Long slow fermentation, natural yeasts, no filtration, minimal intervention and additives.

Extract of Interview with John Nagorcka from Hochkirch Winery from The Wine Idealist Blog

"Biodynamics puts the human element back into agriculture by cultivating a very natural method of farming, despite agriculture’s intrinsic unnaturalness, and allows, or rather encourages, a farmer to work with nature, rather than against it."

“Biodynamic farmers really enjoy and love what they do,” says John, “whereas a lot of conventional farmers don’t. If you look at conventional farmer’s kids, many don’t want to continue to farm, which accounts for the progressive loss of people living and working on the land. If you’re livelihood requires you to use all of these nasty chemicals,” continues John, “well, that’s not how people want to live. If you’re farming organically, or with the BD method, you’re riding the tiger of nature and using it to achieve your ends, which is a much more exciting thing to do.”

“We hand pick, and with the reds (Pinot and Shiraz) we invariably destem, but still use a lot of whole bunch in the ferments,” explains John. “Fruit is put into open top fermenters, and usually sits there for a variable period, depending on how warm it was when it went in. I like to have it sit for about 4 to 5 days before it starts to ferment, using wild yeasts. We then let it sit between 2 and 6 weeks, before it’s pressed into tank and left to settle for 24 hours. Then, it’s moved into mainly old wood, where it stays for a year. It gets racked once, and sulphured if it needs it, and then a further seven months later it’s bottled.”

John doesn’t usually make any additions to improve the wine, unless it’s been a particularly hot year, and then he’ll add acid if he thinks the wine needs it. John says, “fining and filtering is unnecessary because it inevitably strips the wine of its character.”

“Everything we do out in the vineyard is designed to avoid having to do those sorts of manipulations back in the winery,” explains John.

Read the reast of the article at The Wine Idealist Blog