Organic wines are always in high demand here at TLSofJH, and we spend a good bit of time in the wine department seeking them out. There is a lot of confusion surrounding what makes a wine organic and how labeling a wine as organic can be carried out.

The dilemma with organic wines (and what sets them apart from other organic foods) is the importance of sulphur-dioxide (SO2) in the winemaking process. Perhaps you’ve seen a lot more European organic wines and this is because Europe has a different definition of organic. Here in the US to be labeled USDA Organic, a wine must be made from organically grown grapes and bottled without added sulfites. In Europe, organic is defined as a wine made from organically grown grapes that may contain added sulfites.

Organic wines from the US must not add sulfites, which in most scenarios greatly reduces a wine’s shelf life and, in some cases, can substantially change the flavor. Wineries find themselves in a quandary because spending the time and effort to farm organically grown grapes is immediately lost if they use SO2 in the bottling line.

I am currently compiling a list of all of the wines from organically farmed vineyards we carry here at TLSofJH — identified by this symbol  — which is no small undertaking in a store of this size. Forget about putting together a list of our wines from sustainably farmed vineyards, it would simply be unwieldy. Narrowing the focus to organically-grown wines still produced a list much larger than I expected. 

My plan for the list is to have it available in the store and featured online, but it is still a work in progress at this point.  Due to the length of the list, this page will feature a rotating selection of organically-grown wine from various growing regions, updated monthly. 

For a more comprehensive list, please enter "organic" in the search bar.

—Kevin McNamara, CSW, Wine Buyer