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Organic Wine
To explain what an organic wine is, means making a differentiation between two processes. The first one, the most important and also the most difficult to achieve, is the cultivation of the vineyard. During this process, the utilization of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers is absolutely prohibited.
That means, appealing to mechanical and manual labours of the ground, the utilization of vegetable covers, the fertilization with supplies of manure or compost, and finally the prevention of diseases by using allowed products.
Another point to be concerned is the wine elaboration. There are no great differences between the organic method and the traditional one.
What it is authorized is the utilization of selected or native yeasts (which were not genetically modified), the use of cold, the clarification by natural proteins or bentonites, the filtration with soils and the restricted utilization of sulphur dioxide. The proportion of sulphur dioxide is practically the same than the traditional method´s; the international rules demand not to overpass the 70mg per litre for red wines and the 80mg/litre for white and rosé ones, levels which are unusually exceeded thanks to appropriate techniques inside the cellar.
The flavour quality between a wine of these characteristics and a conventional one is similar; the difference resides in the productive process: it is cleaner and it always favors the protection of the environmental quality.
Such the grapes production as the wine elaboration must be certified by private organisms, of which intervention in the process is as a third (non involved) that kept a monitoring to guarantee the organic condition.
The export is a new and promising activity, within the framework of a vine growing from an old tradition, ecologically well adapted, which evolves in matter of quality, differentiation and consolidation at the main industrialised countries.
Conclusion: The organic wine is, above all, wine.
And it is sold not only because of being organic, but because it is a high-quality wine that transmits amazing pleasure and sensations.
Finally, its condition of organic is just one more from lots, which implicates, above all, a commitment with the protection of health and, once and for all, the respect for nature.
Source: "Los Andes" Online Newspaper