Ep. 331 Monty Waldin on Biodynamic Wine | Biodynamic Sprays

Italian wine podcast. Chinchin with Italian wine people. Hello, and welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm your host, Monty Walden. In recent years, I've noticed increasing interest in ideas such as organic wines, so called natural wines, and Biodynamic wines. I'll read for you some excerpts from my book Biodynamic wine, and follow-up with some commentary on the topics covered for those interested in acquiring the full biodynamic wine text. It's available from my publisher, infinite ideas, who right now is offering a discount of fifteen percent. Through July thirty first twenty twenty. To get the discount, use the code, which is bio fifteen off at infiniteideas dot com. That's bio, which is bio one five o f f. This week, we'll provide an overview of some biodynamic preparation solutions along with the substances that go into them. So Rudolphsteiner created his nine biodynamic preparations from natural substances, Cal manure, quarts or silica, to the world's most abundant mineral, by the way, and seven medicinal plants making the preparations involves sheathing six of them in specifically chosen animal organs. Now we may find this discombobulating, but Steiner's contemporaries were quite used to butchering farm animals and game at home. Understanding each individual preparation becomes easier, if you think first of the original substance it's made from, whether it's mineral or plant, followed by whether the substance sheathed or not undergoes its transformation by being buried in the earth or hung in the air or soaked in water. And then the time of the year it is made, And finally, the period of the year through which it is left to transform. We've mentioned nine by dynamic preparations, three of these preparations are turned into field sprays, while six are applied as compost. Let's begin with those preparations that are sprayed onto fields to the vineyards, namely horn manure, horn silica, and common horsetail tee or fermented liquid manure. First, we'll discuss horn manure, also referenced by Biodynamic rovers using the preparation number five hundred. Horn manure five hundred or the Horndung or Cowdung preparation, as some call it, is the one preparation that those with only a passing interest in or awareness of biodynamics seemed have heard of. Hall manure may even be considered the nursery slope by a dynamic preparation because having mastered how to make it, bury a cow horn filled with cow manure for six months over winter, then dig it up and extract the manure from the horn and understood why it is used and how it is used in the way that it is. The rest of the biodynamic theory and practice no longer seems quite so impenetrable. Of all the manures, that from the cow appears unrivaled in the powerful yet efficient way it stimulates soil fertility, plant growth, and thus life. From a biodynamic perspective, manure is not simply vegetable matter that is broken down whilst passing through an animal's digestive system, but vegetable matter, which has also been impregnated with an animal's metabolic forces. Digestion releases energy as both intangible forces and tangible substances to nourish both the spiritual and physical body. Peter Proctor says that by improving both structure and humus levels in soil, the Horn manure five hundred helps increase the soil's water holding capacity by making it more permeable and humic and balancing soil pH by lowering it in alkaline soils and raising it in acid soils. The soil, whether dominated by clay or peat, will in time take on the same crumb structure he says. So wherever one is in the world, one should be able to cell if Horn manure five hundred is being used or not. Horn manure five hundred helps vine roots grow longer, deeper, thicker, and more spread out breaking apart pans and allowing improved nutrient uptake and resistance to climatic stress, especially drought. For the manure, collect fresh cow pat in autumn directly from the pasture before the animals are moved in side for winter. The manure can be put into the horns fresh on the day it is collected or may be kept for up to two days, frost free before being used. Manure can be stuffed into the horns by hand with the help of a wooden spatula or dowel. The filled horns should be buried in a pit up to seventy five centimeters deep. As Hall manure five hundred will take on some of the characteristics of the earth in which it is buried, the soil must be neither too clay or too sandy. The middle of a rich pasture treated with the biodynamic preparations for some time in which cows graze is ideal. The same pit can be used over and over again. The filled horns are usually buried at Autumn Equinox and dug up had spring Equinox six months later. The horns thus remain buried in during the entire winter. When the horns are dug up, six months later, their contents should be dark brown to brownish black in color, supple, colloidal, and elastic in texture and smelling pleasantly of hummus. A useful rule of thumb is that the contents of one horn are enough for one hectare of vines per year. Otherwise, a figure of thirty to a hundred and twenty grams per spray is normal. Demitors' biodynamic standards suggest a total of three hundred grams per hectare per year. The preparation is diluted in twenty five to one hundred and twenty liters of water, the exact volume depending on how much water is available, what kind of spray apparatus is being used to diffuse it, and how much land there is to cover. Spring Hall manure five hundred at least once is the bare minimum for a demeter certified biodynamic farm. Two or three annual applications are usual, one or two in autumn, and a final one in late winter or early spring. Rudolphsteiner was clear that spraying Horn manure five hundred was not to be seen as a substitute for spreading compost, but as a means of enhancing the effect that compost has on the land. Horn silica five zero one, corn silica five zero one, or horn quartz, or horn silicone, as it's sometimes known, is the year to horn manure as yang, while horn manure five hundred influences the lower part of the vine and its roots, corn silica five zero one influences the upper part of the vine, namely its shoots, leaves, and the wine grapes. Very finely ground quartz has a large light reflecting surface area. This is put into cow horns which are then buried in the soil to expose the silica to the light and warmth of summer. When stirred in water for one hour and sprayed onto plants, this preparation conveys light qualities that have been transformed by the summer processes in the soil. This light energy promotes and organizes plant metabolism. Stimulating photosynthesis in the leaf by spraying horn silica five zero one helps chlorophyll formation. This in turn stimulates enhanced fruiting, fertilization seed formation, both during the year the vines are sprayed and in the following year too because the reserve buds for the following year form on the current year's fruiting shoots. Vine sprayed with horn silica five zero one, produce grapes with increased disease resistance, enhanced aroma, color and flavor, higher nutritional quality with lower nitrates and increased trimata, and which produce wines with enhanced aging potential. Rudolphsteiner described how to make horn silica five zero one. Once again, take cow horns, but instead of stuffing them with manure, fill them with quartz that has been ground to a powder and mixed with water to the consistency of a very thin dough is what he said. Courts, the most common mineral found on earth is mainly composed of the compound silica. The most familiar silica rich substances we come across in our everyday lives include sand and glass. In biodynamics, quartz in crystalline form usually gathered either as rocks from mountain slopes or riverbeds is commonly used. Corn silica five zero one should spend six months in the ground during its preparation, either between the spring and autumn equinoxes when the earths force are outwardly directed or centrifugal or between summer and winter solstice. A horn silica spray preparation for a hectare of land is prepared by adding five grams or one level teaspoon to thirty to seventy liters of water. Horn silica five zero one is the quickest biodynamic field spray preparation to apply. For even with the lightest of breezes, Several rows can be sprayed with a single pass. Spreading vegetative growth is encouraged if horn seneca five zero one is sprayed in the early morning, the time when the earth begins to exhale forces. And as the sun is rising to establish a connection between the crops and the light forces. A common horsetail five zero eight. This spray preparation lacks the cornerstone status of the two horn preparations five hundred and five zero one and shares none of the near mystically weird methodology of the solid compost preparations, five zero two to five zero six. It doesn't get sheath in an animal organ, it doesn't get buried in the ground or hung in the sun. The common horsetail, or equisitum arch vents, plant, is a very light, fern like perennial, which grows along shady river banks and lakesides, or anywhere where drainage is poor. The common horse tail five zero eight spray preparation can be made either as a fresh tea or as a fermented liquid manure. Pierre Mason suggests harvesting fresh plant material each year year to maintain this preparation's effectiveness, making common horsetail five zero eight as a fresh tea. The plant fronts are picked and dried in airy shade until needed but should retain their green color. For one hectare of vines, add roughly one hundred to three hundred grams to between two and five liters of water. This is then brought to a rolling boil on a low flame to, quotes, loosen up the fronds, then covered and left to simmer for thirty minutes to an hour. From the concentrate, make a ten to twenty percent dilution either by adding water or by adding the concentrate directly to vineyard sprays, like those used to combat downy and powdery mildew making common horsetail five zero eight as a fermented liquid manure. Common till tea left to macerate in a glazed crock or other storage container with a loose fitting lid for ten to fourteen days at ambient temperature or in the sun will ferment with no negative effect on its usefulness. A distinctive smelling gas hydrogen sulfide is given off sulfur being one important constituent of common horsetail and silica being another. The fermented liquid manure version of common horsetail is usually employed as a soil rather than crop spray to carry solar and other warmth or light forces into the soil. Thus, it can be sprayed in less pressured moments such as late autumn and early bring, and on areas of the vineyard where experience suggests potentially harmful fungi are likely to appear. This is just a brief introduction to those biodynamic preparations that are applied as field sprays. Steiner and his contemporaries may have come up with explanations for why their treatments worked. That might seem odd to us today. Meanwhile, we now have the benefit of alternate explanations that provide insight into what is actually happening in the environment, such as the case of hormone you are changing the physical structure of the soil, regulating pH stimulating soil biota and improving water retention through the introduction of organic matter. As always, thank you for listening to the Italian wine podcast and join us next week for more biodynamic wine and biodynamic preparations, we'll start to delve into the biodynamic preparations that are not applied as sprays, but rather as compost. Of course, if you're interested in my book, biodynamic wine, my publisher infinite ideas is currently offering fifteen percent off through July the thirty first two thousand twenty with offer code bio one five, o f f. Listen to the Italian one podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Pod casts, Himalaya FM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. 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