|
'Organic
food' is now a multi-million pound industry but the term seems to
many people to have almost lost all meaning. However 'biodynamic
wines' are the real deal. Organic to the nth degree, the people
involved believe that winemaking is out of touch with the rhythms of
nature and that growers should hark back to the simplest, purest and
most ancient growing techniques.
Those who subscribe to biodynamic
winemaking techniques can almost appear to be members of a bizarre
pagan cult so devoted are they to the somewhat strange traditional
methods used. However the upshot is that they create some of the best
and most-desired wines that have ever been produced in any era. To
give you an example, winemaking ruled by the moon's calendar may seem
quite literally like lunacy but the wines that are being produced are
proving quite simply peerless.
Growers have come to use
biodynamic systems for a variety of reasons. Some decided that it
can't be right to pump so many chemicals into the soil, others had
parents dying suspiciously early from Cancer after using chemicals to
produce their wines and were looking for a more natural form of viticulture.
Others, top growers in classic
regions like Burgundy or Bordeaux or The Rhone, decided biodynamic
wines simply tasted better.
This isn't a bandwagon that the
supermarkets will be able to jump on easily. Most Bio growers tend to
produce in tiny volumes, there simply isn't enough being made to
satisfy a supermarket.
According to David Motion, one of
this country's most pre-eminent wine experts famed for going
'straight to the producers' in his search for the perfect bottles, "much
wine available today is squeaky-clean, sanitised and characterless,
stripped of life. Good wine should be made hygienically but, were you
to pasteurise it (which some industrial-scale producers do), it would
cease to be of interest to us. It is dead. Inert, boring and
lifeless. Good wine is, and should be, a living thing, capable of
development in and out of the bottle, providing a sense of place, of
culture and fascination while it is being consumed. Plus, without
additives or chemicals, hangovers are a thing of the past!"
Arriving in London in 1977 with
the intention of becoming a pop star, David studied at the Royal
Academy of Music before falling in love with recording studios and
becoming one of the UK's most successful composers of neo-classical
and electro music - music used in commercials for everyone from Tesco
and Vauxhall to HSBC and Prada.
In 1996 he decided to pour his
savings into buying his favourite shop - The Winery just off Warwick
Avenue and the rest, as they say, is history. "Initially I
didn't want people in music to think my heart wasn't in it anymore
and didn't want people in the wine industry to think I was a
charlatan but I now feel people have accepted I'm just hugely
passionate about both," says David. Which Wine Guide made
David its first ever 'Most Innovative Wine Merchant of the year' and
'The Winery', with its innovative approach to wine, have made it a
firm favourite of both the wine press and everyone from Sienna Miller
and Keira Knightley to Bjork, Jarvis Cocker and Lulu.
top |
