Organic wines

[vc_row full_screen_section_height=”no”][vc_column][vc_column_text]If once the main question was choosing between a white or a red wine,
now the question is more and more often:
“choosing between a traditional or an organic wine?”

What until a few years ago was a marginal phenomenon has grown at such a rapid pace that it has become a global phenomenon of significant importance, not only on an economic level but also for its semantic significance.
Organic wines and their more “extreme” version, natural wines, owe part of their success to their positioning as wines that aim to shorten the distance between man and nature, presenting themselves as the key to a symbiotic relationship with the environment, which is increasingly needed today.
It is no coincidence that they are associated with terms such as "vitality" and "minimum distance", but also with "ethics" and "trust", as noted Eric Asimov, New York Times wine pen:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/dining/natural-raw-wine-fair.html?_r=1

Leaving aside for now natural wines which deserve a separate discussion, let's focus instead on organic wines and the data relating to surfaces, markets, consumption and consumer profile, but also any implications which are not exactly positive for the environment.

Let's start with a premise:
What is meant by organic wine?

A controlled and certified product, which complies with European regulations on the matter, where the use of synthetic products and herbicides is prohibited and a lower limit on the use of sulphites is foreseen than that permitted for conventional wine.
The data presented at the last Millésime Bio of Marseille:

https://www.millesime-bio.com/

the largest organic wine event in the world, now in its tenth edition and with over 900 exhibitors, portrays an increasingly organic Europe.
In 2015, growth stood at 11,7% compared to 2014, reaching 281 thousand hectares, equal to 8% of the entire European vineyard.
Leading the way is Spain with 90% of the European organic vineyards, equal to 95.591 hectares (or 9% of the national vineyards) concentrated mainly in the regions of Castilla-La Mancha, Murcia, Catalonia and Valencia. The second European nation in terms of surface area is Italy, with 83.642 hectares (or 10% of the vineyard surface) concentrated mainly in Sicily, Puglia and Tuscany.
The increase in Italy has been constant: between 2013 and 2014 there was a + 6,5 percent which in 2014 brought the extension of organic hectares to 47 thousand units, with over 25 thousand hectares in the conversion phase (the data for Italy are from 2014 and come from SINAB source).
Third is France, with 68.565 hectares (9% of the vineyard area), located mostly in Vaucluse, Gironde, Gard and Hérault. In a cascade, although with a clear gap, are Germany, Greece, Austria, Bulgaria, Portugal and Romania.
The Old Continent, as a whole, represents 85% of the world's organic vineyards, followed by China (6%) and the United States (5%).

The main markets, by value, are France, Germany, the United States, Italy, the UK and Austria. It is no coincidence that Vinitaly (and its business sense) has decided for some years now to dedicate an ad hoc section to organic wines, Vinitaly Bio, but also an area like ViViT, as well as the ad hoc award Wines Without Walls, with the latter opening to wines without sulphites or with a content lower than 40 mg/l.

The main destination markets are Germany, which already spent 2012 million euros on organic wine in 198, and which buys mainly from Spain, Italy and France. They are followed by the USA, whose imports in 2014 reached 165.800 hectoliters, for an expenditure of 121,3 million dollars (equal to 2,5% of total imports), and then Great Britain, where organic wine represents 2% of the wine market.
And Asia?
While in Japan, where knowledge of wine is on average high compared to the Asian panorama, something is starting to move and three quarters of imported organic wine comes from France, in China the attraction for this type of wine is still to come.

Why do consumers seek out organic wine and are willing to pay more on average than for a “normal” wine?

This is the question posed by a survey conducted by Ipsos for ViniSudBio.
The factors that emerge range from the naturalness of the product and its authenticity, for German consumers, to health and environmental respect for the Italian public where 43% of consumers believe that natural wines are of superior quality to conventional wine.
In Italy, always according to the same survey (read the .pdf document of the Ipsos survey), it turns out that 16,8% of Italians consumed organic wine at least once in 2015 (compared to a percentage of 11,6% in 2014 and 2% in 2013) and that organic wine represents approximately 2% of the total volume of wine consumed in Italy.
The consumption of organic wine in Italy is almost self-sufficient, with 99% of this type coming from Italy, and the purchase is made, unlike traditional wine, directly from the producer.

And if the organic trend promises to grow in the coming years, with important benefits for the local economy and employment, the question that arises spontaneously is equally unavoidable:
How eco-sustainable is a global vineyard cultivated entirely with copper and sulfur considering that copper is a heavy metal that accumulates in the soil year after year?

The issue, which is often passed over in silence, has led to the first concrete actions, with the progressive replacement of copper with plant extracts and seaweed.

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