For something different, why not try wine grown by lunar rhythms? Organic wine will be free of all those toxins sprayed on the wine, as contribute so much to later headaches and hangovers.

A recommended UK mail order and distributor of Bio-Dynamic and Organic wine (including M.Joly's from the Loire valley) is 

Vintage Roots

www.vintageroots.co.uk

For sampling some good Bio-Dynamic food why not visit Organic Health (Canterbury), tel. 01227-472774.

Vines and the Sun

Readers with a warm and sunny spot in the garden may wish to try growing vines; with all this global warming, why not? For the ancients and for traditional astrological-rustic books, the vine had a solar rulership. The Calendar gives the main Sun-Moon aspects are given and these are the important options for when to set up a vine. These are, primarily, for cutting the scion in the Autumn and then grafting it in the spring. Why not try a trine, the harmonious 120° angle, between Sun and Moon, as happens twice a month? Such times should also be a fruit-day.

The ancients related wine quality to the movement of Jupiter around the zodiac. As it orbits once in twelve years, Jupiter enters a new zodiac sign each year. The words Jolly, Jovial joy etc. derive mysteriously from that sphere in the sky: Jove. This is something to mull over. One might seek for Solar aspects to Jupiter or Venus (not given in this Calendar) for the important and career-determining event of setting up a vineyard. As not many readers are likely to be doing this, it is somewhat a theoretical issue. The Sun, sol, relates to the concept of one's inner being, to the heart.

To help understand this idea, let's quote from a recent book on plant rulerships by Jean Elliott (1). This brought Culpepper's ‘Complete Herbal' up-to-date as it were. It gave the Grapevine as solar in its rulership, and summarised solar qualities as follows:

The Sun: Core essence, integrated conscious self, playful self, vitality. Play, children; palaces and mansions; day; gold. The Sun rules Leo. Colour: yellow, orange, gold. 

Its section on plants ruled by the Sun said:

Grapevine: (Vitis Vinifera). Lilly, Culpepper. Either grows as a long lived climber or in bush form for wine. Green/white flowers from early to midsummer. Grapes in Autumn.

Under Vine in Herbal. Brought to Britain by the Romans. 

She has referred to William Lilly and Nicholas Culpepper, the two seventeenth-century astrologers who gave the rulerships.

Fifteen years ago, one of the most respected French wine estates owned by Nicholas Joly went Bio-Dynamic (2). In the azure blue of the Loire valley, two different wines are now produced using a lunar calendar: Joly's ‘Clos de la Coulee de Sevant', and Noel Pinguit whose white wine ‘Le Haut Lieu' has won every award going (‘a stunningly intense, joyful wine' - solar qualities, perhaps?). One percent of French wine is presently Bio-Dynamic.

Joly expresses his views in rather solar terms:

‘When we look at a flower or fruit, it becomes perfectly clear that they owe their beauty, their colour, their fragrance, their variety of shapes and flavours to the sun. And it is precisely this power of expression, which manifests itself in constantly new variations that must again be allowed to flourish again in wine - and in every foodstuff'.

Readers tired of Euro-plonk will surely appreciate Joly's comment:

‘Our apparently progressive agriculture has largely destroyed the soil as a living entity. As a result, the soil is now hardly capable of sustaining growth. It has consequently become dependent on chemical fertilisers, which are inevitably absorbed into the vine itself... In the past, wine growers enriched the soil whereas nowadays, they feed the vines directly. This amply explains the ever-increasing uniformity of wines available from the retailer' (3).

As the grapes ripen, a critical situation develops in the last few weeks, crucial for final quality. The grapes have to be collected at their optimal stage of ripeness. As acid content of the grapes gradually decreases, the sugar content rises. After harvesting the grapes in September, they are crushed and the mix poured into barrels. That moment needs careful choosing, being the ‘birth-moment' of what will mature into wine, so make sure it's a fruit-day.

Maria Thun is collaborating with a wine-grower in the South of France. When I went to visit her, her research plot had various sprays of different copper concentrations applied to vine trees. Copper sulphate is regularly sprayed onto vines as an insecticide, but she was using higher dilutions of copper i.e. somewhat homeopathically. This was mainly to investigate insect resistance. 

In 1988, the huge Burgundy wine grower Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, which produces the most famous red Burgundy of all, announced its decision to go organic, which caused a sensation. In 1995 they formed an association for compost production, in an endeavour to revitalise the soil.

1990, the last sunspot maximum, is regarded as a classic wine-year. We will shortly reach a new sunspot maximum. As the Sun expands, with solar flares extending further out from its surface and aurorae maximising at Earth's poles, are the best wines then formed? To quote from Gauquelin's classic opus, ‘The Cosmic Clocks': 

‘According to the French Astronomical Bulletin, years in which the number of sun-spots is highest are great vintage years for Burgundy wines; in years with few sun-spots poor vintages are produced. The Swiss statistician A. Rima found similar results when he analysed the production of Rhine wines for the past two hundred years‘.
 

1) Jean Eliott, 'Plants & Planets, astrological gardening' 1996.

2) N. Joly, 'Le Vin du Ciel a la terre' Paris 1997.

3) A. Domin, 'Organic Wholefoods, naturally delicious cuisine' Konemann 1997.