A biodynamic vigneron in the Marco de Jerez region

At the beginning of May, the Muchada-Léclapart team took part in a training course on the Goethean approach to the plant world led by botanist Jean Michel Florin, director of the agricultural section of the Goetheanum and organised by the biodynamic farm Entheos, in Lerin (Navarra). We share here some [...]

Rudolf Steiner, the father of biodynamic agriculture, worked for several years in Johan Goethe's archive in Weimar, studying his scientific writings, which had not been analysed as a whole. Goethe is the great German playwright, the “German Cervantes”, but he also produced an important scientific work, based on his scientific writings.

In 2022, the publishing house Atalanta published in Spain the beautiful and delicate work of Professor Gordon I. Miller, from Seattle University, who has republished The Metamorphosis of Plants, a work by the German philosopher and writer Goethe (with wonderful illustrations and photographs, by the way). In this post

It is said that the traditional pruning of the Marco de Jerez, called Vara y pulgar, is like a simple Guyot; however, it would be correct to say it the other way round: the Guyot pruning is like the Vara y pulgar, since the documentary records are much earlier. The pruning was invented and perfected by

I don't know when the Palomino grape was vilified. I suppose it was in the 1970s when chemicals and tractors were introduced in the vineyards of the Marco del Jerez. This caused the production per hectare to triple -because the Palomino is a variety that can reach a maximum of three times the yield per hectare.

This year it has been 10 years since David Léclapart and I met. It was on a trip -which I consider an initiation- to France. I knew nothing about the world of wine or biodynamic agriculture. At that time I was in the middle of writing my doctoral thesis.

Until very recently, only the bodegas in the Marco de Jerez were talked about. The uniqueness of the criaderas and soleras system, and the complexity of the biological (under flor) and oxidative ageing methods, made this possible. The bodegas of the Marco de Jerez have been able to safeguard

I love to tell this anecdote, because I think it symbolises very well the figure of the “vigneron” that I learn with David. -Vigneron would be translated into English as winegrower; however, in French it has another symbolic meaning. In the French wine world, vigneron means to take a step forward, and to pass on to the next generation.

When we started looking for plots where we could apply biodynamic agriculture and make our dry white wines, it was clear to us that we wanted to find old palomino vines. The main reason is that the old palomino vines are of massal selection; that is to say: they did not come from nurseries, nor did they

I like to think of vineyard treatments as messages we send to the vines. Biodynamic agriculture itself limits our use of minerals such as copper or sulphur to a huge extent compared to conventional agriculture: possibly to a tenth of what we use in conventional agriculture. Conventional winegrowers sometimes talk about