Why are some vineyards certified biodynamic and others not?
Ah, now, this is the curly one. Hard-core biodynamic wine people reckon you’re only legitimate if you go the whole hog and certifiy – which means you are audited by an Australian government-accredited certification body. The little certification logo on your label certainly gives the person who buys your wine confidence that the grapes were grown and the wine made according to a set of standards. On the other side of the debate, many winemakers using BD methods argue – equally passionately – that it’s the ‘conventional’, chemically-dependent growers who should be subjected to the rigorous auditing, rather than the other way around. New Zealand BD wine pioneer James Millton, for example (who in fact is certified) asks: ‘Why should I have to tick the boxes to prove that what I’m doing is working, when all I need to do is show you the bees and worms and flowers …?
