Wine myths
Biodynamic viticulture is scientifically established
“Biodynamics works — the preparations and the lunar calendar are proven to improve the wine.”
Biodynamic vineyards often are well farmed, but trials that separate the specific biodynamic preparations and calendar from good organic practice have not demonstrated an effect attributable to them.
The full answer
Three separate things get bundled together, and separating them is most of the work. Biodynamic certification requires organic practice; it adds a set of prepared field and compost treatments; and it adds a planting and working calendar derived from lunar and planetary positions.
The organic layer has a well-established evidence base. It is the additional layers that are at issue.
The trials that have attempted to isolate the biodynamic preparations against an otherwise identical organic control have generally not found effects attributable to the preparations themselves. The proposed causal mechanism for the calendar has no accepted basis in physics or plant science.
This does not make biodynamic growers wrong about their own vineyards. Certification demands close, attentive, low-input farming with a great deal of time spent looking at vines, and there is every reason to think that is beneficial. The disputed part is the attribution.
WineHQ does not mock the practice and does not endorse the mechanism. Those are two different judgements and it holds both.
Biodynamic estates include some of the most conscientious farming anywhere, and the attention the system demands is real.
Why the belief persists
The wines are frequently excellent, which makes the attribution feel self-evident to the people making them.
A proposed mechanism that specialists actively disagree about. Publishing it means publishing the disagreement, not picking a side.
What would settle it: The dispute being resolved in the literature.
Sources
Sources consulted
- UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology — University of California, Davis
- INRAE — French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment — INRAE
- The Oxford Companion to Wine — Oxford University Press