Lola Gayle, STEAM Register
Raise your glass and drink up! A new study has found that wine made from environmentally friendly grapes really does taste better.
The study, conducted by UCLA researchers, looked at reviews and scores for more than 74,000 California wines from the magazines Wine Advocate, Wine Enthusiast and Wine Spectator. On a standardized 100-point scale, eco-certified wines scored an average of 4.1 points higher.
“The bottom line is that however we look at it, we find that organic and biodynamic farming has these small but significant positive effects on wine quality,” said Magali Delmas, a UCLA environmental economist and professor in the UCLA Anderson School of Management and lead author of the study published in the Journal of Wine Economics. Her co-authors include Jinghui Lim, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher with IoES and UCLA Anderson, and Olivier Gergaud, an economics professor at the Kedge Business School in Bordeaux, France.
Only California eco-certified wines were analyzed during this study, but the research team expects the results to apply broadly, since California produces 90 percent of the wine in the United States. Preliminary findings on a study looking at French wine showed similar results, Delmas said.
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The study looked at eco-certified wines, which include wine made with grapes from organic and biodynamic farms. The study did not include organic wine, which refers not only to how the grapes were grown but also how the wine was made. Most notably, organic wine cannot contain added sulfites, an important preservative, Delmas told UCLA reporter Alison Hewitt.
Surprisingly, two-thirds of eco-certified California wineries do not showcase the seals on their bottles, possibly because of the general customer sentiment that eco-labeled wines are of lower quality. Delmas therefore hopes the research will inspire vintners to show off their eco-certifications more boldly, and encourage more wineries to take up environmental practices.
“Wine makers say it’s better for the quality of the wine,” Delmas said. “It’s a purer taste with more sense of the terroir, because when you replace pesticides with labor, you have hands-on care for the vines and you improve the composition of the soil and you get back all the life — the microbes, insects, bees and worms that you need in agriculture.”
While Delmas’ previous research has shown that vintners’ top motivation for using environmental practices is to improve the quality of their wine, it’s not the only reason. Particularly at family farms, where the owners plan to pass the property on to their children, a key motivation is to provide a cleaner environment for future generations, her research has found.
So drink up that eco-wine. It’s good for the environment, cheaper than the alternative — and science shows it tastes just a little bit better.
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