You’d be forgiven for flunking a quiz with just one question: What’s the difference between sustainable, organic, Biodynamic, and natural wine? That was last year’s test.
This year’s pop quiz comes with a twist: Regenerative agriculture just joined the lineup.
In the $300 billion wine industry, regenerative agriculture is the new buzzword—shorthand for growers who think in decades, not harvest seasons.
“When we plant, it’s for 100 years,” says Dominique Arangoits, winemaker and technical director at the esteemed Château Cos d’Estournel in Bordeaux. “And the regenerative model ensures this.” The definition of “regenerative” varies depending on who you ask, but everyone agrees on one thing: it’s about improving the soil.
Austrian winemakers Stephanie and Eduard Tscheppe of Gut Oggau describe regenerative agriculture as a soil-first approach—focused on rebuilding humus, the nutrient-rich layer created by decomposed plant matter. Healthier soil means healthier fruit—and, they say, a more expressive wine. “Because grapes yield a super sensitive juice, showcasing all the steps in farming, the drinker can feel and taste the difference when it’s right.”
A more complex definition factors in labor practices, packaging, and everything involved in the supply chain.
The National Resources Defense Council, an organization dedicated to saving the planet, is a big advocate for regenerative farming, often saying it’s the antithesis of everything the industrial agricultural complex embraces.
Regenerative agriculture relies on a suite of techniques: cover cropping, no-till farming, composting, mulching, and crimping, as well as avoiding fuel-based inputs like synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides. It also often incorporates agroforestry—integrating trees and shrubs into the landscape as conservation buffers. It aims to mitigate climate change, preserve water by increasing the soil’s ability to absorb this precious resource, and increase biodiversity.
The result of these practices is a stronger, more self-reliant vine, with a more robust root system that can withstand drought by finding deeper water—essential in our time of climate stress.
RA is at the heart of Cos d’Estournel, where only 65% of their land is planted in grapes. Another 10% of the agricultural land is a reservoir of biodiversity, i.e., cultivated habitats alive with plants and animals that balance the estate’s total ecosystem. The rest is unmanaged forest and a wetland.
The goal, from the vintners’ perspective, is terroir on steroids. As Arangoits put it, “It took 24 years, but I finally understand that the grapes’ terroir isn’t solely contained in the vineyard. It doesn’t end where the vines stop.”
Regenerative agriculture has roots in the early 1950s, when Scott and Helen Nearing moved to Maine and started an organic farm in pursuit of a more land-connected life. The movement picked up steam in 1969, when a group of Haight-Ashbury hippies founded Morningstar Farm East in Taos County, New Mexico. They trucked organic produce back to San Francisco to support free food programs.
That pro-social ethos, linking agriculture to community, started with them. Though the farm dissolved by 1973, the back-to-the-land spirit of organic farming had already taken hold across the country.
The term “regenerative agriculture” was coined in the 1980s but has only recently stepped into the spotlight. More familiar labels like sustainable, organic, and Biodynamic often overlap with, or are included in, the growing use of the term.
California’s Tony Coturri made wine “as it was meant to be” as a partial RA pioneer as far back as 1963. With no chemical intervention in the field and zero manipulation in the winery, “just grapes” has been his motto.
Across the pond in England, RA farming has taken off. Groundswell, an RA farming festival in its ninth year, drew 8,000 attendees to Hertfordshire for lectures, forums, and business advice. Their goal is to make RA mainstream and profitable.
Big business has taken notice. PepsiCo recently announced plans to manage 1.8 million acres under regenerative agriculture, doubling its previous commitment. Unilever has also entered the space, growing mustard for Colman’s using regenerative methods.
Words matter. In both the United States and Europe, “organic” carries legal and regulatory weight, while “Biodynamic” is a trademarked term governed by the Demeter Society, which enforces strict standards based on Rudolf Steiner’s agricultural philosophy.
In the United States, the leading recognition for regenerative farming is the Regenerative Organic Certified™ (ROC) label. Based in Northern California, the nonprofit behind it has members around the world. By 2023, the Regenerative Organic Alliance had certified 6 million acres of vineyards—12 times more than the year before. Whether winegrowers are drawn to the certification itself or the farming principles behind it, the momentum is clear.
Right now, the majority of RA farms are operating on the honor system while they work toward certification. As Morgan Twain-Peterson, co-owner of Bedrock Wines (which is currently seeking ROC), told us, “One of the fundamental issues of RA is that context matters. You have to adapt your tools to the situation instead of Biodynamics, which I’m not a huge proponent of. For example, at Bedrock, we’re not tilling, we graze animals in vineyards during the winter, and we plant an incredibly diverse cover crop consisting of 22 plant species.”
Digging down into the term, Morgan added, “Soil biology is first and foremost. Everything is about building or preserving it. So anything, like a root-killing herbicide, which depletes the soil’s ability to hold water, is bad. Tilling does the same thing. We’re in California, a state that’s drought-prone. For every 1% increase in soil organic matter (carbon), you get a water-holding capacity increase of 18-22,000 gallons/acre. Some conventionally managed vineyards have a total capacity of .5%—4-6% is my goal. Another way to look at this is that tilled soil can absorb half an inch of water per hour. Non-tilled land can absorb up to 10 inches per hour, which captures enough water to replenish the aquifer.
“We’ve also found that mulch, some from crimping cover crops, keeps the soil up to 40 degrees cooler. On a hot day last summer, I measured the temperature in my crimped field and my neighbor’s in the open sun. There was an unbelievable difference.”
A wine drinker may reasonably ask, “What’s in it for me?” Several things, some of them determinant and others tangential.
First, consumers who have a choice of where to spend their dollars, supporting RA’s practices, is a step toward healing the earth …no small goal.
Second, as is true in Biodynamic farming, and as noted wine writer Jancis Robinson has so aptly observed, any winemaker going to the Herculean effort to grow grapes Biodynamically would be unlikely not to put the same effort into turning those grapes into fine wine.
Her assessment is echoed by David Skurnik, owner of the eponymous wine importer and distributor, who told us, “I think most producers are working regeneratively because they believe it’s what’s best for the land, and for the ecosystem where their vines grow, and by extension, the earth. I think they feel healthier vineyards produce better wines, which there is a lot of evidence to support.”
Morgan agreed, saying, “Wine is a unique libation. It gives you optics into everything upstream that’s in the bottle. That’s what is helping to save wine—the new generation cares about what’s going into their bodies. They’re savvier about greenwashing.”
Morgan continued, “The more microbial your soil is, the healthier your grapes will be. The more there is a conversation between crops, soil, and the finished fruit, the better the result will be. For wine, this translates into physiological ripeness and skin thickness, resulting in the ability to make a lower alcohol product, which is what younger drinkers prefer.”
Vintners committed to regenerative agriculture are also unlikely to use any of the hundreds of additives and flavor enhancers legally permitted in wine—none of which are required to appear on the label.
Regenerative agriculture is, as the saying goes, on the side of the angels. But it also asks us to reckon with decades of extractive farming practices. The good news: we can help reverse the damage. By doing our homework and supporting regenerative winemakers, we become part of the healing. The Ethical Cellar will drink to that.
