April 2009 Gary's Wine Club Selections

A Good Kind of Green

We're hearing the word green thrown around quite a bit these days, in reference to everything from household cleaners to transportation. But in the wine world, calling a bottling "green" hasn't always had positive connotations. In less eco-conscious times, a "green" wine was a wine made from grapes that had been picked a little too early, before they were fully ripe, resulting in a thinner texture and tart vegetal taste on the finish.

But today, we often call wines "green" as a form of praise for their eco-friendly farming practices. Here at Gary's, we've begun identifying wines that we know to be either organically, biodynamically, or sustainably farmed with "Gary's Green Selections" tags. It can be tricky to navigate the intricacies of the terminology (after all, "organic wine" has an entirely different meaning than "wine made from organic grapes"), but we think that sharing this information is at least a step in the right direction toward being ecologically-informed wine drinkers.

So this month, in celebration of Earth Day on April 22nd and all things deferential to Mother Nature, we tip our hats to the wineries that, in some form or other, have "gone green" in the best sense of the word. No vegetal tang, we promise.

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