The Organic Italian Wine Trend – The Reasons Why This is the Wine of the Future

Have you heard about the organic wine trend that’s sweeping the globe?

At Xtrawine, we’ve long been supporters of the growing trend to go organic among many Italian wine producers. A quick search of our website will show you that we offer dozens of organic Italian wines.

The movement has been a pretty big thing in Italy for quite some time now.

But we’re also starting to see other countries trend towards going organic.

Take the UK for instance. Supermarket chain Waitrose says that 2018 saw its sales of organic wines increase by about 57%. And one survey of consumers showed that people would be willing to pay up to a third extra to buy an organic bottle of wine over a regular bottle.

And that’s just in the UK.

In the USA, we’ve seen sales or organic wine go up year-on-year from 2007 all the way up to 2016. Today, sales of organic wine in the country total more than $300 million per year.

That’s a not insignificant chunk of money.

While organic wine has been around for quite a while now, it’s the increasing awareness that surrounds this type of wine that’s leading to its success.

The simple fact is that going organic becomes more and more popular every single year. And each year, we see a whole bunch of producers creating their own organic wines, in addition to new wine makers cropping up who focus solely on this niche.

Why is organic wine a trend that you need to look out for? Here are some of the reasons why we think this may be the winemaking technique of the future.

Reason #1 – It Protects Consumers

The move towards organic in all types of food stuffs has a focus on the overall health of the consumer.

The grapes used to make a regular bottle of wine will likely have seen exposure to some man-made chemicals during the production process. These may include pesticides and herbicides, as well as the sulphate that producers often add to their wines.

The issue here is that these chemicals aren’t supposed to find their way into the human body. Yet non-organic wines may contain them, even if it’s only in trace amounts.

Organic producers only use natural products when they’re making their wines. In fact, the use of man-made chemicals is completely banned. The EU, along with several other governing bodies, will not allow a wine to carry the organic label if it’s anything less than fully natural.

That means wines that are better for consumers, which leads to more people wanting to buy organic.

Reason #2 – It Protects the Land

Every single person who makes wine, from the smallest producer at home through to the major producers that span the globe, love the land on which they grow their grapes.

It’s the terroir that lends their wines such unique tastes, which is why organisations like the DOC place such a high importance on regions when classifying wines.

Despite all of this love, there’s no denying that traditional wine production can damage the land. Unnatural chemicals get into the soil, which affects its quality over long periods of time. These chemicals can also change the entire eco-system of the vineyard, which again has an effect on the land.

Going organic means that producers offer more protection to their own land. Using natural fertilizers and pesticides results in their land replenishing its own strength faster, which leads to the production of higher quality wines.

Protecting the land means the producer can use it over a longer time period. In terms of pure sustainability, it makes business sense to go organic so that you can get even more from your land.

Reason #3 – Organic is Practically a Brand

The above two reasons for the organic trend show that there’s a large market niche that worries about the impact that our agricultural practices have on the planet. They want to see producers using more sustainable and environmentally-friendly practices in their work.

Organic wines provide all of this. As mentioned earlier, the production methods do a lot to protect the land. However, proponents or organic wines will also tell you that they take less energy to produce. That’s because they don’t use the man-made chemicals that require energy to create and transport.

Thus, organic wines are cleaner when it comes to the producer’s carbon footprint.

For these people, seeing organic on a label is a reason for them to buy.

And in that sense, organic has become something of a brand in its own right. It’s a badge of honour that producers can wear to show that their wine offers something a little different from everything else on the shelf.

And it works.

It’s the power of the organic “brand” that leads to people being willing to pay more for a bottle of wine if it’s labelled as organic.

Producers will be taking note of all of this. And it’s likely that we’ll see organic wines become more prominent simply due to how readily people attach themselves to the brand.

Reason #4 – The Flavours

Now this is perhaps the most contentious reason on this list. And we’re not going to say that organic Italian wines taste better than regular Italian wines. In the end, that’s completely subjective.

However, there’s certainly a noticeable difference between organic and regular wines.

Organic wines tend to have earthier tones that some would describe as being “cleaner”. They are perhaps truer representations of what the land had to offer than their non-organic counterparts.

The Final Word

It would be wrong to suggest that organic wines are objectively better than regular wines. We’re big believers in treating every bottle individually rather than applying qualities to an entire niche of wine.

However, there’s no ignoring the fact that there’s a definite trend towards organic production. More and more people buy organic every single year and the Italian wine industry has responded with more and more producers creating organic wines.

We predict that organic will grow for years to come. And who knows? Perhaps we’ll see it overtake current farming practices in the future.