Who doesn’t love dried fruits and vegetables? There’s the extra sweetness and concentrated flavor. They can be eaten “as is” or reconstituted with water. They’re lightweight—easy to carry to class, to work or even around the world. And don’t forget their environmental friendliness: they can be stored nearly forever without refrigeration, they don’t need to be cooked to be enjoyed and, unlike so many other foods, they don’t come wrapped in excessive packaging (especially if you make them yourself).
Under the right conditions in the right climate, certain foods dehydrate naturally. But you can build your own food dehydrator to create favorable conditions wherever you are with the free plans below.
Raw vegans have a special appreciation because they believe, and scientific investigation bears out, that produce heated to no higher temperature than the sun would, retains its nutritional integrity and life force.
However, raw-fooders aren’t the only people who enjoy using food dehydrators. Backpackers make lightweight soups, homesteaders make winter seasoning blends, naturalists dehydrate healing herbs, and some dads make mean all-fruit roll-ups.
There are many food dehydrators on the market, but by constructing one yourself, you can build it to your size specifications and make it completely off-grid.
If you like a lot of dried food, or like giving it away to friends, you should consider building a roof dehydrator. It’s fun to assemble, easy to use, and is powered directly by the sun and wind (which means no waste of energy and no increase in utility bills!).
A rooftop food dehydrator works by using the color black to draw in the sun’s heat through a clear barrier. The heat then warms the air, which rises and is directed through screens with food on them.
If you are a true DIYer and have a set of tools to tinker with, go for the hardcore solar-food dehydrator like the one pictured. For the really hardcore, the rawer than raw, the useful object recyclers: why not use all reused or compostable materials?
My solar dehydrator, for example, is on a rooftop in Hollywood, dehydrating nine months of the year, so the sun is providing a generous power supply. Here are some tips to build your own:
The above concept can be used as a guide to concept your own customized dehydrator. This is a pretty simple design which should be transparent from the photos. You will need the usual hinges and screws for attaching. If you have tools and even limited experience building things, it shouldn’t be hard. Proceed as you would with other conceptual designs and base the dimensions of the box and cover on what is available on your rooftop space—and how much dried food you want to produce.
Certainly, you don’t have to build a solar dehydrator as big as mine. You can find plans below for a small, easy solar dehydrator that can be built in a few hours for less than $10. Tailor the plans to fit your specific climate, space and food needs. But do build one.
I mean, how cool would it be to send your child to school with a luscious whole dehydrated banana in her lunch box? How about some date-sweetened “buckwheaties” with hemp-seed milk for breakfast cereal? Or you might want a work snack of apple slices spread with sun-warmed coconut butter. It’s easy to replace potato chips with a more mineral-packed variety, and if those kale chips were dehydrated in your personally built, solar food dehydrator made from recycled material, what could be greener about your late-nite snacks?
I don’t burn petroleum in my car for fuel, so why would I burn it in my home for light?
After extensive research into the benefits and environmental impact of my non-petroleum candle enthusiasm, and after some actual natural-wax burn comparisons, I personally switched to a combination of local farmers market beeswax candles and palm-wax candles from Strega Moon, who actually upped their company’s integrity with me tenfold by enthusiastically agreeing to ship my palm candles in all-paper/non-petro packaging (sometimes you just have to ask and hope that when enough people do, your special request will become the standard).
Over the last year and a half or so of burning these clean-wax candles, I haven’t wanted to throw the unburnt, leftover wax into the landfill, when it’s perfectly good candle-making material. So I contacted Strega Moon again just to ask if Lois had any advice for a novice candle maker. Can you believe that the company owner actually mailed me wick and wick tabs to start me off? Now that’s the true freedom of information.
Initially, I had the equivalent of one plastic grocery bag full of saved wax. It made 36 votives and two pillars, was a ton of fun to make and saved me a load of cash (about $75). I have poured candles from saved wax several times since and let me tell you: the light given off by a candle you poured yourself is a very magical light indeed.
How to Make Veg Wax Candles at Home
Or is that solidarity?
All candles are one candle. All light is one light. When you use one candle to light another, does the first flame diminish in any way? All light is one light. And so it is with love, as well.
Allow your candles to cool/harden for at least 24 hours. They may seem ready early. Resist the urge. And then share your light.
In parts one and two of this series on candles, we compared the production methods and safety of non-petroleum candle waxes andcontrasted their quality and price in real-time burn tests. Here I would like to offer you some vital criteria that you can judge your candles against in order to assure you are enjoying the healthiest and most eco-friendly burn available.
Ever notice a soot ring around the lip of your candle container? This is an indication of chemical fragrances, toxic wax, metal core wicks or a combination of all three. In any case, soot is not good. Metal-core wicks were once widely used in candles because cotton wicks can fall over into the wax during the burn. Unfortunately, “burning four metal-wick candles for only two hours can result in airborne lead concentrations that pose a threat to human health,” according to Jerome O. Nriagu, Ph.D., environmental chemistry professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Lead poisoning can cause internal organ damage, behavioral changes and, in extreme cases, coma and death. Children are especially susceptible to lead poisoning.
Many domestic candle manufacturers have transitioned to cotton wicks, but I still recommend asking your candle pourer what type of wick they use. The only acceptable answers are 100% cotton or 100% hemp. If your candle manufacturer is too big to get an answer from, they should no longer be your source for candles.
Purchasing unscented and un-dyed candles will help you avoid soot and toxins caused by additives. Some candle pourers use exclusively organic essential oils to scent their candles. “Fragrance oils” are not the same as essential oils, so make sure to ask. Should you prefer unscented and un-dyed candles, you can still customize your scent experience with every burn at home by adding five drops of your desired essential oil into the melted wax every two hours.
The final vital concern I have when purchasing candles is the environmental impact of how they get to me. Locally poured and sold candles, such as those at my farmers market, are ideal. No shipping, no packaging and a bright smile between two very real people during every candle exchange—it doesn’t get much better than that!
There are small businesses out there, however, that behave as if they were at your local farmers market, like Strega Moon. I have found them available to answer questions, share their wealth of information and even listen to packaging requests. Several years ago I contacted Lois of Strega Moon asking if my petroleum-free candles could be shipped in petroleum-free packaging. She not only went out of her way to wrap each candle in paper, but over the years, she has even fulfilled my request for reused newsprint as the wrapping (I reuse the packing newsprint in my kitchen vermicompost bin). A business relationship like this leaves a warm place in both the customer’s hearth and heart.
Candles not only save electricity, but they warm and beautify the home. It seems ironic to me that we’ve gotten ourselves into a world where we have to weed through so much misinformation to make sure something as simple as the candles we burn are not harming our children or the rain forest. The good news is, the information is out there—and I’m here to summarize and make it easy for you, the reader, to make an educated consumer choice. Heck, someday you might just feel like taking control and pouring some candles with your own two hands. (Next blog entry, I’ll teach you how to do exactly that.) Developing a relationship intellectually as well as physically with anything in your life can only make the emotional impact of its actual experience fuller.
I’m a thorough investigator. I understand that although animal ethics, environmental awareness and health consciousness influence my consumer decisions, so do quality and price. Many people will still see that paraffin candle at the 99-cent store and think it’s a deal too good to pass up. After performing a side-by-side votive-candle burn test myself, however, I’m not convinced that paraffin’s low price tag makes it the best value after all.
Burn, Baby, Burn I compared five votive candles in a side-by-side burn test from start to finish. Each votive was housed in an identical glass votive cup. I was baffled at the variance in burn times.
Strega Moon’s palm-wax votive candle burned an outstanding 20 hours! At $1.50 each, that means each burn hour costs less than seven cents. The hand-poured, local farmers market beeswax candle burned an impressive 15 hours (10 cents per hour). Whole Foods’ beeswax votive burned 13.5 hours (22 cents per hour). The farmers market soy votive burned a mere 11 hours (14 cents per hour). Walgreen’s paraffin candle burned a disappointing five hours (12 cents per hour).
The best values according to this burn test are the palm and beeswax candles. Of course, candle making is an art and high-quality manufacturers will indeed produce a longer-lived flame. The burn duration affected the final cost per hour of the votive, but of course so did the initial price. To keep the cost of your non-petroleum candles low, purchase beeswax or palm wax in bulk from a high-quality manufacturer and cut out as many middlemen as possible by buying direct from the candle pourer or local farmers market.
Learn, Baby, Learn Why waste your time purchasing eco-friendly candles if you are going to waste their time? I’ve learned that proper burning can extend burn times by as much as three, ten or even 15 hours for the same candle.
The wax of a well-made and properly burned candle should uniformly melt all the way to the perimeter of the candle until the flame goes out, with very little residual or no wax to save—no drips, no leftovers. Here’s how:
Trim candle wick to 1/4.” Not 1/2″, not 1/8″—1/4.”
On the first and every lighting, allow the candle to burn long enough to melt the wax all the way to the perimeter of the candle. If, after three hours, the wax does not melt to the perimeter, it was a poorly made candle—purchase future candles from a different maker.
Don’t blow out your candles; use a candle extinguisher to put them out. This will instantly suffocate the candle, keeping the wax drawn up through the wick, rather than allowing it to smolder and burn. It is the wick’s wax that is burning off; we want that for the next light. If the wick is waxless, it has to draw up wax from the candle first and saturate the wick once again—that’s a lot of wasted wax. Requiring wax in the wick means less to burn on the candle, resulting in a smaller melt diameter and therefore a candle that is burning wax from inside its circumference. This leaves oodles of unmelted wax at the end of the burn and greatly reduces your candle’s potential burn time.
For safety, extinguish your candle its final time (when it’s about to be spent) when there is 1/8″ of wax left. This is for the sake of safety, ritual and taste. Final extinguishing with just a bit of wax left keeps the candle container heat from charring whatever table, shelf, scarf or doily upon which it is placed. Early final extinguishing also keeps the metal wick tab from getting too hot and catching the paper sticker on the bottom of store-purchased candles from igniting. We’ve all seen it. Tacky and a little dangerous. Solution: early final extinguishing.
A deep respect for my health led me on this quest for the cleanest candle. But cleanliness does not stop at my personal air quality. I’ve learned that farming and manufacture methods affect my candle karma, as do the efficiency and quality of the candle itself. Next week I’ll share some other vital ways you can keep the non-electric lighting of your home eco-conscious and healthy.
We all know petro-plastic has toxic implications, which is precisely why I first reduce, and then recycle all of the plastic with which I come into contact. I drink all of my water from glass bottles. Heck, I even drive my car on vegetable oil instead of petroleum fuel. If I am willing to go this far to become a conscious petroleum consumer, then why would I still be burning petroleum-based candles right in my own living room at home?
Paraffin is a byproduct of the petroleum refining process. This dark-gray sludge is further treated with toxic chemicals to bleach, color and scent it. Then it is sent off to well-intentioned consumers wanting to light their homes “naturally.” And don’t we all just love the cozy smell of vanilla candles? Well, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) air-chamber analysis has revealed “these neurotoxins and carcinogenic compounds in significant quantity in a random group of over 30 candles tested: acetone, benzene, butane, ethylbenzene, styrene, phenol and lead,” to name a few. That vanilla pillar doesn’t smell so good any more, does it?
The good news is, there are many alternative wax candles out there—including palm, soy and beeswax—that when burned will not release carcinogens into the air. Let me give you the lowdown on these non-petroleum waxes so you can make an educated decision for your electricity-free home lighting. Not all non-petroleum waxes are created equal:
Soy Wax Soy wax comes from a notorious, genetically modified crop saturated with pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals. The soy bean does not want to become wax too easily, so the oil is processed with hydrogen and nickel to hydrogenate the oil and turn it into a solid. The wax is still quite soft after all this processing and will not form pillar candles easily. If you own a soy pillar, it might have been combined with another wax—most likely paraffin. Also, soy wax candle products tend to be heavily colored and fragranced; it is hard to find a scent-free, unbleached soy candle. Although I consider soy wax a vegetable wax, I personally do not consider it natural.
Palm Oil Wax Palm oil is not genetically modified, is carcinogen-free and is far easier to liberate into a waxy substance than soy. Palm oil wax is produced like most essential oils: the fruit berries are pressed for oil, which is then distilled. Unfortunately, between the health-and-beauty and health-food industries, palm oil has become in such high demand that Sinar Mas and United Plantations (suppliers to Nestlé and Unilever) are clearing Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s rain forests at a rate that has reduced the populations of endangered wildlife, such as the Indonesian orangutan, by as much as 50% in recent years—all so they can plant more commercial palm fields.
The palm tree grows native in western Africa and mostly on small, family farms. It is currently more sustainable to source palm wax from western African locations; however with enough interest, I personally suspect that the same environmental catastrophe is likely to happen in Africa as it has in Southeast Asia. Palm wax is often bleached and deodorized before reaching a candle pourer, who may or may not use synthetic fragrances and dyes.
Beeswax Beeswax is a no-brainer. It is the original wax. It looks like wax when it is formed and requires next-to-no processing to place a wick in the center of it for burning. I questioned a beeswax candlemaker about what processing is done to the wax. Her response: “We heat the capping so the honey and wax separate (the wax floats to the top). We drain the honey and then drain the wax. It hardens as usable wax. Later I put it in my wax melter. When liquid, I pour it into dipping pots and start dipping candles. The answer is nothing is done to the wax but heat.”
The production of beeswax does not harm the environment and happens locally almost anywhere in the United States. Although beekeeping is normally a careful and sustainable art, some vegans feel it is unnatural to interfere with bees’ lives and choose to exclude bee products from their lifestyle. Beeswax candles are most often unscented (because beeswax smells so luscious as is!) and are rarely dyed.
These are the ethical, environmental and health impacts of the production and use of non-petroleum candle waxes. These criteria have become the basis of my consumer purchase decisions recently. But they aren’t everything. Next week I will discuss the other factors that make one candle a cleaner burn on the consciousness.
I’m not saving the world. I don’t want that responsibility. And honestly, I don’t think the world needs my saving anyway. That would imply that I thought I had the “right” answers and we all know what kind of trouble righteousness gets people, governments and religions into. Plus, I kind of like my world. Or at least I’m choosing to like my world. I mean,my experience of this world is entirely what my life reduces to and I see no point in sitting around complaining or conspiracy propagating or immersing my consciousness in avoiding things when I can surround myself with ideas that I am instead striving for.
I use rechargeable batteries. No, I’m not saving the world. There are theaters I perform at that replace two mercury AA batteries in each performers’ mic pack every night, after only two hours of use because they can’t risk a mic fizzling out the next night on stage. My battery consumption at home doesn’t even register on the environmental pollution scale compared to that. Thank goodness I’m not trying to save the world here. I just wanna strive towards a lifestyle that leaves me feeling empowered.
I use rechargeable batteries, but get this—I have a personal solar battery charger to recharge them with. That’s right, I just strut up onto my Hollywood rooftop and place this affordable little box out in the sunshine and voilà—three hours later, those two AAs are ready to go. I get a really good feeling turning up my stereo’s volume now knowing the sunshine is powering this remote control. Heck, my solar-powered battery charger charges different-sized batteries like AAAs, too. So every time I hear my car alarm beep on or off, I know the sunshine is the motivating force behind that, too.
Sure, the first thing I had to do was use up all my old mercury-filled batteries and put in a lot of effort trying to find a hazardous-waste recycling facility in Los Angeles to deliver them to. Then I reconsidered needing so many things controlled by batteries—I mean, when my bicycle head and tail lights can run off of my pedal’s friction, why use batteries at all, you know?
Then I had to make the investment in 12 rechargeable AA batteries and four AAAs—your world may have different needs. And it did take about four hours of compare and contrast Internet research to locate the solar battery charger that was right for me. But all in all, the money investment has paid itself back in only a few solar charges. And the time investment was well worth the joy I get every time I throw what I see as a little concentrated sun-power capsule into my sleep-noise machine. I feel like a little kid going, “How does it do it?” I imagine this experience would be invaluable for parents with children.
During my rechargeable battery and solar-powered charger research, I discovered that there are indeed new mercury-free batteries being marketed as green. To that I say thank you, but buyer be conscious: Why buy any single-use item when you could be using the same item over and over again? I hereby banish the word “disposable” from my vocabulary!
I also discovered that there are battery chargers with a 12V car adaptor so people can literally charge their batteries on the excess electricity their car’s alternator produces during travel. I actually charge my cellphone and iPod exclusively in my car. There is no reason to power these personal electronics from the grid when you can leave them in your car during your hour at the farmers market, or at work or overnight if you can stay off the phone that long. When you come back out, you are ready to jam those MP3s as the soundtrack for another week of motivational jogging.
I don’t really know how to describe being “in the system,” but I do know what it feels like to be “out of the system.” Growing your own organic food and composting the food scraps is out of the system. Purchasing thrift clothing and sourcing Freecycle furniture, then gifting it away when you are through, is out of the system. And cradle-to-cradle energy sourcing via solar power, vegetable-oil fuels and excess energy from your own dang cars is definitely out of the system. I’m not living outside certain systems because I’m saving the world. I’m living here because it’s a fun place to be. Because I meet really neat people who enrich my life. And because I can die with integrity built from a lifetime of following my dreams and living my ideals.
The world does not need saving. But it does need integrity.
Some select the foods they eat solely on the basis of taste. Some are trying to affect their body’s health or shape. Others make food choices based purely on convenience. Children often don’t get to choose at all; they eat what they are given by the adults in their lives. The reasons for food selection are as numerous as the stars in the sky. One thing is certain: to those of us living in the United States, at least, it usually is a choice.
As I’ve researched and written about eco-conscious wines, including organic, sustainable, biodynamic and Fish Friendly Farming® (FFF) certified vintages, I’ve become increasingly aware that there is a lot of good wine out there—oh, blessed be, there is so much good wine! And with this abundance of exceptional fermented libation at my finger tips, especially here in California, I have had the opportunity to educate myself on more than just the nose and flavors in a bottle. I have learned as well about the growing practices, community outreach, ecological philosophies and energy-production sources inside the bottles I sip. And I have discovered a common-sense truth: the wine tastes better when it is eco-consciously produced.
There are numerous factors to consider in selecting a fine wine—including whether or not it was produced in an environmentally-friendly manner and if it has been certified as such. The national organic farming certification rewards growing practices. The international biodynamic farming certification focuses on growing practices as well as the laws of nature’s spirituality. The regional sustainable certification encourages improvements in many areas, touching on the above as well as energy resources, waste-reduction, working conditions and community responsibility. And the FFF certification offers another angle on sustainability, this time addressing land management of the farm as a whole. All of these factors influence my wine choices.
Of the many reasons to choose one food or wine over another, flavor is certainly at the top of the list. But when you discover that your favorite winery also operates on solar power, fertilizes through companion planting, bars chemical insecticides and fungicides, and constructs its roads to assure the health of native wildlife, a new level of satisfaction comes into play. My food and drink choices are not based only on (rightly so) selfish pursuits of flavor, accessibility and body image. My choices—and they are choices—encompass ecology, community, sustainability and ethics as well. It’s good to know that one does not exclude the others, but rather enhances them. Indeed, in my estimation the best wines on Earth are those that are eco-consciously produced!
I would be remiss in discussing certified wines if I did not mention a most integral certification found regionally in northern California: Fish Friendly Farming® (FFF). TheFFF certification offers another angle on sustainability, this time addressing land management of the farm as a whole. FFF is not so much concerned about the wine in the bottle, but the land the business is sitting on.
I grew up in a southern Michigan farm town with a grandfather who owns 130 acres of land. He’s planted mainly soy and corn, although in recent years he’s received government subsidies to not plant or been paid to replant native trees. My grandfather is a farmer, not a raw-vegan pioneer. He is a man who has a relationship with the land, not a set of visionary environmental ideals. And I know—because I am his granddaughter—that the burying of quartz crystal dust in cow horns of biodynamic protocol, which I value so much, would not hit the top of his hard-work farming priority list. But he watches the fish that lay eggs in his creeks, he notices erosion taking fields away, and he wants to live in accordance with nature—that with which he interacts daily—as much as he can. It is my opinion that the FFF is a farmer’s certification, based on the kind of land management that my grandfather would understand and value, and that I wish every vineyard and farm in northern California followed.
The FFF, drafted in 1999 in Santa Rosa, is available in the counties of Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa and Solano. Grape growers voluntarily enroll in the program’s workshops, where they learn about creating and sustaining environmental quality and habitat on private land. Attending the workshops is not a guarantee of certification; the farmer must complete a Farm Conservation Plan that includes an inventory of present land, resources and practices as well as an improvement proposal. The areas of focus are soil conservation, creek networks, water conservation, limited chemical use, restoring riparian corridors, new vineyard design and something called Beneficial Management Practices, which is specifically the protection and enhancement of salmon and trout habitat—the basis of the certification’s Fish Friendly Farming name.
Salmon and trout are indicator species, meaning they are very sensitive to human-induced environmental impacts—kinda like the canary with CO2. If water quality, temperature and aquatic food webs change, the salmonids’ population will decrease giving attentive humans an early notification of the overall health of the ecology. So it stands to reason, and I’m sure my grandfather would agree: Farming that keeps the salmon and trout in the rivers happy is farming that keeps everyone happy.
After the farmer has developed his/her conservation plan, the FFF staff present the plan to a team with representatives from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the County Agricultural Commissioner for onsite review and timeline implementation. The farmer then takes responsibility to implement the plan, sometimes sharing major project expenses, but funding at least 75% directly. Extensive monitoring is done, including photo-documentation. Recertification is required in five to seven years to ensure the plan was implemented and to update it if needed. Following the FFFprogram ensures compliance with the federal Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act as well as state pesticide laws. Surely farmers can go further than these minimum standards in their self-directed practices, too.
Some recent FFF projects include the return of storm-scoured gravel from creeks, where it was causing flooding, back to feeder rivers where salmon rely on the gravel for natural habitat. Another recent project assisted Michel-Chlumberger Winery to reduce bank erosion by removing invasive, Pierce’s Disease host plants and re-vegetating the corridor with native plants. This culminated with the release of steelhead trout juveniles by Healdsburg Elementary School students. And finally, funded by the California State Water Resources Control Board, FFF worked with Navarro Vineyards to implement the demonstration of soil control on a vineyard road originally generating fine sediment runoff into nearby creeks. By out-sloping and installing rolling dips, this project disperses erosive flow. It is these seemingly simple things that the organic, biodynamic and sustainable certifications do not handle, yet truly do make a difference in the long-term land management of a vineyard and farm.
With that in mind, I savor even more the taste of my wine from Husch, Preston, Bonterra, Quintessa, Volker, Artesa, Sinskey and Phelps—just a few of the 70 certified vineyards constituting more than 100,000 acres enrolled in the FFF program.
The “sustainable” wine certification is vital in the larger picture of what eco-conscious winemaking is all about. Yet this certification is by far the least organized internationally—and the most intangible to the wine aficionado.
While both the “organic” and “biodynamic”wine certifications concentrate on soil and plants (the former on what we don’t do to them and the latter on what we do), the sustainable wine certification has a wider focus. It evaluates not only a winery’s ecological sustainability, but also its social sustainability.
With certification points for business practices, energy efficiency, social responsibility, clean water management and more, the sustainable certification is a flexible point system that may mean one thing to one winery and something else entirely to another. But what it does mean to all of its certified vintners is that they are making a notable and quantifiable effort to improve culture, environment and commerce through their business model.
For example, Ampelos Cellars of Lompoc, CA, is recognized with the Sustainability in Practice (SIP™) Sustainable Vineyard Certification, for powering their home and vineyard with 100% solar power, offering English as a Second Language classes to employees and shipping private wine sales in 100% recycled newspaper pulp inserts. In fact, Ampelos Cellars is the only vineyard I know of that is certified organic, biodynamic and sustainable.
Agencies accrediting the sustainable wine certification are mostly regional, like California’s Sustainability in Practice (SIP™) and Napa Green, and Oregon’s Low Input Viticulture and Enology (LIVE). They are born of a desire for recognition and encouragement within a wine-producing community—with the added bonus to tasters that something, even if we are unclear as to exactly what, is being done by our winemakers to practice sustainable business.
After a conversation about a city notice we received regarding how the mandated environmental cleanup of the local dry cleaner would impact our immediate air quality, my wonderful next-door neighbor said to me, “You are obsessive about health.” To which I responded, “No, just educated.”
I don’t sit up at night devising ways to restructure my drinking water or worrying that the city dogs might have peed on my tomato plants. But I do find enthralling the topic of how my well-being can be enhanced. I mean, is there any more riveting a subject? How can my life get even better? How can I love myself more? How can I take better care of the people around me?
I wish it were all altruistic, but let’s face it— like anyone else, I just wanna feel good. I wish to be healthy and happy and free. I wish to laugh a lot and make love often. So when I gather information and experience on winegrowing and business practices, it’s not to avoid something “bad” finding its way into my world, but to get a kick out of focusing my time and energy on things that make me feel better. Things that keep my mind healthfully entertained. Things that fill my wine with more than just a vanilla melon nose and a quick, mineral finish.
My education allows me to get more out of wine—and out of life. Of course, in the end, it’s what I do with my education that matters. I feel the only way I can make conscious choices is to have an education. After all, I can eat/drink/think/do anything I want. But I choose to do it a way that feels good.
Another label the green consumer can look for when choosing a wine is the vineyard’s biodynamic certification. Worldwide, there are more than 450 certified biodynamic wine producers and, from my experience, that number is rapidly growing.
The Demeter Association is the singularly recognized international biodynamic certifying body. Farms seeking the Demeter biodynamic certification must meet the same three-year waiting period as those certified organic by the National Organic Program.
Both the organic and biodynamic certifications regulate mainly soil and plants. While organic growing and certification focuses on what farmers do not use in production, biodynamics encompasses what they do use. I see the difference between organic and biodynamic as akin to that between vegetarian and raw vegan. Vegetarians do not eat dead animals. Raw vegans do eat living produce. Yes, raw vegans are also vegetarians, and so most biodynamic farms are also organic. In fact, Demeter offers—through its sister company Stellar Certification Services—a free organic certification to those qualifying for its biodynamic certification.
Biodynamic farming practices and certifications are based in the spiritual/practical philosophy of Rudolph Steiner, called anthroposophy, which integrates the ecological and energetic, as well as spiritual, in nature. The biodynamic philosophy dates back to 1924 and involves managing the farm as a living organism—something that could ideally sustain itself. Through asking questions and reading, I have come to understand biodynamics as a growing practice that unifies the raw, spiritual, environmental and occult. And to me, these practices are more than evident in the finished wine.
An oversimplification of some biodynamic farming practices, in addition to meeting and often exceeding organic standards, is:
During a tasting of some of the most exceptional whites on the central California coast, our pourer at Demetria Estate in Los Olivos, CA, described how he had brought in children from the local Waldorf school to dance amongst their vines one morning. Now, this surely isn’t part of the certification process, but is right in line with the biodynamic philosophy.
As is the case with organic wines, one will be hard-pressed to locate a biodynamically certified wine, but will find biodynamically certified vineyards. This is my experience, at least. And as discussed in Part 2 of this series, reading the wine’s label, asking for certification details, and assuring that the wine you are drinking was produced from the estate’s vineyard are helpful when attempting to actually taste biodynamically grown wines.
As a raw vegan, I am delighted that the wine world, in farming practices, is so far ahead of the food world. I can shop for organically grown produce at the farmers market and health-food stores. But never are my fruits and veggies labeled biodynamic. In wine country, however, biodynamic farming is becoming more and more prevalent as vintners discover that their crops are resilient to pests and disease, and their final product is of a higher quality. In fact, when Fortune conducted a blind tasting of 10 pairs of biodynamic vs. conventionally made wines, judged by seven wine experts including a head sommelier and a Master of Wine, nine of the biodynamic wines were judged superior to their conventional counterparts.