Organic Winemaking

Davenport Vineyards is one of the few UK wineries that are licensed as organic by the Soil Association. We are inspected every year to ensure we comply with their standards. While winemaking is essentially a natural process, organic winemaking differs in the following ways:

• Sulphur dioxide levels must be below 100 mg/litre (as opposed to 210 mg/litre for non-organic wines). Sulphur dioxide is used as a preservative in wines, but is possibly also partly responsible for the hang-over effect and allergic reactions in sensitive people.
• No GM products are allowed in organic production. This could include sugar, yeast, bacteria and enzymes. Any sugar we add to our juice has to come from an organic source.
• Any synthetic fining agents are prohibited, such as PVPP. The only fining agent we use is bentonite, derived from clay.

As our winemaaking follows a natural philosophy, we do not use fining agents (except for bentonite), we often have no need to add sugar, we ferment using natural yeasts. This makes is relatively easy to follow the organic standards.