We have bottled last month our first Riesling “made from organic”. We have been playing with Biodynamic grapes and winemaking over the past few years and we thought it was time to play with organic. We did have organic grapes but never made them into a commercial organic wine. We have certified the winery last summer, so we are now the only Washington Winery with an Organic Producer and a Biodynamic Producer certification. The organic winemaking is pretty simple and was really straightforward for us because we don’t really use many additives. We use only native yeasts (no commercial stuff), organic nutrients, no acidification nor sugar added and we do not use any heavy filtration material (just membrane filtration). I could not go the whole way and not add any non organic sulfites but we have stayed well below the 100ppm requirement for total sulfites (closer to 80ppm total in fact) so the wine is 99.84% Organic. Because we use non organic sulfites (note that yeasts produce organic sulfites naturally) we qualify for “made from organic grapes” and not for “Organic”. Interestingly this wine would qualify as “Organic”‘ if produced in Canada and many other country that have a waiver on non-organic sulfites (at least to a certain level).
The wine is made in an off dry style somewhere between our Dry and our Sweet Riesling. With 11% alcohol it is very refreshing and quite frankly as pure as it gets. Pick a bottle and comment back on what you think about the wine.
