Show Notes
A big thanks to our special sponsor for this episode: Shifting Gears Travel My guest for this episode is Tim Jordan, who is a co-founder of and winemaker and consultant for Common Wealth Crush. From overseeing winegrowing brands Star Party and Midland in Augusta County, to his winemaking and vineyard responsibilities at Common Wealth Crush, Tim has his finger on the dynamic pulse of Virginia wine. Born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley, he holds a PhD in entomology from Virginia Tech, with a focus on grapevine insects. This specialized knowledge and passion for Virginia winegrowing has propelled him through numerous roles in the industry over the years, including as vineyard manager for Michael Shaps Wineworks, winemaker at Barren Ridge Vineyards, consultant with Shenandoah Vineyard Services, and now co-founder of Common Wealth Crush. Tim is also part of the grape breeding program in Virginia, in collaboration with the USDA, that is developing new grape varieties that can successfully produce delicious wine within the unique regional limitations and challenges that grapes face in Virginia. I wish every state had one of these programs. I have a special relationship with Virginia in a way. Virginia is the setting for the first episode of the Beyond Organic Wine podcast (which I highly recommend listening to if you haven’t), and it’s the setting for Chapter 1 of my book, Wine Liberated. That’s because Virginia is one of the oldest wine regions in the US, and it’s simultaneously one of the most difficult places to grow wine on earth. So the lessons we learn from the folks growing wine there organically, ecologically, or regeneratively – and there is a growing group of winemakers who are – these are lessons that can be applied broadly across most of the winegrowing world. But Virginia is also a place where Vinifera Culture has been, and continues to be, heavily invested in. Enormous amounts of resources are given every year to trying to produce wine from Vitis vinifera in Virginia. This is a product of a colonized wine culture that defines wine as the fermented juice of varieties of Vitis vinifera only, and it’s time we call this what it is… utter and unsustainable folly. Yet, as you’ll hear, this is what most people learn as we begin our journey with wine. And so Tim’s journey began by planting and growing vinifera in Virginia. But twenty years on, Tim has learned too much to go back. He won’t plant vinifera again for his wine, and he’s setting an example that I hope more and more growers in Virginia, and around the world, follow. This theme is merely background, however, for an in-depth look at a thoughtful, community focused, ecologically informed journey to grow wine in one of the most challenging wine regions on earth. Enjoy!
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Here’s a quick mention of a few upcoming things that I’ll say more about in the future: First, the book release party for my book Wine Liberated will be held in Ithaca, NY at Autumn Leaves Bookstore on November 14th. Wine will be served. It’s an anarchist book store. I’ll be there, trying to inspire a new odyssey for the next century of wine exploration. Second, the Embracing Hybrid Grapes conference is happening February 21-22 at UC Davis and in Berkeley at the Donkey & Goat winery. Tickets will go on sale in a month-ish, and we are looking for sponsors and hybrid wine producers who want to showcase their herbicide free wine to a thirsty west coast. Third, I’m going to MC Undercurrent 2027, which is THE organic and biodynamic wine conference in New Zealand, maybe the entire southern hemisphere. It’s June 1-3 in Queenstown, and the amazing Alica Anderson of Amvive will be the keynote speaker. Finally, please subscribe at beyondorganicwine.substack.com to support this podcast and all the work of Beyond Organic Wine. Thank you! At this point in history, Halloween 2026, talking about the very scary crisis in agriculture, especially in the US, may be like being on the Titanic and brining attention to the fact that the boilers are flooded. It’s true, and it’s a seriously serious issue… but it’s merely a symptom of much bigger issues. So I start this episode with a quote from my guest as a reminder of where our focus needs to be. I started a boycott of glyphosate and all herbicides in wine because it is an important statement that we don’t need to tolerate discussion about this anymore. The known knowns of glyphosate are utterly damning, and even though there are certainly many unknowns, they give zero reason to excuse its use. And yet this boycott doesn’t solve the larger issues. And Dr. Michelle Perro reminds us of the power and responsibility we have as agents of change, as instigators and initiators. But we need to speak up, stand up, and own our capacity to re-engage with our communities in not letting our lives be dictated by corporations who seek short-term material gain and the power to protect and increase their profit-making ability despite its devastating effects on humans and all of the lives with whom we share this world. Wine invites us to think about the future. We make decisions today in wine that we know we won’t taste, in some cases, for years. Wine asks us to think long-term. To think perennially. To think about systems that exceed our own brief lifetimes. I find it ironic that we think we can’t live and make wine without these novel chemicals that were only invented a few decades ago, that are harmful for us in multiple, intergenerational ways, when our wine cultures were developed over thousands of years without fossil fuels, let alone chemistry, I know it isn’t easy to farm ecologically, but easy is only a short term solution, and short term thinking seems to have created some long term problems. We find ourselves deeply invested in an approach to winegrowing that is only possible with chemicals. But that doesn’t make those chemicals good or wise, and examples to the contrary, the hundreds of folks I’ve interviewed for this podcast, prove that these chemicals are not the only way to grow grapes commercially. I know that there can be pretty extreme consequences to weaning off some of these things when there aren’t other easy alternatives, and it would suck to be the people who bear the burden of those consequences in our lifetime. But I think those consequences can be felt voluntarily by us now or they can be felt by our children involuntarily, because agricultural approaches that are only possible with chemicals are not sustainable in the long term. If you haven’t read my post, How To Grow Wine Without Herbicides, please do. My guest is Dr. Michelle Perro. Dr. Perro is a veteran pediatrician with over four decades of experience in acute and integrative medicine, co-founder and CEO of GMOScience, a 501(c)(3) no
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For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, Happy Harvest, Merry Samhain, and a Celebratory Equinox to you all wherever you are. This episode is about Magic, the cunning arts that have been practiced for millennia in most cultures.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit beyondorganicwine.substack.com