Wine Knowledge

Henschke’s Approach to Biodynamics 2006

Biodynamic viticulture - beyond organic

As the chief viticulturalist at the estate, Prue Henschke is a passionate advocate of biodynamic vineyard management and has been overseeing the change to organic and biodynamic culture in Henschke's vineyards. Biodynamism is a complex method involving natural homeopathic treatments and the use of the lunar calendar to determine the best moment to treat the vines and to harvest the grapes. However, the central principle of biodynamism is a simple one, namely to ensure a healthy balance between the soil, local plant life and the environment. Its impact is not just on the grape, but potentially too on the finished wine: adherents around the world believe that it is the interaction between the vine and the biology of the soil that ultimately leads to the expression of terroir in the finished wine. Winemakers who use biodynamic principles acknowledge that monocultures have a detrimental effect on the soil and so use organic treatments such as cow dung, achile, chamomile, nettle, oak bark, dandelion and valerian to build humus. Henschke's methodical vineyard regime involves the use of Canola oil (a variant of rapeseed) to treat leaves against threats, an approved biodynamic treatment. The Henschke vineyard is at the forefront of sustainable grape growing and winemaking, recycling both water and plant mass and most recently utilising posts made from recycled plastics in place of chemically treated wood, the conventional practice. And, following a long term study conducted by Prue, the vineyard is 'green covered' with native grass species, a practice believed to be a first in Australia.

Our Environmental Policy states our aim to “operate a profitable family business, utilising sustainable viticultural and farming practices within a healthy functioning ecosystem and produce premium quality products” such as wine. In 2003/4 Stephen and I took a big leap of faith and instigated some organic trials across our vineyards.

Our trials cover 35 hectares of our Keyneton vineyards, which includes Hill of Grace, Mount Edelstone and the Home Gardens (mainly Grenache) and also a very new vineyard of Shiraz diagonally opposite Hill of Grace on a similar red-brown earth. This vineyard has been laid out on NW-SE rows to face the morning sun and the midrows have been sown with local native species - one half has a creeping saltbush Atriplex semibaccata which forms a carpet of the most wonderful habitat for beneficial insects such as ladybird larvae and the other half has the local Wallaby Grasses Danthonia spp which are favourite feeding sites for a number of native wasps. So you can see there was every reason to go to a nature-friendly system such as biodynamic viticulture. We also have two hectares of Chardonnay and three hectares of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot on our Eden Valley vineyard (700mm annual rainfall) and, to test the boundaries, I have 1.2ha of Chardonnay at Lenswood in the Adelaide Hills (1148mm annual rainfall) that has been operating as an organic trial for two years and now I am changing to biodynamics.

My interest in biodynamics was stimulated by the focus of biodynamic management on soil health. I attended a two-day biodynamism workshop nearby in the Adelaide Hills which made the processes easier to follow (the moon and planet cycles are the hardest to get into your head but we have our Antipodean Astro Calendar to walk us through each month!). Directly after the workshop a fellow workmate and I diligently collected the freshest manure from our 22 beautiful Murray Grey cattle and set to work preparing our cowpat peat, churning it for an hour in a cement mixer adding all the preparations and ground eggshells before plopping the frothy green "milkshake" into the buried half barrel under the shade of a Blackwood tree (Acacia melanoxylon - very important for nitrogen supply). I also set up a compost heap as a trial to develop compost for the vineyards. This required an Enviroment Protection Agency licence so some serious preparation had to be done. It will now be used to process all our stalks and grapeskins from each vintage, instead of them being sent off for spirit production, and the compost will be used to dress our vines.

We have sprayed our first soil preparations using the matured cow pat peat, cow horn manure (500) and horn clay on the descending moon in October this year across all the biodynamic vineyards. The latter two preparations I was able to buy from our biodynamic association in northern New South Wales. We developed a tank for spraying out the soil preparations - aptly named the "Little Red Beetle" - towed behind an all terrain vehicle at the amazingly low rate of 175g of soil preparation per hectare. We also sprayed out the Horn Silica the next morning at dawn. I included some 508 in the soil prep made from Equisetum but will be using our local Sheoak spp (Allocasuarina spp) in future to make my own 508.

There is some talk of using emu eggs instead of cow horns for the preparation of 500 - I'm not sure which is rarer to come by - but we get a lot of support from Biodynamic Agriculture Australia so some of the rarer preparations are easier to order in. The one thing that has held us back from becoming fully organic or Biodynamic has been weed control because our soils are too fragile to even contemplate regular cultivation, as is the way with organics. However we have now sourced two new tools; one is a weeder blade that cuts under the straw mulch, slicing through the weeds and the other is Bio Weed Control which is a form of pine oil that has the most amazing desiccating effect on weeds, in particular broadleaf weeds that compete with the native (and exotic) grasses.

All our fungicide sprays are of organic origin and are approved by the Biological Farmers Association of Australia on these sites. So we are well on our way and will gradually build up our expertise and biodynamic vineyard area over the next couple of seasons.