Please consider supporting the crowdfunding of my second book BioInnovation: Champagne’s quiet ecological (R)evolution. The soil, and more specifically stimulating soil life to boost vine resilience naturally is a subject that I will explore in great detail. Thank you!
“Why are you so obsessed with herbicides”, is probably one of the questions I am most frequently asked. My aversion to herbicides can be traced back to 2007, when my one year old puppy Betty ate some grass that had recently been treated with glyphosate. She nearly died of kidney failure and only survived because she was young, strong and healthy and most importantly, she only ate a little bit of grass. This experience made me realize that if this herbicide, even in a very small dose, could so easily floor a 30kg dog, it would most certainly kill smaller creatures such as the variety of soil microbes.
Luckily, Betty pulled through and would go on to live a long and happy life, but I became very distrustful of all products grown in glyphosate soaked soil. I already ate organic, but from that moment onward, I also began to drink organic. I was living in New Zealand at the time, where organic wines were very scarce, but I was lucky enough to stumble upon James Milton and Seresin wines in a WSET class. Both Milton and Seresin were biodynamic producers, and their wines stood out miles from the traditional New Zealand offering. The first thing I noticed was that flavors seemed to be more profound and the experience was more joyful. Furthermore, they really seemed to reflect the place they came from – in my case two different islands. Ever since, I have almost exclusively drunk organic and biodynamic wines, or when none are available water, and I have been comforted in my choice when I moved to Champagne in the winter of 2011-2012.
Seeing the vineyards - that looked more like a graveyard than the actual cemetery – my vision of champagne as a superior sparkling wine, exploded in one million pieces. The first year I was here, I think I was more put off by champagne than enticed by it, but luckily there were some producers who made my heart beat faster. And yes, they were once again biodynamic or organic. In fact almost seventy percent of the producers in my first book: Terroir Champagne: the luxury of sustainable, organic and biodynamic cuvees were organic or in organic conversion. And all producers in the book refrained from using herbicides.
I had instinctively realized that to speak about terroir, one could not kill the soil, a view not shared by many other champagne writers. However, when one looks at Wine-Searchers World’s Best Wines – selected by comparing a multitudes of scores across vintages and availability, the top ten list is almost exclusively biodynamic or organic, which implies I am not the only one who noticed wines from a living soil taste better.
Researching my second book BioInnovations: Champagne’s quiet ecological (R)evolution, I have been intensively researching the soil and more specifically how soil life can be preserved and stimulated. The main reason for my recent soil fetish is, that many organic champagne producers seem to invest heavily in soil life to boost their vines resilience in a natural way. There is plenty of academic data to backup this hypothesis, but maybe the clearest sentence I have read on the matter comes out of Emmanuel Bourguignon’s excellent “Prendre soin de son sol” book. In here he explains that soil is an evolution of life, and that therefore soil life is necessary to grow healthy crops.
Recycling life
Through the processes of mineralization and humification the circle of life is renewed, dead organisms are broken down into nutrients (minerals and humus) which will fertilize the soil and make it a suitable environment to grow crops. The process of humification captures carbon in the soil and the process of mineralization transforms it in a nutritional source for the soil microbial creatures and ultimately for the plant. In more geek terminology, the soil organic carbon (SOC) rate impacts the soil structure or aggregate stability – the ability to move and store oxygen and water in the soil- , the cation exchange capacity (CEC) - or to what extend positively charged subsoil minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium can be retained in the soil – the soils buffering capacity – e.g. stabilization of soil pH - and finally soil water retention capacity. In short SOC is not only an indication of soil health, it is also essential for plant health.
According to Bourguignon, the industrial agricultural approach to (grape) farming tried to find shortcuts to boost yields in an unnatural way. As a result it has negatively impacted the SOC and it has led to poorer soils, and fragilized plants.
Nuked soils cause sick yellow vines
To bring this back to the Champagne context, the region’s love and reliance on excessive herbicide usage has reduced the SOC and CEC levels, which translates in compacted soils and water and nutrient run-off. Concretely this means, nutrients such as potassium and manganese - needed for vine resistance and immunity- are not readily available for the plant, which can impact its fragility to water logging, impair photosynthesis and weaken the vines resistance to insect and fungus attacks.
An example of the above are the many ‘yellow’ vines one can see today in Champagne’s most nuked vineyards. The yellow leaves are symptomatic of a nitrogen, ion or magnesium deficiency, and they are generally caused by an excessive pH in the compacted soil. This year’s excessive rain has incited many growers to over-indulge in pesticides and herbicides which in turn has messed up the soil ecosystemic processes.
The yellow leafed vines are visual proof of the impoverished soil. Moreover, when leaves are completely yellow, it is unlikely the photosynthesis process will continue to work effectively, which will impact the grape development and ripening process, vine reserve storage and even in the long-term vine survival.
While these vines could be impacted by fanleaf disease, or even flavescence dorée, it is more likely that the vines in the picture became ill because the soil stopped working effectively after being subjected to a cocktail of different pre-emergent and post-emergent herbicides. Even fanleaf disease, which is cause by soil nematodes, indicates an ill-functioning of the soil microbial composition and activity, and can thus be traced back to SOC level issues in the vineyard soil.
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