"Amigo Bob" Cantisano offers organic advice to dozens of wineries, including Honig, where he is pictured. His remedies rely on naturally fixing the cause of the problem rather than putting a chemical band-aid on it.
Spreading the Green GospelBy Jeff CoxWhen I went to work at Organic Gardening magazine in 1963, pretty much straight out of college, I stepped into an alternate universe. Rodale Press, which published the magazine, was a small business run by J.I. Rodale, a grandfatherly man from New York's Lower East Side whose faith in nature's health-giving energies was boundless. Yet in the public eye, he was lumped in with a slew of kooks, cranks and crackpots for his ideas about organic gardening and farming. He was vilified, dismissed and ridiculed.
It must have hurt him, but he never wavered in his belief that the source of all health begins with the health of the soil.
Through the decade of the 1970s, OG's circulation grew from 225,000 to 1.25 million, and much of its content provided increasing scientific backing for Rodale's notions. Although he never lived to see it - he died in 1971 while being interviewed on "The Dick Cavett Show" - he is now fully vindicated, and the organic method is seen as a much-desired antidote to environmentally damaging conventional agriculture.
Yet 25 or 30 years ago, even though Organic Gardening's circulation had quadrupled and the green philosophy was seeping into the mainstream, very few vineyards on California's North Coast were organic, and even fewer biodynamic. Europe had many natural, if not strictly organic, vineyards because they had descended from simpler times to the present, dragging time-honored techniques through the centuries along with them. Ancient Romans like Pliny, Columella and Varro, among others, recorded these enduring techniques in their writings - and a lot of what they described is still practiced today in places like Italy, Spain and Greece. But the organic method is rooted in the empirical results of agricultural science, not just the techniques of pre-industrial farming. The latest results of soil science, plant pathology, entomology and other disciplines contribute to the way organic farming and gardening is practiced today.
Wherever excellence is placed before profit, organic and biodynamic techniques seem poised to become the methods of choice in vineyards and wineries. The number of acres of organically farmed wine grapevines in California has tripled since 2004, according to California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), the state's largest organic certifying agency. Of the world's annual production of 30 billion liters of wine, about 600 million are now deemed organic or biodynamic, and that number is growing by 20 percent per year.
When chemical-based agriculture arrived in the late 19th century, most thought it was the salvation of farming. Simply sow the seeds, spread the right chemicals and harvest the results. But a few far-sighted folks thought this more convenient modern approach created more problems than it solved.
Among the protesters were the German metaphysician Rudolph Steiner, who in the early 1920s laid out the basic tenets of biodynamics (his agricultural techniques were organic, but his conception of a farm was metaphysical, including the earth, our moon, the planets with their moons, the sun and the infinite array of stars and galaxies), and British botanist Sir Albert Howard, who went to India to teach modern agriculture, but instead was taught by the locals about the relationship of healthy soil to healthy cattle, and eventually, healthy village people. Working at about the same time as Steiner, Sir Albert is considered the founder of the organic farming method.
His ideas took root in England when Lady Eve Balfour began the Soil Association, and in the United States when Rodale (who was a light switch manufacturer) had his mind switched on after reading Sir Albert's book, An Agricultural Testament. As Sir Albert had discovered, Rodale realized that health starts in the soil where plants are nurtured; animals that eat such plants are strengthened; and people who consume those healthy vegetables, grains, meats and wines are ultimately benefitted.
Organics, at its fundamental level, is all about the health of the body. Biodynamics, practiced in harmony with all of nature's energies and laws, casts a broader net, and includes the health of the spirit as well as the body. Both produce better, healthier, more flavorful food.
A half century of research, development and experimentation with Steiner's and Sir Albert's ideas were undertaken by a minority of disciples, so as the 1960s drew to a close and the 1970s dawned, organic and biodynamic systems were poised to become much more mainstream in all types of farming - including winegrowing.
These were the days of hippies returning to the land just as the general population was forming its environmental conscience. "Amigo Bob" Cantisano, was among those who got in touch with their earthier selves in the 1970s. He became involved in natural foods at many levels, including as the founder of a co-op and a wholesale distribution company, and eventually started two organic farms, the first on a parcel of land in the Sierra Foothills. He learned the organic method from the best teacher: the land. Nearly 40 years later, he's the go-to organic consultant for numerous food farmers and dozens of wineries, including Adelsheim, Calera, Frog's Leap, Honig, Morgan, Shafer, Staglin, Storybook Mountain, Tres Sabores and Turley.
Though I had left OG in the mid-1960s, I returned to it in 1970, eventually becoming its managing editor. By then, I was gardening at home and writing about my experiences for readers like Amigo Bob. On one occasion, I was reprimanded by OG editor Jerry Goldstein for leaving work at 3 p.m. each day. I defended myself by explaining there was no way I could write about gardening without doing it. And there was plenty to do. I built 13 raised beds four feet wide and two feet deep and combed through every inch of soil with my fingers. I planted black currants, red currants, gooseberries, bush cherries, apricots, apples, filberts and grapes - especially grapes. My two-acre property had a vineyard comprising 60 Chancellor vines for wine grapes, four vines of alden, one vine of aurora and one of canadice for eating out of hand. And it was all organic. I poured what I learned into story after OG story. I also started writing books. My first, From Vines to Wines (which is still in print), came from my Chancellor vineyard experiences and the wine I made from its fruit.
No doubt Amigo Bob learned by doing as well. His vineyard recommendations rely on fixing the cause of a problem by understanding nature rather than putting a chemical band-aid on it. For example, when Honig Vineyard & Winery was losing hundreds of vines per year to Pierce's disease, spread by blue-green sharpshooters, he recommended planting 16 specialized crops, including nitrogen-rich alfalfa, as a buffer between the vines and a nearby creek where the sharpshooters breed. The sharpshooter stayed in the buffer crops, which also attracted beneficial insects that prey on the sharpshooter. Bluebird and bat houses were installed to attract breeds that dine on sharpshooters, further reducing the number that made their way into the vines to next to nothing. The Honigs, who had to replant three times over 20 years, have been free of Pierce's disease in the 15 years since Amigo Bob implemented his natural solution. Though not an instant remedy, no chemicals contaminated the earth, the fruit or the resulting wine to achieve the needed result.
Jim Fetzer, then president of Fetzer Vineyards in Mendocino County, was one of Amigo Bob's early clients; he converted the property to organics in the late 1980s. Although there were already some smaller organic producers operating in the county, like Frey and Lolonis, Fetzer was among the largest Mendocino wineries to adopt the organic method in its vineyards. Though then-winemaker Paul Dolan was somewhat skeptical, Amigo Bob recalls that he was ultimately converted to organics by the superior quality of the resulting fruit. (Today Dolan owns an eponymously named winery in Mendocino County where he produces organic and biodynamic wines.) On the heels of going organic in the vineyard, the Fetzers next installed an extensive organic flower and food garden, and a wine and food center led by chef John Ash to showcase what organic food could achieve on the plate.
Developments at Fetzer Vineyards (now owned by Brown-Forman) attracted a lot of buzz. Free-spirited John Williams of Frog's Leap in Napa Valley visited in the late 1980s and became convinced that natural farming techniques could revive worn-out vines and produce better fruit. "I'm not out to save the world," he says today. "I'm out to make the best wine possible, and organics is a way to do that."
Another way is via sustainable practices, which are sort of like stepping stones that move a farm or vineyard toward organics. Tim Mondavi was one of the pioneers of sustainable vineyard techniques. In 1988, he called a meeting of local Napa Valley wine growers interested in adopting more benign vineyard practices. The discussion was a clarion call that would ultimately turn so many area vineyards organic. "We live in one of the most beautiful places on earth," Mondavi told the attendees, "and we've got to protect it." He went on to detail how sustainable and organic techniques could not only protect the soil, but could actually improve its structure, prevent erosion and promote a healthy diversity of plants and animals in the vineyard ecosystem.
Though Mondavi sowed greener ideas in a public forum, it may have been Doug Shafer who made old guard Napa growers take notice. Shafer Vineyards Hillside Select Cabernets were superstars - expensive, sought-after cult wines. In the late 1980s, again under the tutelage of Amigo Bob, Shafer turned to cover crops instead of herbicides and chemical fertilizers, and instituted other earth-friendly techniques, such as providing living spaces for predatory birds, flowering crops for bees and more.
In Europe, centuries-old, natural vineyard practices were largely in place until the post-WWII era, so a return to such remedies was readily embraced. Modern-day pioneers include Nicolas Joly, whose estate has been certified biodynamic since 1984. He has written three books (What Is Biodynamic Wine?, Wine from Sky to Earth and Biodynamic Wine Demystified) that are enlightening for their insight into why and how biodynamic viticulture makes sense.
Rhône Valley residents Michel Chapoutier and the Perrin clan have also made much headway with organic and biodynamic wines, as has Marc Kreydenweiss in Alsace. Kreydenweiss started transforming his vineyards from conventional to biodynamic in the late 1980s, and by 1991 was fully biodynamic. His world-renowned whites - Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris especially - display an excellent acid balance, which he attributes to biodynamic practices that reduce the amount of malic acid in relation to the amount of tartaric.
Here in the States, Benziger Family Winery started converting to biodynamic viticulture in 1994, becoming fully certified by 2000. Winery president Mike Benziger says he chose this path "because we had to do something to heal the property. We'd damaged our land by farming it conventionally. Our soils lost their life and collapsed. Vines lost their immune systems. We saw it in the wines - fermentations stuck, vintages were inconsistent."
Benziger attended a seminar led by Amigo Bob, then he went up to Lake County to visit Jim Fetzer and tour his 100 percent biodynamic Ceago Vineyards estate, which he founded in 2001 after he and his siblings sold their family winery. "I saw that this was the method that could heal the land," Benziger says simply.
Today there are no doubt thousands of winegrowers around the world like Benziger who are perpetuating the beneficial changes wrought by organics and biodynamics. But in California, Amigo Bob is still the guy leading the flock forward.
Sonoma-based Contributing Editor Jeff Cox is the author of From Vines to Wines, Cellaring Wine and the newly released Organic Cook's Bible.
