Emiliana Organic Vineyards

The Free Bacchus Story

The received wisdom is that biodynamic farming only works at small scale — that the attention it requires cannot be sustained across large acreage. Emiliana is the largest certified biodynamic and organic wine producer in South America, which makes it a useful test of that assumption.

The full programme runs across the estate vineyards in Colchagua and Casablanca: preparations, composting, cover crops, livestock integrated for soil fertility, under IMO organic and Demeter biodynamic certification. Doing that at volume is a management problem rather than an agronomic one, and it is the management that usually defeats people.

Four bodies audit four different things here, and none of them substitutes for another: organic through IMO in 2001, biodynamic through Demeter in 2006, carbon neutral through TÜV SÜD in 2009, Fair Trade through FLO in 2011.

Coyam, the flagship Colchagua blend of Syrah, Carmenère, Merlot and Mourvèdre, has drawn 95 points from Wine Advocate and marks the ceiling of what the farming produces here. The Adobe range carries organic certification at genuinely everyday prices, which makes it one of the strongest arguments available that certified organic wine need not be a premium purchase.

For a great many drinkers this is the first certified organic South American wine they encounter, and the quality at the top of the range is what makes the commitment credible across the rest of it.