In our weekly newsletter I shared a study that has been making the rounds everywhere. It apparently shows robust data that organic and biodynamic wines score higher than conventional wines – but sustainable wines score no higher than conventional.
I mentioned that I hadn’t had time to look at the data in depth and wasn’t vouching for it.
Well, I’m glad I did not!
Guess what the study used as a proxy for quality – PRICE!!!
That’s garbage. First of all, because quality =/= price. But even if we think there is a strong relationship between quality and price, organic and biodynamic wines will always have a higher price than a conventional counterpart because organic farming/winemaking itself costs more. (Andrew Chalk says by ~15%).
Andrew Chalk, who wrote a rebuttal pointing this out, is going to examine the dataset and factor out price. I’ll update once he does so.
Two quick things: I do think labels like organic, biodynamic, or sustainable are absolutely needed in BC to justify our unavoidable higher prices. Intuitively I think this leads to higher quality wine but I won’t make the data fit my assumptions.
Second, headlines (and studies) suck. It’s marketing, not truth. That’s why I won’t trust anything unless I’ve had a chance to read a study in depth.
