waldin 2004, p. 111).

In addition, two of the world's most influential wine writers, Robert Parker and Jancis Robinson, have weighed in in favor of these wines. (1) Although both should be held in the highest regard for their integrity and knowledge of wine, without doubt, neither of them is in any way an expert on the biodynamic movement. They have, at times, expressed the desire to remain neutral. But, at other times, they show themselves all too ready to accept its pretensions.

Parker, arguably the most powerful and influential wine critic alive today, is a man whose yearly reviews help set the prices of each Bordeaux vintage. In his most recent book, he refers with clear affection to wineries that utilize biodynamic practices. For example, he extols Catherine and Sophie Armenier, owners of a Rhone Domaine, as "following the astrological/homeopathic writings of the famed German professor Rudolf Steiner" (Parker 2005, p. 380). In this context, it is perhaps no surprise that Parker has also publicly declared that he is himself applying biodynamic methods to part of the Beaux-Freres vineyard in Oregon that he owns along with his brother-in-law. (2)

England's Robinson is one of the leading wine essayist of her generation. She is one of the few Masters of Wine in the world, with an armful of publication credits including the Oxford Companion to Wine and the World Atlas of Wine, dozens of awards, and hundreds of articles. She also has published claims that BD works (Robinson 2005). (3) Confronted with a skeptical rejoinder, she responded, "If producers are happy with, if mystified by, the results--why not let them continue? Perhaps you could explain what harm they do." (4)

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She asks a fair question. To start with, what exactly is biodynamics? It is a method of organic agriculture admixed with some odd extras. These additional methods include taking into account cycles of the moon and relative positions of the zodiacal constellations when farming, as well as applying different sorts of homeopathic or esoteric "preparations" to the vineyard soil. These and other similar pretensions are set against a complex background cosmogony that makes the whole process not unlike a quasi-religious movement.

Steiner's Fancies

Biodynamics began with a series of lectures in June of 1924 by the Austrian occult philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Steiner had a vitalist vision of the universe in which "ethereal" qualities infuse raw matter in order to give it life; this distinguishes living things from mere amalgamations of chemicals, however complex. The potential conflict with modern biochemistry should be clear. At any rate, he saw his program reintroducing "spiritual" elements into farming. Indeed, his ideas were to create an entire crank "Spiritual Science" that would illuminate the connections between such spiritual properties as the "ethereal" or the "astral" and chemical elements like oxygen, sulphur, carbon, and nitrogen. (5) For example, "the ethereal moves with the help of sulphur along paths of oxygen," (Steiner 2004, p. 46). Needless to say, no experimentation was done to discover these "facts." Throughout, Steiner used his favored methodology: armchair philosophizing and guesswork, which in his case he considered quite literally clairvoyant.

His agricultural lectures included a number of concrete suggestions for so-called preparations to be added to the field or compost, many done with one eye on the astrological star-charts. According to the present-day Demeter certification bodies, a farm can be labeled biodynamic simply by virtue of being organic and adding the preparations in sufficient quantities (Waldin 2004, p. 73). Hence, it would be good to return to the original treatise to investigate the preparations, and their accompanying justification, to see what they are and why they are prescribed.

Steiner's agricultural lectures are, to put it mildly, not an easy read. They are marked by clear falsehoods, digressions, and odd fantasies. He recommends such techniques as combating parasites "by means of concentration, or the like" (Steiner 2004, p. 84). He says that certain insect pests are spontaneously created by "cosmic influences" (p. 115) and that eating potatoes "is one of the factors that have made men and animals materialistic" (p. 149). He tells us, "most of our illnesses arise" when our "astral body" is "connected more intensely with the physical (or with any one of its organs) than it should normally be" (pp. 116-17). In contrast, "in the true sense of the word a plant cannot be diseased"; plants only appear to be diseased when "Moon-influences in the soil ... become too strong" (pp. 117-18). He also describes baroque fantasies of a human history that spanned "epochs ... on the earth when such things were known and applied in the widest sense" (6) (p. 120). And on and on, ad nauseam. It is good to keep this material in the back of our minds when considering his forays into agriculture.