Green Drink
“Green Drink” is the fifth episode released on season 1 of the Frey Vines podcast, devoted to telling you the story of organic wine. In honor of Earth Day, our April edition of the podcast is all about how we are a green winery that makes a green drink for you to enjoy. Tune into this episode to hear Eliza, Katrina, and Molly Frey explain how Frey Vineyards has pioneered the category of organic wines in the USA, from organic grape farming to USDA labeling to requiring organic yeast for organic wines. For a full transcript of this episode and every episode of the Frey Vines podcast, you can visit www.freywine.com/blog
MOLLY FREY: Welcome to the fifth episode of the Frey Vines Podcast! In this episode, we’ll look at all the ways in which Frey Vineyards is a green winery that makes a green drink. From our organic and Biodynamic vineyard practices to our signature certified organic winemaking style, we are the pioneers of real organic wine in the USA.
ELIZA FREY: Frey Vineyards was started by people who were really interested in organic and chemical-free living, and so when it became clear that wine was the path they were going on, it just made sense that it would be an organic and pure wine through and through. And that's something that the owners and proprietors of the business, it's something that we've really all held onto and are really committed to. We want any wines that we're producing to be wines that we ourselves would want to drink. And I would say we're a pretty picky bunch in terms of chemical free living, organic food, and what we choose to put in our bodies.
KATRINA FREY: There’s still a huge need, in my opinion, for more consumer education about organic and biodynamic wine. I think wine has a somewhat undeserved reputation as being a “natural beverage” and most wine drinkers are quite shocked to realize that there can be as many as 80 different synthetic ingredients in a wine.
The reason that it's shocking is that wine is the only product in the United States that we either put in or on our body that doesn’t bear an ingredient panel. So the consumer really doesn't know what they're drinking, and that is something that it's more than just a soundbite to get across to the wine drinking population. But what I have noticed as the years go by is that the United States consumer is becoming more and more educated about purity in their food. And you know, after Covid and the whole association between health and food finally rising to media attention —I think that was really good for the Organic and Biodynamic wine industry, and I think it'll continue as people become wiser about their food choices.
Green winery, green growing practices, green drink in your glass
MOLLY: While there has been a fair amount of discussion about adding an ingredient panel to wine bottles at the federal level, there is currently no requirement to list what is in your bottle of wine. In Europe and other countries, the law requires wineries to list the ingredients and nutrition information directly on the label. When you open up a bottle of Frey, you’re drinking a wine that was made with the highest quality grapes and minimal manipulation. Although the United States does not yet require this labeling, we have decided to start putting our short list of two ingredients on some of our labels to bring awareness about just how much we care about keeping it real: aside from grape juice, we only ever add organic yeast. And, in our Biodynamic wine lines, the only ingredient is the Biodynamic grapes themselves, which have enough wild yeasts to produce a delicious fermentation! As the first Organic and then also the first Biodynamic winery in the country, Frey Vineyards has pioneered the way for a truly green drink.
KATRINA: Really, it was Frey who brought public awareness to it, did a huge amount of consumer education, and elevated and created the category. In 2003, Mendocino County became the first county in the United States to pass an ordinance against the growing and producing of genetically engineered crops. It was known as GMO-free, genetically modified organisms, GMO-free Mendocino, and it was a real David and Goliath battle. In California you’re allowed to create ordinances if you collect enough signatures. And we went to town. What we envisioned the strategy committee was an education campaign and that people would just become aware of the growing emergence of genetically modified organisms and the threat to human health. What we didn't realize is that our tiny, little grassroots campaign would attract the eye of the multinational, pesticide, and creators of GMO companies such as Monsanto. And before we knew it, Monsanto was spending tens of thousands of dollars pouring literature into Mendocino County to try to stop the ordinance from passing. So it became a really heated battle.
MOLLY: Frey Vineyards has been championing organic agriculture for 45 years, and thanks to our efforts, Mendocino County is now the greenest AVA or American Viticultural Area (AVA) in the country! We are committed to keeping it that way, and so, when the GMO-free Mendocino initiative came forward, Katrina and Frey Vineyards stood up for organics. Not only did the measure pass, but Mendocino County still maintains its green appeal to this day. And, in Mendocino County, we boast more organic wine grapes than anywhere else in the country. An impressive 25% of the vineyards here are certified organic, which is about one-third of the total organic vineyard acreage in California. We were the first organic winery, not just in Mendocino County, but anywhere in the USA. However, we’ve really been able to contribute to making Mendocino or as the locals call it, “Mendo,” greener.
All the Options are Green Drinks at Frey Vineyards
KATRINA: The other obvious way that we've greened up the industry is by being a home for people to sell their organic grapes, because there are a lot of farmers in Lake County and Mendocino County who don't have any interest in being wineries, but they're good farmers and they want to grow their grapes organically. So over the years we've worked with probably 75 different certified organic growers. In a typical year, we'd be buying fruit from maybe 50 different people.
MOLLY: While Frey wines are the original green drink, there’s been a long evolution regarding how to label our wines for the market, and what we were legally allowed to call Frey wine. You have to remember that we have been organic since before organic really existed on the mainstream level that we have come to appreciate today. We were creating the category of organic wine before there were certification agencies to support our claim to an organic wine.
KATRINA: So the years went by, we still couldn't use the term organic wine on our label because the regulations for wine labels are governed by a federal agency, and there was no federal definition of the word organic. So for that first two decades really, we had to call the wine made with organic grapes, and we had our CCOF SEAL on it. CCOF stands for California Certified Organic Farmers, and they were our certifying agency.
But then in 2001, an effort began to create a federal definition for the word organic, and Jonathan (Frey) served on the processing committee that was composed of about seven different producers, two of them wine, who set up all the rules and standards for any processed food. And those rules entered the National Organic Standards Committee. So in 2002 the National Organic Program, NOP was created. This was under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture, the USDA, and there were two levels to organics wine making.
The highest level was the word organic wine, and that's the level that we achieved because we refused to use any additives in our wine. The organic wine category allows us to use the USDA seal on the front of our bottles, and a lot of shoppers who are really interested in purifying their diet often walk through a store just looking for that USDA seal. So that was a real advantage for us to be able to shine in that category.
The USDA Organic label is featured on ALL Frey Wines
And then underneath us is the “made with organic grapes,” category: wine made with organically grown grapes. Those people are all legitimate organic farmers; their fields, like our fields, our vineyards are inspected every year by agents of the USDA, different certifying agents, but they're still allowed to use sulfites up to a certain level in their wine-making process, and they also adjust acids and are allowed to use some different yeast nutrients.
At Frey, we avoid any synthetics at all. So one of the things that came out of that, that I think is one of Frey's major contributions to green the organic industry, was that Paul Frey, my brother-in-law, became really, really interested in the whole topic of genetically engineered yeast. And he realized that the yeast, the wineries buy to start their fermentations are not technically genetically modified, but the substrate that they're grown upon is a substrate of genetically modified beet sugar, and there's a lot of scientific evidence that these genes can transfer within substrates. So Paul became really concerned and did not want to use that yeast in our wine-making. So he challenged Lallemand, which is an international yeast company, to create a yeast that could pass through organic certification. It took them a couple of years to do the research, but they finally created a substrate that includes organically grown sunflowers. And so Paul Frey was directly responsible for the first certified organic yeast. We started using it in our winery, and now it's actually entered the National Organic Program (NOP) as a necessary factor for achieving organic wine certification. So that's something that I'm really proud of.
Really it was Frey that I would say single-handedly created the category of organic, non-sulfited wines for the whole United States. We did that with extensive sales trips. We attended trade shows. We went to the natural products expo down in Anaheim, California. And met all sorts of people who were sincerely interested in this really brand-new category.
Don’t panic, it’s organic!
ELIZA: So from the beginning, Frey Wine has always been certified organic, and we really have a commitment to low manipulation and to the highest purity standards that we are able to work with.
MOLLY: For questions or comments about the content shared here, Frey Vineyards, or Frey wines, you can email info@freywine.com or call 1 800 760 3739. Our retail staff is happy to help you Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm Pacific Standard Time. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Frey Vines Podcast, telling the story of organic grapes. We hope you'll tune in for our next episodes when we'll pluck more storied fruits off the Frey Vines.
To select your favorite green drink, check out the Frey Wine Shop!