The Organic Sommelier Blog

Most "buy Barolo" pages start with a history lesson and end with a generic shopping cart. We start with what's in the warehouse. Right now, if you want Barolo from The Organic Wine Store, you're looking at three bottles from one estate — Tenuta Cucco in Serralunga d'Alba — and...

Italy makes more organic wine than any other country. That is not a marketing claim; it is an EU agricultural statistic. Italy has over 120,000 hectares of organic vineyard, roughly a sixth of its total vine area. And unlike countries where "organic" arrived as a premium retail category, many Italian...

If you have been searching for sulfite-free wine online, you have probably noticed two things: it is hard to find, and most of what comes up is misleading. Wines labeled "sulfite free" usually are not. Wines labeled "organic" might still have sulfites added. And most online wine shops do not...

If you've ever had a headache after a glass of wine and blamed sulfites, you're not alone. "Sulfite free wine" is one of the most searched wine terms online, and the confusion around it is real. Here's what's actually going on. Every wine contains sulfites Sulfites (sulfur dioxide, SO2) are...

Nebbiolo is seldom a mass-market crowd-pleaser on the first sip. It doesn't hit you with ripe fruit and velvet tannins like a traditional Cabernet or Merlot. It's pale in the glass, almost deceptively so, and the tannins can be fierce when the wine is young. But give it time, and...

The wines we're drawn to tend to come from the same kinds of places. Small estates where the family still walks the rows. Hillside vineyards where the soil hasn't been stripped by decades of chemical shortcuts. Cellars where the winemaker makes decisions by tasting, not by spreadsheet. These are producers...

The short answer: organic wine comes from grapes grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, or artificial agents. The longer answer is more interesting, and more complicated. What makes wine "organic"? The vineyard Organic winemaking starts in the dirt. Conventional vineyards rely on a chemical toolkit to manage pests, weeds,...