Winemaking: The vineyards using biodynamics to future-proof their wine

Cow horns filled with manure and taking advantage of the lunar cycle are part of the work practices of a new breed of biodynamic vineyards.

The dirt road that winds its way toward Ngeringa passes vineyards, olive trees, and paddocks heaving with vegetables. Visitors to the farm cause the resident chooks, sheep and shaggy Highland cows to raise their heads in fleeting interest before returning to the task at hand – feeding on the fertile land below.

The Adelaide Hills property is owned by Erinn Klein, his wife Janet and their three sons. It literally buzzes with life. You can hear it in between the bursts of chatter between a group of farm workers as they gather over a communal lunch of freshly plucked vegies. Meanwhile, Klein checks on progress in the winery, his white german shepherd Lunar sticking to him like a shadow. The dog’s name hints at the ethos behind the multi-layered produce and wine business located on the outskirts of Mount Barker.

Ngeringa is a certified biodynamic vineyard and winery. It has been for more than 20 years. In a nutshell, the practises they swear by are all about the soil. Promoting healthy microbial activity encourages nutrients and ultimately strengthens the life force of the vine.

Germany-born Klein was born into a sustainable lifestyle. “We had a relatively big back yard by German standards,” he says. “We grew our own fruit and vegies – never with any form of chemicals. We made biodynamic compost and we put the ‘preparations’ in the compost back then too.”

Winemaker Erinn Klein at Ngeringa in Mount Barker Summit. Picture: Tom Huntley

Klein’s family moved to Australia in 1983 when he was eight. His parents were drawn to South Australia’s clean, green environment. It was the perfect place to grow the herbal ingredients required for Jurlique, the natural botanical-based skincare brand they launched in 1985 (and later sold in the early 2000s).

“Mum was a teacher and Dad was in research and development at Dr. Hauschka [natural beauty products],” Klein says. “They also looked at California, New Zealand and southern France but what appealed here in SA is that there was very little DDT and heavy chemicals used. It was a nice, clean, Mediterranean environment.”

It served them well. The family went on to establish Ngeringa, one of Australia’s original biodynamic winegrowing pioneers.

“They were pretty ahead of their time,” Klein says. “I remember when we started researching biodynamics and trying to find people who kind of were ahead of the game here in Australia.” There weren’t many. “Julian Castagna [founder of Castagna vineyard and winery in Victoria’s Beechworth wine region] was heading that way but had only just started as well.”

You could fill pages with lengthy descriptions about the theories behind biodynamics. According to the Biodynamic Agriculture Australia website, it is “A practical and holistic technique that regenerates soil and supercharges organic growing. A system that restores biodiversity and works with Mother Nature.”

Look deeper and there’s a barrage of information about soil preparations the main one being horn manure (cow manure that was buried in cow horns over the winter months) and is then stirred in water and applied as a spray according to lunar movements – think the moon opposing Saturn, horn silica (the product derived from cow horns filled with finely ground up silica and buried for six months) and a lunar calendar that determines the best times to pick, prune, and water plants.

Confused? To a newcomer it’s all quite baffling.

“One of the major misconceptions is that it’s this kind of Voodoo practice,” Klein says. “A lot of people think we bury cow horns on the full moon and dance naked around the fire while we’re doing it.”

Not so. In a nutshell, it’s about working with the cycles and rhythms of nature to work towards a self-sustaining, closed-unit farming system.

“First and foremost, you farm without chemicals,” Klein says. “You have to be organic; No synthetic fungicides, herbicides, pesticides, or fertilisers. They all have to be naturally derived because as soon as you bring in those influences, you’re propping up a farming system artificially and not really building a system to sustain itself.”

In Klein’s opinion, biodynamics takes things up a level.

This includes the use of the handmade biodynamic preparations developed by Rudolf Steiner, the late Austrian scientist and philosopher who founded the biodynamic process in 1924.

“You can take the Steiner teachings as esoteric and come to a point where it kind of becomes this religion – that’s where you lose most people,” Klein says. “Our approach is quite pragmatic. We strive towards a closed unit farming system. From a fertility point of view that means you’re not bringing in loads of inputs outside our farm, but rather building and sustaining a farming system with vitality with what we already have at Ngeringa.”

WA-based winemaker Vanya Cullen. Picture: Frances Andrijich

For Western Australia-based Vanya Cullen, the road to biodynamics was personal. Cullen Wines’ chief winemaker and managing director has made wine at her family’s Wilyabrup estate since 1983.

Cullen studied music in Perth and Adelaide before completing a postgraduate diploma in oenology at Roseworthy (thanks to encouragement by her father Kevin).

After working at wineries all over the globe, she returned home to Margaret River. Her boutique wines are exquisite.

For her efforts she was the recipient of the Halliday Winemaker of the Year Award 2020 and in 2019 received the ACO Chairman’s Award for her contribution towards organics in Australia and won the Australian Woman in Wine Winemaker of Year Award 2019.

Cullen’s path to eco consciousness started young. Her parents were environmental warriors. When the Cullen Estate was planted in 1971, chemical intervention was minimal.

“Mum and Dad always had a very strong legacy for caring for the Earth,” she says. “When they were in Tasmania, they fought to try and save Lake Pedder but were unsuccessful.In the 1960s they were successful in getting an environmental Act passed through parliament because the whole of the coastline here was pegged for bauxite mining.”

Her father Kevin, a GP, saw the effects of chemicals on his patients, many of whom were potato farmers. “Ironically, Dad went to serve in the Vietnam War because he felt bad that his friends died in a war but doctors didn’t have to go.” There, he was exposed to Agent Orange and later died of motor neurone disease. “It has always stayed with me,” she says.

The fight against chemicals became a passion. An obsession, even.

In 1998 Cullen and her mother Diana made the change to total organic viticulture (resulting in A-Grade Organic Certification from the Biological Farmers Association of Australia).

“It happened intuitively,” Cullen says. “When Mum passed away in 2003, I felt like I needed a bit more. Moving on to biodynamics seemed the natural thing to do.”

She hasn’t looked back.

In 2004 the Cullen Vineyard became certified A-Grade Biodynamic by the BFA of Australia and the Mangan Vineyard and Winery followed in 2008. Cullen also has five biodynamic kitchen gardens which supply a majority of the fruit and vegetables used in the cellar door’s carbon positive dining room.

Cullen describes the progression as an energetic lineage. “My mother’s mother was a suffragist and a nature photographer,” she says. “It’s the energetic lineage of the caring mother.”

Over the years, Cullen has focused on the health of the vineyard (particularly soil and trellis management) and experimentation, quality and sustainability in the winery has been unwavering.

Achieving biodynamic and carbon negative certification (or positive as she prefers to call it) and running a naturally powered estate takes hard work and dedication.

Cullen Wines has been voluntarily offsetting its carbon emissions since 2006, buying credits almost exclusively for projects in WA which focus on pulling carbon emissions out of the atmosphere. Over the past nine years, Cullen has been responsible for 3921 tonnes of CO2 offset through reforestation carbon sinks, and the planting of more than 1705 native trees and shrubs.

“We have paid for trees to be planted to offset our emissions in biodiversity corridors in Western Australia,” Cullen says. “We’ve paid about $25,000 a year since 2007.”

When Cullen first started on the biodynamic path, there was little information available. “It was harder going from minimal chemicals to organic than organic to biodynamic,” she says. “It took a long while because we had to work a lot of things out.”

After years of research and practical experience, Cullen uses the word “connection” to define biodynamics.

“By enlivening the soil with the soil micro flora, that bit of B12 in cow manure from the 500 (the enlivening substance) actually facilitates the regulation of nitrogen.”

She likens it to what we understand about our gut microflora. “A healthy gut equals a healthy brain; it’s the same. Healthy land, healthy vines, and balanced fruit.”

Cullen regularly refers to her respect for the Wadandi people, the traditional custodians of the land she calls home. “They had 65,000 years of sustainable land care before we got here. Without the land we don’t have a life. There’s a lot to be learned from there.” She pauses. “We’re just continuing on that, but the biodynamic supercharges it. It’s really how people used to farm before chemicals. There’s really nothing new about it.”

Back in South Australia, on the land of the Peramangk people, Klein is also conscious of those who went before him. “They obviously coexisted with the environment for more than 60,000 years,” he says. “I don’t think we’re going do that very successfully at this rate. At Ngeringa we put a lot of energy and resources into revegetation to try and do our bit to minimise species loss, and try and provide habitat for smaller endangered species; birds, lizards, you name it.”

Conversion is not about flicking a switch. It takes approximately four years to convert a vineyard to biodynamic certification standards. “It’s a lot of hard work and a commitment,” Cullen says. “A strategy and a financial investment.”

The costs involved are ongoing. Membership fees, regular inspections, a percentage of turnover and a levy for displaying certification on wine labels all add up to thousands of dollars per year.

“Our reason for doing it is not a marketing angle,” Klein says. “I grew up watching my parents and their farm manager go this way and if you’re not trying to run a big corporate farm, there’s a belief that it’s the way to be sustainable and accountable for future generations. The aim is not to take away but build the health of your soil and plants. Hopefully that is something we can pass down to generations.”

At present, the regulations on the use of the terms “organic” and “biodynamic” in Australia are ambiguous. It riles Cullen.

“Anyone can use organic and biodynamic in Australia that’s what makes it confusing,” she says. “Not many people know that. Organic or biodynamic can be anything. How are consumers supposed to know what’s actually organic and biodynamic and support it when anyone who has one vineyard that’s organic can market their whole business as organic or biodynamic?”

Her dream is for the whole of Margaret River to be organic. Truly organic.

“There needs to be a real focus on the land and sustainability,” she says. “In a real way, not just ticking a box.”

And the impact on what’s in the bottle?

“By farming well, and taking out the chemicals that confuse the terroir, I honestly believe that you get a much better taste of place from your grapes,” Klein says.

Cullen agrees. “Producing better quality fruit is an outcome that was not expected,” she says. “We don’t add anything to our wines. No acid … nothing. And we don’t take anything out. We’ve just got such beautiful balanced fruit.”

Anna Flowerday, at Te Whare Ra Wines in Marlborough, New Zealand. Photo supplied

When Anna Flowerday talks about the precious patch of land she and her hubby Jason own in Marlborough, New Zealand, she uses the Maori word Kaitiakitanga. “It means guardianship,” she says. “The land is considered a resource to be respected according to the principle of Kaitiakitanga. A kaitiaki is a guardian and the process of protecting and looking after the environment (sea, sky or land) is referred to as Kaitiakitanga.”

Another increasingly common addition to the wine industry vernacular is the Maori concept of Turangawaewae. “It roughly translates to ‘the place where you stand’,” Flowerday says. “We have been starting to use this over the last 10 years or so – rather than terroir.”

The co-winemaker and proprietor at Te Whare Ra Wines grew up McLaren Vale and is a sixth-generation winegrower.

She studied science and oenology at the University of Adelaide before falling for her New Zealand-born husband Jason during vintage at Hardy’s Tintara.

They went on to own their own little Watervale vineyard in Clare Valley (where they worked as winemakers for other companies) before relocating to New Zealand 18 years ago to do their own thing.

When they saw Te Whare Ra (TWR) vineyard and winery in the Marlborough subregion of Renwick, it was love at first sight.

The 11ha vineyard was originally planted in 1979 and is one of the oldest in Marlborough.

“It was like the old house that you fall in love with because it’s got amazing potential but needs a bit of love to bring it back to life again,” she says. “A lot of people thought this vineyard was completely stuffed and thought the vines should be pulled out because it wasn’t sauvignon blanc but we just loved everything about it and spent the last 18 years trying to bring it back to life again.”

The vineyard is certified organic and managed with biodynamic principles. All the fruit is hand-picked and hand-sorted (with the help of their two sets of twin daughters).

“We are certified with Biogrow which is the main certifier in New Zealand for exports,” Flowerday says. “We’re not biodynamic certified but we have our own cows and make our own preps. I guess we’ve sort of taken the bits of biodynamics that we think might work in an overall system for our property. One of our company taglines is wines made with cow shit, not bullshit.”

The pair will not attend Tasting Australia’s masterclass due to COVID travel restrictions but their small batch creations will be poured. They produce gewurztraminer, riesling, sauvignon blanc, pinot gris, chardonnay, rose, pinot noir and syrah.

“We are passionate about showing people the depth and diversity of Marlborough,” she says. “It’s not just a one trick pony. What was planted here is part of what attracted us to this property.”

Erinn Klein on with Scottish Highland cows at Ngeringa in Mount Barker Summit. Picture: Tom Huntley

They will also pour their field blend Toru, a co-fermented blend of gewurztraminer, riesling and pinot gris.

“It’s become a bit of a rock star wine for us. It represents our place and what we’re about.”

Melanie Chester won the national Young Gun of Wine People’s Choice Award in 2018 after many years of hard work in a relatively young life. The Sydney-born, Adelaide Hills-raised winemaker studied winemaking in South Australia, clocking up some serious experience at wineries across the Barossa, McLaren Vale and Hills while she was at it.

Gigs at Treasury’s Wolf Blass and Seppelt Great western in Victoria followed. “They are both big companies and lots of challengescome with that but I loved the support and access to incredible vineyards,” she says. “The fact that we basically made wine from 70 per cent of the most notable Victorian regions from Mornington, Great Western, Bendigo, and Heathcote to Drumborg was quite a fun exposure into wine.”

As a result, Chester fell in love with continental shiraz grown on granite. “Shiraz on bedrock and shiraz grown inland in Victoria – I’m obsessed with it.”

That led her to her current role at the helm of Sutton Grange, a small wine business 30 kilometres south of Bendigo.

She is full of praise for founding winemaker Gilles Lapalus. “He was revolutionary and was a big part of driving natural wines, biodynamics and organics in Australia,” she says. “He was also revolutionary in terms of varietals that we have here.”

In addition to the central Victorian classics (shiraz, cabernet and merlot) planted in the late 90s, Lapalus pioneered varieties that suited the terroir and climate better. “Things like sangiovese and fiano. No one was really growing it here at the time during the mid 2000s.” Chester’s first vintage at Sutton Grange was 2016. “I’ve been here at Sutton Grange for five vintages now.”

The tiny nature of the 13ha vineyard and winery means that Chester does it all.

“I run the operations and the vineyards as well as the winery,” she says.

“We are a tiny business so I clean the toilets, do the strategic plan and the budget and the label research. A bit of everything which is great fun.”

She loves her job. “Working for a small business is super hands-on and rewarding. It’s very challenging, especially when you farm from one vineyard like I do. We are very frost prone here and lost our whole crop in 2020.”

The business is no longer biodynamic. “We are not certified organic, but we are organic in practice and in philosophy.”

The farm’s beating heart is a 150 megalitre dam.

“It’s the lifeblood of our farm because we are quite continental (low rainfall) and it means that our grapes survive every year but also it’s this beautiful ecosystem for the property.”

She believes sustainability is not just about what you do on the farm, but how you bring that into the winery.

“Things like ‘where do you get your glass and your dry goods from? Are they recyclable and what are the carbon miles if your really expensive glass that you’ve imported because it fits the cork that you want has come from Abu Dhabi’. Everything we use is all Australian.”

Water sustainability is also front of mind.

She believes it is an exciting time for the wine industry.

“All these conversations are exciting,” she says.

“This is a generation of people who are rethinking and taking risks themselves. I think that’s amazing.”

Tasting Australia’s Future Farmers masterclass takes place on May 8, 11am-12.30pm, Town Square Masterclass Pavilion, Victoria Square, $145/ticket. tastingaustralia.com.au