Market Watch: Biodynamic Wine and Olive Oil

Albany Patch takes a look at the people behind the . Michael O'Looney from Santa Rosa describes the pristine ecosystem from which his olive oils and wines come from.

What is the name of your farm and where is it located?

It’s called . It’s a family winery located in Glen Ellen, CA, up near the town of Sonoma, under the shadow of Sonoma Mountain. 

How did the company get connected with the Albany farmers market?

Well this is our first visit here. This is Benziger’s first market, and I think we’re going to do a few more in Sonoma County. The company is looking to make an appearance in different farmers markets throughout the North Bay. 

I’m new at this, coming out here. Ordinarily I give tours at the winery, I work in the tasting room. But they needed somebody to come down and somebody asked me and I thought it’d be fun.

What products did you bring to the Albany farmers market?

We bring our biodynamic wine and our biodynamic olive oil. Biodynamics is a much more complex advanced form of organic farming where the focus is trying to engineer an environment and making it as biodiverse and healthy as possible for the raising of your fruit. Benziger Winery, they were the first ones to produce a biodynamic wine in America. And it took them about seven years to make the transition from being a conventional vineyard to becoming a biodynamic vineyard.

So this is the estate reserve olive oil, which is from older trees and is pressed three times, so pretty powerful stuff. It's $29.95. And this is our extra virgin olive oil, which is twice pressed, it’s $24. You know, we have about 1,200 olive trees on the property.

That over there is a Bordeaux blend. It’s made of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, petit Bordeaux. It’s all estate fruit. The bottle is ordinarily $45 but today for the people of the East Bay here on Solano Avenue, it’s $25. 

Do you think people at the farmers market will find the prices too high?

I never found that problem before, maybe once. Somebody tried to convince me that two-buck chuck is as good as our wines. 

And you said?

Well I refrain from saying anything offensive. Benziger’s put in a lot of effort and investment into converting their vineyard into a biodynamic ranch and the result is we had extensive soil testing done last year and the geologists concluded it was one of the healthiest vineyards they’d ever seen in California. So from healthy dirt you’ve got great fruit and from great fruit you get your better wines. These are wines that are exceptional to begin with and they are getting better all the time. The land gets healthier and healthier.

Can you explain what makes the biodynamic processing different?

As a biodynamic vineyard it’s a closed, self-sustaining farming system where we have everything within our property we need for the growing of our fruit. We make our own compost. We have our gardens, which attract the kind of insects we need to attack the insects that attack our vines. We have a special ground covering that adds micronutrients to the soil. We have our animals, a herd of 150 sheep, 10 Scottish Highlander cows which graze during the dormant season, till the land and fertilize it. And we have our own recycling and water purification system. So everything's there, we’ve eliminated dependency on all chemicals. Don’t have to go outside our front gates for anything we need to make our wine.

So far we haven’t sold anything but hope forever springs eternal. And it looks like they have a lot of nice products here at the market.

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at emilier@patch.com.