Dispute over organic wine at the Salone del Gusto in Turin

At the Salone del Gusto, which closed on 29 October in Turin, organic wine took centre stage, so much so that the national daily La Repubblica devoted to it the central page of the "Cibo" supplement produced especially for the Turin event.

If on the one hand the development of agro-industry, together with chemistry, has guaranteed an undeniable increase in the average quality of wine products, making it possible to successfully tackle pest control and boost soil productivity while containing overall production costs, on the other hand pesticides, herbicides and the many substances used in agriculture have, over the long term, impoverished soils to the point of rendering them sterile.

The economic crisis seems to have sharpened the clash, which began about 10 years ago, between organic producers and producers who use every tool made available by agronomic technologies. The authors describe the two players in the field as incapable of dialogue with one another: the "organic" camp convinced they are the last custodians of age-old traditions, the "agro-technicians" convinced they represent a bulwark against the return of a medieval obscurantism, in defence of modern technology.

The conclusion the authors reach is that "wine has in any case always been the product of human transformation. And a wine born on untouched land, from century-old vines of a local variety, vinified without sulphites and bottled without the addition of any chemical substances whatsoever, can still be a poor wine, despite being authentic. A wine produced from cabernet grapes using modern techniques, selected yeasts and aged in barriques can be a wine of the greatest expressive naturalness".

And the truth lies in the middle: "those who fight for respect for nature, for the reduction of physical and chemical interventions and the exaltation of the character of the terroir have our respect. Conversely, those who abuse the permissiveness of Italian and European law to add lawful but artificial substances to wine and manipulate it have our condemnation".