Biodynamic wine, including the awkward parts.
Organic farming plus a philosophy. Some of it is sound agriculture. Some of it is harder to defend. Here is which is which.
Yes, some of it sounds like astrology.
Biodynamic farming involves burying a cow horn packed with manure over winter, and timing certain vineyard tasks to the moon. If your first reaction is scepticism, that is a reasonable first reaction and we are not going to talk you out of it.
You also do not have to believe any of it to enjoy the wine. Nobody is going to ask you at the table what you think about lunar calendars.
What follows is the honest version — what it involves, what holds up, and what does not.
Organic, plus a closed farm and a calendar.
The baseline is organic: no synthetic fertiliser, no synthetic pesticide or herbicide. Everything else is on top of that.
The farm is meant to work as a self-contained organism. Animals produce manure, the manure becomes compost, the compost feeds the vines, and as little as possible is bought in from outside. Meinklang’s three hundred cattle in Burgenland are doing exactly that job.
Then there are the preparations — nine numbered composts and sprays, some of them prepared in ways that sound distinctly odd — and a calendar that assigns days to root, leaf, flower and fruit work.
Demeter is the certification body, and it has been running since the 1920s. A Demeter label means somebody inspected the farm, which is more than the phrase "natural" can claim.
The farming holds up. The magic is unproven.
The evidence that the specific preparations do what they are said to do is thin, and controlled trials that separate them from ordinary organic practice are rare and inconclusive. Anyone claiming otherwise is overstating.
What is not in dispute is that biodynamic estates tend to be farmed with unusual attention — smaller yields, more hand work, more time spent looking at the vines — and that attention shows up in the glass whatever you believe about the horn.
So the useful way to read "biodynamic" on a label is not as proof of anything mystical. It is a reliable signal that somebody is farming carefully and has submitted to being checked.
Four growers, four different depths of commitment.
Meinklang in Austria is Demeter-certified and has been since 2003, on one of the largest biodynamic farms in Europe.
Monte Dall’Ora in Valpolicella went biodynamic by 2006, on terraces they rebuilt themselves.
Chatzivaritis in northern Greece has farmed organically since planting in 1994 and has been moving towards biodynamic work since 2017.
And Tsiakkas in the Troodos mountains has been organic since 1995 — not biodynamic, and we are not going to describe them as something they are not.
Come and ignore the philosophy.
Drink the wine, decide whether you like it, and let the cow horn remain somebody else’s business. We stop at a hundred pizzas a day — the earlier you come, the better your chances.
The things people actually ask.
Q.What is biodynamic wine?
Biodynamic wine comes from vineyards farmed to a system that begins with organic practice — no synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides — and adds a closed-loop farm, a set of nine numbered compost and spray preparations, and a calendar linking tasks to lunar cycles. Demeter, founded in the 1920s, is the main certifying body.
Q.Is biodynamic wine better than organic wine?
There is no strong evidence that the biodynamic preparations themselves improve the wine, and controlled comparisons with ordinary organic farming are rare and inconclusive. What biodynamic estates reliably share is low yields and a high level of hand attention in the vineyard, which does affect quality.
Q.Where can I drink biodynamic wine in Cyprus?
Filomena Pizzeria Napoletana, at 1 Aristotelous in Larnaca, Cyprus, pours biodynamic wines including Meinklang from Burgenland, Austria, and Monte Dall’Ora from Valpolicella, Italy, alongside Neapolitan pizza. It is open Tuesday to Sunday, 6pm to 10pm.