Organic Practices Turn Out Green Wine

GEYSERVILLE, Calif. - Viticulturist Douglas Price breaks open an owl pellet, the matted brown material regurgitated post-meal by the big-eyed bird, and pulls out a curved strip of bone.

"Gopher jaw," he says happily.

Bad day for the ex-gopher, good news for Clos du Bois, which like many wineries is trying to subdue vineyard pests without chemicals in a quest for greener wine that is becoming increasingly popular in California.

"More and more wineries are backing away from chemicals," said Paul Dolan, president of Fetzer Vineyards, a strong proponent of organic grapes. "It's been really significant in the last couple of years."

Fetzer began going organic two decades ago, back when the natural approach was on the tie-dyed fringe of farming. Dolan can remember talking about environmental commitment to industry groups, "and I'm sure people thought I was smoking dope. I guess they couldn't relate to it."

But proponents kept plugging away and today about 2 percent, or 8,000 acres, of California vineyards are certified as organic, according to the California Certified Organic Farmers. That's about double what it was a decade ago, according to Jenny Broome, associate director of the University of California Sustainable Agriculture and Research Program.

While organically grown grapes have been embraced by some high-end winemakers as better quality fruit, organic wine has a less glowing reputation. To be labeled organic, the wine can't have sulfites added to prevent spoilage. That makes it a challenge to turn out a product with a reliable shelf life. There are good organic wines being made now, Broome said, but earlier misses left some people leery of the label.

Broome suspects more vineyards are going organic than are ready to boast about it. And quite a lot more, perhaps as many as one-third of the state's vineyards, are adopting an approach known as "sustainable farming," said Kent Daane, a UC Davis agriculture adviser.

While organic means forgoing artificial chemicals, sustainable farming is an umbrella term for a number of environmentally friendly practices.

So, growers who once sprayed herbicides to keep the narrow corridors between vines bare and brown now plant cover crops that crowd out weeds and attract "good" insects to feed on the pesky ones.