Can organic wine really be ?

More and more people are looking for and buying organic wine, but one can wonder if an organic wine really is. Beaux-Vins tells you all about the subject…

Il y a des thèmes dont j’aime bien parler. Le Beaujolais en fait partie et vous l’aurez certainement déjà remarqué, mais le vin bio est aussi un sujet que je trouve passionnant. Le vigneron, poussé par une philosophie biologique, est prêt à faire de gros efforts — investir du temps, de l’argent et prendre des risques — pour que son vin soit meilleur pour le consommateur, mais aussi pour la nature et les générations futures. In short terms, on ne peut que le féliciter d’une telle démarche. But a question can quickly come to mind : can organic wine really be totally ?

Consumption of organic wine in France

It should be noted that France is the second largest producer of organic wine in the world behind Spain, but occupies the first place in terms of organic wine market. A performance that many other European countries envy us. One in three French people consume organic wine regularly and they are prepared to pay more for the respect of the environment.

But what is most important is the wine market in France. Indeed, organic wine represents 10 % sales of organic products in France !

Where does the consumer buy his organic wine ?

The vast majority of people buy their wine in supermarkets. Yet, concerning organic the trend is very different - and that surprises —. Between 2007 to 2012, sales of organic wine grew by 66 % to reach 413 M€. We could have imagined that supermarkets are taking the biggest slice of the pie, but they only represent 20 % Sales.

In fact, it is the producers themselves who sell their production to consumers (36 %). Then come the stores specializing in organic products that sell it. 27 %, then the supermarkets (19 %) and finally the wine merchants who progress more and more to reach 17 %.

Back to our question

The anti-pesticide association Générations Futures publishes reports on the presence of pesticides in food. Every time, products from organic farming always do much better than conventional products. The reason is quite simple, the main pesticide used in the organic sector, the copper, is never a wanted substance. So, by simply reading the research report we can say that the product is indeed organic.

Agriculture and Environment therefore wanted to verify the veracity of this research in collaboration with Wikiagri. In 2015, twenty-nine samples of organic wines from all regions of France and purchased in a specialized store, as well as in several supermarkets in the Paris region, were thus entrusted to three independent laboratories (Girpa, Eurofins and Dubernet), so that they can analyze the presence of copper.

Current regulations allow the presence of 1 mg of copper per liter of wine. The Eurofins laboratory has detected quantifiable residues in 31 % samples with a quantification of 0,1 mg / l. The Dubernet laboratory detected copper in 27 of 29 samples with a threshold of 0,02 mg / l - it's already huge, But it is not finished —. The Girpa laboratory highlights the presence of copper residues in 100 % samples with a threshold of 0,01 mg / l !

What to understand

An organic wine free of pesticides or copper simply does not exist for several reasons : it can be the neighbor who is in traditional viticulture and the pesticides are found in the neighboring plots, soil and water that is saturated with pesticide, or simply a permissive copper rate.

By carrying out a more in-depth study than that normally used for synthetic pesticides, residues of the main fungicide used organically are found in all of the samples. Copper residues are therefore much more present in organic wines than are synthetic pesticides in food from conventional agriculture.. And even better, there is no difference in quantities between the copper detected in organic wines, and what can be found in terms of synthetic plant protection products in products from conventional agriculture.

Is it really a bad thing ?

This rate represents approximately the amount of pesticide residues that would be found in more than 1’000 l of water containing 0,5 g / l of pesticide residues - for information, this is the European potability standard for all pesticides in water —. This equates to about three years of consuming water at a rate of one liter per day !

Chronic exposure to copper is still considered a probable cause of the onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.. - so it's not really trivial -

It is important to have a finish