NO SULPHITES WINESOR NATURAL
“The production of sulphite-free wines began in 2007 because working in the cellar and using, like all the cellars in the world, sulphur dioxide (i.e. sulphites) in all its forms, whether gaseous, liquid or powder, I felt ill, I could no longer breathe properly. So I looked it up and realised that it was a very powerful chemical substance and certainly not healthy if ingested or breathed in, as is also written on the manufacturer’s instructions. Not only that, but I felt it was too intense when smelling the wines and I found that, with its aggressive and bitter odour, it ruined the true aroma of the wine, covering it up and making it impossible to enjoy the scent of the grapes. I also thought: what is the point of making an organic wine if you are going to add such a harmful chemical?”
Sulphur dioxide, also known as E124 or sulphites, is a preservative which, besides in wine, can be found in many other beverages and foods. A lot of people are allergic to it, often without knowing it. Many symptoms that appear after an excessive drinking session, as for example a headache or stomach ache, are caused by this substance. After some reflection, I began to experiment in the field of wines without sulphites, at the time still largely unexplored.
At the beginning, our white wines would oxidize immediately when the bottle was left open overnight, and turn dark like tea. You could not drink them anymore, because their taste had become unpleasant.
Then came the summer and the weather was hot, so the wine in the bottles would begin to darken and lose its freshness. During the first two years we had to empty thousands of bottles.
Looking back, I can say that we have been courageous. We have risked a lot, but we have been rewarded because now our wines without sulphites are of excellent quality. They are natural, linear and aromatic, and taste of grapes and nature, just like we had always imagined them.
Most certainly, the grapes grown with biodynamic methods were a great benefit to our winery, since they are cleaner and stronger, with better defences.
There is only one drawback regarding these wines without sulphites: if you start drinking them you cannot go back to drinking wines with sulphites. Just like when we converted to Biodynamic farming. We looked back and, together with the workers in the vineyards we said to ourselves: “We will never go back to conventional farming – rather, we would change jobs”.
Today we produce five excellent wines -reds and whites- without added sulphites, and all the other wines have a very low sulphite content. We export them to all parts of the world and they have never had any problems with preservation.
