How Can I Make Organic Wine From Your Wine Kits?

What would I have to eliminate in my wine kit (Cabernet Sauvignon ) to get close to an organic wine without sacrifice taste.
Thank you, Daniel
Name: Daniel B.
State: FL
Hello Daniel,
The whole idea behind organic wine is to grow the grapes without the use of pesticides or other manmade interferences — to keep the growth of the grapes as natural a possible. Unfortunately, we have never seen this type of packaged product made available to the home wine making market.
Most “organic” wines on the market contain sulfites, just like the potassium metabisulfite you will find in the wine ingredient kits we offer., but there are a handful of wineries that do not add sulfites to there wines out of principal.
The reason most organic wineries add sulfites is because the risk of spoilage is so high when they are not. Extreme care has to be taken to insure that the wine is not exposed to airborne contaminants, etc. Everything that come in contact with the wine has to be sanitized to a very high standard. All this takes time and money, and if spoilage does occur, it is usually the entire batch that is lost, not just some. A vineyard can only provide one harvest per year.
For the home winemaker, keeping spoilage from occurring is even harder than it is for the wineries. This is because the smaller batch size that most home winemakers are dealing with. A smaller batch has more surface contact with equipment on a per gallon then a large batch. This is just laws a physics. This extra surface contact per gallon increases the risk of spoilage proportionally. This is why it is so important for the home winemaker to use sulfites in their wine just has 99% of the commercial wineries do.
So to answer your question, regardless of what you leave out of the wine it still would not be consider “organic”, and to leave out the potassium metabisulfite is not practical anyway for the home winemaker.
I hope this helps you out.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.