organic wine at Whole Foods the other month, can't remember the name though. It was cheap too.

Hi.

I sell organic wine for a living. I am a trained sommelier.

About 70% of what I sell regularly is wine which contains little to no detectable sulfites. All the wine I sell is made at the very least, with organically grown grapes. A fraction of these wines are produced biodynamically.

Here is the thing: The science as to how sulfites affect people is fairly controversial in my circle of associates. So, let's just say this: like all wine, conventional or organically produced, there is good, and bad wine.

To say the wine is bad because it is organic is foolish. Wine is bad because of one (or all) of three things: poorly sourced grapes, poorly crafted, poorly stored. Wine that is made without added sulfites does tend to be less stable than wine made with added sulfites. However, there are amazing sulfite free wines. Pick up any sulfite-free wine from Stellar Organics, out of South Africa. These are really good wines, with no detectable sulfites, that are true to the varietal. Every single buyer who has tasted them has been blown away.

Lesser-known, but very amazing, is Casa Barranca's Arts and Crafts Red, also sulfite free. Like good pizza, this wine actually tasted better the next day, which is saying a lot for most wines, and completely amazing for sulfite-free wine.

My final points are:

1) It so happens that much of the worlds most highly-regarded and highly-coveted wines happen to be made from organically and biodynamically grown grapes.

2) Another consideration is wines that are not made with any sort of organic oversight are often full of additives. Many wine producers are not above adding glycerin, flavoring and other additives to maintain consistency and quality, let alone sulphur dioxide.

So, to make a distinction between organic and non-organic wine as good vs. bad is unfair. There are great wines on both sides, and there are some truly horrible wines from both sides too.

But the only way to find out what you really enjoy is to get out there and try, try, try!

Cheers.

that in order to find a decent bottle of organic wine I have to be in Europe.

True I haven't haunted the specialty wine shops here, but I have never yet found a great tasting organic wine whenever I've chosen one here. So I gave up looking at the American organic wines. I had been convinced that something was missed in the wine process here that hasn't been lost or subverted in Europe.

And with this article I can understand more about what my taste-buds told me some time ago.

And far and few between is the person who suddenly develops an allergic reaction to them in normal concentrations. Moreover it will spoil faster so caveat emptor. Maybe you'd be happier with a rum.

Anyway the real earth mother story is the cork. EU regs will put an end to corks made out of, well, cork, soon. The trees are endangered but the EU is mostly worried about percolation of bacteria and infectious diseases, because you know, for the last 10,000 years of wine making that's been a huge problem.

It's bio (organic), and I can't write enough good things about it. Naturally it's getting hard to find. -m

I have a gift book by Pattie Vargus & Rich Gulling titled: 'Making Wild Wines & Meads' 125 Unusual Recipes Using Herbs, Fruits, Flowers & More.

"Fine wines only get better with age."

It is a fun hobby. Bubbles of Troubles.

I have some neighbors who will take a bad wine turned vinegar batch, which he said he'll use because it makes the best liquor. Cordials are tasty. Add frozen or fresh berries.

I remember my grandfather would have a few nasty looking gallons of foamy jugs on the back porch with a few raisins thrown in, "How you drink that crap?" I'd think. No campden tablets were used for clarification. A cloudy brew in the commercial market may not sell at Wal-Mart but, it may be better than a $199 Italian import. Who knows if that expensive fruit juice with a fancy label wasn't fermented from meat balls?

There is a wine store in a town I'll visit but, usually I'm disappointed that a Abbey Leffe bier, or one from some other Belgium Trappist Monastery, cost $3.00 more a 6-pack than a local carry out store. I'll scrounge for the cheaper bottles.

I enjoyed the article. A modest dose of scary named chemicals can make it clear, sparkle, and not give a sledgehammer sulfides headache, as the sales person said. I've heard that too. To drink in moderation with friends is holy communion. A good wine enhances a good time. Wines can bring heightened merriment with something to eat.

So-if a bad bug, a fruit nat does,

"ruin" a batch-go to the copper still guru.

Don't throw bad wine away. Use the vinegar.

Green salad?

There is some construction tycoon in the town I mentioned where the brews are too expensive, and the merchant tells me the "rich" think nothing about spending $2,000 for cases of sulfite wine to impress the fussiness associates in grim DC. Sorry to gab too much but, the politico's don't impress me and I'd not, generally, enjoy their phony company. They, sad to say, talk smooth textured baloney. Let them wear initialed socks, shirt cuffs, and starch the socks. I tire to hear how great their stocks are doing. I'd rather sip with folk who have holy and musty unmatched socks. Serious. "um give people indigestion and constipation.

You cover the drug that leads to breast cancer and yet you won't cover the drug that kills breast cancer cells and even appears to block the gene that teaches breast cancer cells how to metastasize.

Okay, that's politics. I get it. It's politically safe to love the drug that causes breast cancer but it's politically risky to show any interest in the one that appears to fight breast cancer.

See -- that's why I hate politics. Information is not the only thing that politics can destroy.

By the way, the drug you won't cover definitely does taste better when it's organically grown.