Beyond Organic Wine Deborah Parker Wong - Slow Wine USA & Wine’s Ecological Context
My guest for this episode is Deborah Parker Wong – the co-editor, with Pam Strayer, of Slow Wine USA.
Centralas, my winery, is honored to be listed in the Slow Wine guide. I say honored, because Slow Wine is unique in the entire realm of wine scoring or recommendation guides in that it takes into account the ecological context of the wine that they recommend.
All other wine scoring and recommendation guides reflect the problem that plagues wine in general – that is the problem of disconnection. When wine reviewers and guides give a 100 point score to a wine, what does that tell you about the way that the fruit was grown? What does it tell you about the way that winery conducts it business, treats its employees, manages its land, or interacts with its community? It tells you nothing about these things. Yet aren’t these things vitally important to the “greatness” of a wine? Can a wine be great if it tastes amazing yet poisons children in nearby schools? And I use this example of poisoning children because it is an actual example from both Napa and Bordeaux. Our disconnection from the context of wine is the only reason we revere 100 point scores that are based on the flavor of a wine, rather than think them ridiculous.
I tried to point this out at one point by creating the Ecological Wine Score, as a comprehensive, yet satirical take on giving a wine a score that is actually meaningful, and all that would have to be considered. You can see this at EcologicalWineScore.com
Slow Wine and the Slow Wine Snail of Approval reconnect wine to it context in a human community and living ecosystem, and Deborah walks us through how it does this. We talk about the Slow Wine Manifesto, which I’ll make available on the episode page at OrganicWinePodcast.com, and we talk about the research that is required to get behind some of the green façade that wineries rely on, and understand the complex practices that no one certification can capture. So much more goes into a wine than just its sensory evaluation or a biodynamic certification.
Just for fun we talk about Drops of God which we don’t spoil if you haven’t seen it, and we talk about how the common idea of wine – you know, the Euro-centric monoculture that has been spread around the globe through capitalist imperialism – is actually not going down so well among young folks. Crazy, right?
A big thanks to Deborah for this fun and engaging conversation, and for letting us know about Slow Wine.
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