On becoming a father the vintner Gérard Bertrand suddenly saw the world with new eyes. As a former rugby professional who played for Narbonne, Paris and the French national team he of course maintained a healthy diet and made sure he was only treated with homeopathic medicine. But he didn’t make the step towards introducing biodynamic winegrowing onto his estate Cigalus in Corbières in the south of France, which he had acquired in 1994, until he saw the beaming face of the baby his wife Ingrid had just given birth to. Since then he has done without chemical pesticides and fertilizers, instead burying cow horns filled with cow dung into the ground and adapting his viticultural work to lunar constellations. He also intends to progressively convert his other three vineyards to biodynamic methods of cultivation, for it is not only the soil that has become more vital now that it contains more bacteria than traditionally farmed land. The wine too has now got “much more power”, the winemaker confirms.

For Eugène Meyer from Alsace it was a temporary loss of sight cured by homeopathy that gave him cause to stop using chemicals in his vineyard. The young vintner Werner Michlits at the Meinklag winery in the Burgenland region in Austria converted to biodynamics five years ago, out of personal conviction and with success – in 2003 he was awarded the prestigious German Oenologists Prize.

For a long time adherents of Rudolf Steiner and his anthroposophy movement were dismissed as fools and nutters. But in the meantime more and more oenologists have abandoned the well-trodden paths of orthodox winemaking and renounced the use of artificial fertilizers and chemical sprays, preferring instead to revitalize their terroirs with homeopathic, plant-based solutions. Eric Saurel from the Domaine Montirius in the southern Rhône valley has installed copper wire in the walls, floors and roofs of his new concrete vats so as to defuse possible electromagnetic fields that would negatively affect the wine. And to mix the concrete he had “specially informed water” delivered from Paris…

The “Agricultural course” Rudolf Steiner gave between 7 and 16 June 1924 at the farm estate of Graf Carl von Keyserlingk to a select audience of farmers has in the meantime evolved into a formidable cultivation method, and one which is now also pursued by the world’s top vineyards. Besides greening the ground between the rows of vines with special plants and synchronizing work in the vineyard to the astral calendar, above all three preparations are employed: cow dung to enrich the soil, cow horn dung to stimulate the roots and cow horns packed with quartz dust to enhance photosynthesis. Biodynamic winegrowing works with nature, not against it. Growing particular types of vegetation between the rows increases water stress for the vines, which has a positive effect on the wine. Indeed, of the seven wines tested at a blind tasting by the German wine journal “WeinGourmet” the four biodynamic estates earned better ratings than their conventionally operating colleagues.