Grape farmer's dilemma

With the soggy news coming out of northern Italy, not to mention much of France, I have to wonder about the "biologic" or organic or biodynamic or other subvarieties of grape farmers in such a wet season.

Note that I use the term "grape farmers."  Wine producers -- the kind who actually own and work their bits of land -- are farmers, after all, and face the same challenges and vagaries as the men who grow wheat or cabbages.  They're at the mercy of the weather, which has its profound effects on the health of the plants and the fruit that they produce, whatever the crop.  This is obvious, but in so much wine writing and criticism there is little or no attention to the problems faced by farmers. Too often wine articles and reviews take an aesthetic, stylistic or market-oriented view that simply ignores the physical conditions in which the grapes must ripen.

Allora.

To my point: When I hear "biologic," minimal-interventionist grape farmers, the type who proclaim that wine is made in the vineyard, not in the cellar -- say that mildew and funguses have hit their vines, I have to worry what this means in agricultural terms.  A big hit of "industrial" fungicides?  The dreaded "chemical" pesticides that the purist crowd thinks are the Antichrist?  A degradation of the environment in order to save the crop, and their own livelihood? 

I don't believe there can be easy answers to these questions.  During a wretched season, it's one thing not to declare a vintage or not to bottle the highest-denominated cru of the vineyard.  It's quite another to declare the crop a complete loss and take a huge financial body blow.

As much as I've come to appreciate, even to prefer, minimally manipulated wines, I'm no organic/biodynamic fundamentalist.  Grape farmers should do what they must in order to make an acceptable wine, or to sell grapes to co-ops or bulk producers, especially if otherwise they would suffer terribly.  After all, a great many of the grape farmers I meet are small family operations, often deeply in debt in their bid to invest in better vines, better equipment, more land.  For them as for any other kind of farmer, each growing season presents its own challenges, and everybody faces a terrible season at least once every few years.  Better they should "compromise" their stance and save the crop than die nobly but in vain.

That's my POV.  Possibly all wrong.  What do you think?

Vineyard photo purloined from Tom Wark's Fermentation

Comments

[Pat]

If there were fewer people in this world to feed, we could all farm organically and we wouldn't need to worry so much about producing cheap food(and drink). But we have created an economy of scale and we choose between small producers of higher quality and large scale mass production. Not saying good or bad, just the way that it is. In a bad harvest year, everyone gets hurt, some more then others.

[th]

Pat, you are so right about it's being the way it is. Shouting about right and wrong is pointless and childish. So many people take these extreme positions and it all becomes a jihad. It's enough to turn people off wine.