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part 6: Alvaro Espinoza—biodynamics in the new world
It’s clear from the outset that Alvaro Espinoza isn’t
your average Chilean winemaker. ‘Traditional viticulture
artificializes the vineyards, creating an artificial medium’, says
Alvaro. ‘the result is that the wines are similar to those from
other places’. His view is very much that organics and biodynamics
facilitates the expression of ‘terroir’ (site-specific flavours in
wine), which isn’t a word you hear very often in Chile. He also eschews the besetting varietalism that has become
an enduring facet of new world winemaking. ‘I am not aiming to make
another Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile. Blending can add character;
that is why we are planting a whole range of varieties.’ This sounds
promising. So what is the story behind VOE? Initially, one of the
owners of Santa Emiliana was interested in integrated pest management
(IPM), a scientific approach to reducing chemical inputs by targeting
interventions just where they are needed. From here, they progressed
to organics in 1998 when plots from three farms were selected as an
experiment. Then, in 2000 Alvaro Espinoza was hired to be responsible
for this project. Alvaro had previously worked for 8 years at Carmen. He
first became interested in organic viticulture in the mid 1990s
through links with Fetzer – a Californian winery who pioneered
organics in the USA. He decided that conventional viticulture had some
severe limitations. ‘I’d lost my idealism and my connection with
the vineyards’, he explained. Through 1995 he had lots of contact
with the Fetzer and Bonterra team, and started to do some work with
Carmen later that year, putting some of their Maipo plots into
organics. In 1998 Alvaro had a sabbatical that proved to be very
significant: he went to Mendocino in California and spent 6 months
working on viticulture with the Mexican vineyard workers at Bonterra.
While he was there he had lots of contact with the Fetzers and Alan
York, a well known Californian biodynamic consultant. Alan York gave
him Rudolf Steiner’s book, which ‘changed my views about
nature’, he says. ‘Steiner’s views seemed very logical’, and
Alvaro’s return to Chile, with its environmentally unfriendly
industrial-scale viticulture, proved to be a big shock.
He left Carmen in 2000 to work for VOE. At VOE, three farms
were put completely into organics and biodynamics, and they are being
treated as closed units of production. There are three main pillars to
the vineyard work. First, they aim to increase the biodiversity of the
farms, with cover cropping and biological corridors. ‘Monoculture
helps to develop pests’, says Alvaro. Second, there is composting:
adding fertility to soil and preserving healthy plants with natural
nutrients. Finally, there is alternative pest management work with
compost teas, and biological products such as Bacillus subtilis
and Trichoderma (a fungus that has antibotrytis and antioidium
action). Alvaro is leaving an increasing amount of flowers in the
vineyards to encourage insects. This has the side-effect of making the
vineyards look pretty! Currently VOE are just using selected plots from their
farms for their wines. They have lots of new plantings, and they sell
off many of the grapes from the youngest vines. The whites aren’t
ready yet. The move to biodynamics has proven to be a complicated
process. ‘In 2000 we started to be in contact with Demeter’, says
Alvaro. In Chile there is no biodynamic association, so Alvaro has had
to make all the biodynamic preparations preparations himself, a
challenging task. Initially, he had a problem getting yarrow, which
isn’t native to the wine growing regions of Chile. More complicated
was getting the bladders of red deer, used to ferment some
preparations: there aren’t any red deer in Chile. ‘Now we have
enough to sell to others’, Alvaro says. ‘For me the main view is
the sustainable view of the farm, seeing it as an organism’. With
this goal in mind, he’s bringing animals to the farms to close the
cycle of nutrients, so he can producing his own manure and compost.
Recycling is important and for their cover crops, VOE collect the seed
and re-use it. Currently the wines of VOE are classified as organic, but the plan is to proceed with biodynamic certification. This natural philosophy extends to the winery, which aims
to respect the landscape using raw materials such as wood, stone,
copper and adobe. Everything is gravity fed, and the small fermenting
tanks mean that Alvaro can work with small blocks. He doesn’t use
natural yeasts yet because this is too risky, but he’d like to –
at the moment he’s afraid of stuck fermentations because of high
potential alcohol levels. The wines? They’re pretty good. While I might have
expected them to show more ‘terroir’ characters, the structure and
concentration set them apart from many of their peers. Impressive
work, and I look forward to seeing what happens here as the vineyards
develop and come on line. Other topics in this series
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For a Chilean winery, Viñedos Organicos Emiliana is
unusual. It is dedicated to producing environmentally responsible
wines, initially organically, but then the goal is for it to adopt
biodynamics. The man at the helm of the project, which started in 2000
with the backing of parent company Vina Santa Emiliana, is Alvaro
Espinoza, formely winemaker with Carmen. Alvaro is a true pioneer, and
has been single-handedly responsible for introducing biodynamic
viticulture into South America. Santa Emiliana selected three farms in
the regions of Maipo, Casablanca and Colchagua, totalling a
substantial 240 ha, to form the basis of this project, so it is a
serious commercial operation and not just a token green-friendly PR
gesture. I met with Alvaro at Ransome’s Dock restaurant in London to
hear about this new project, listen to his views on biodynamics, and
to taste the wines.