Biodynamic whisky is our subterranean not-so-secret weapon. Our ultimate natural single malt, born of that most iconoclastic form of agriculture – an uber-organic approach that charges barley with vibrancy and whisky with its greatest intensity of flavour.

Esoteric to some, biodynamics has changed the very face of fine wine and played a central role in our own investigations of natural flavour as we have become the world’s largest distillers of biodynamic whisky.

In the whisky world, slow to turn its attention to how its key ingredient, barley, is actually grown, ‘biodynamics’ can feel a relatively recent term. But this year biodynamic agriculture celebrates 100 years since its tenets and principles were codified by Rudolf Steiner in 1924.

The first artificial fertilisers

Once upon a time the term ‘organic agriculture’ would never have been used, because it would simply have been described as ‘farming’. Everything was organic; soil health or quality never a necessary article of discussion. Fertilisers that were used were natural; mined niter deposits and guano – the excrement of tropical seabirds and bats.

The seeds of change were sown in 1909, when those natural fertiliser sources were rapidly running out. In response, to ensure that the world’s growing population could be fed, Pandora’s Chemical Box needed to be opened. German chemist Fritz Haber – later to become notorious as the godfather of chemical warfare – succeeded in producing ammonia by using an iron catalyst to produce a reaction between hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen, artificially producing ammonia. Having achieved this at laboratory scale, the following year Haber sold the process to chemical company Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik (BASF) and collaborated with Carl Bosch on replicating it at an industrial level.

It is difficult to overstate the impact this synthesisation of artificial fertiliser has had on the world. It has ultimately been responsible for astronomically increased crop yields and feeding a global population that has grown from around 1.75 billion to just under 8 billion since Haber’s first experiments.

The Haber process had a more immediate secondary application, too, since it could be used to produce nitrogen compounds such as saltpetre that were used in German munitions during the First World War. (The same war in which Haber himself directed the first use of chlorine gas at Ypres, killing over 10,000 French soldiers in a matter of minutes.)

Biodynamic beginnings

The biodynamic movement was a natural reaction to the rapid ubiquity of chemical agriculture. Steiner realised that this new ‘liquid diet’ was not only bad for soil health on a chemical and biological level, but by concentrating all nutrients on the soil surface was preventing meaningful root growth, impacting soil’s physical structure too. Between short roots and one-dimensional chemical fertilisers, plants inevitably could not take in the rich, complex diet of nutrients that had previously given them so much flavour.

Concerned by a deterioration they had seen both in their soil and in their plants, a number of farmers had requested that Steiner deliver a series of lectures on his biodynamic principles in 1924. These became the first presentations on any form of organic agriculture as distinct from farming with synthesised fertiliser. The key principles have not changed since then – hardly surprising, since Steiner compiled his biodynamic practices from farming methods that dated back millennia. (More information about these principles can be found in this article on two of our own biodynamic growers.)

From their origins in Germany, biodynamic principles were quickly taken up by farmers internationally, first practiced in the USA in 1926, and in the UK from 1927. In Germany, which after all had invented synthetic fertilisers, they were viewed with great suspicion. Count Carl Keyserlingk, on whose estate in Koberwitz Steiner had delivered his lectures, took much responsibility for shielding the movement from the Germany authorities of the 1920s and 1930s.

Having been the heir to a chemical company before he was ejected for his closeness to Steiner’s movement, Keyserlingk became aware that companies and governments were attempting to spy on biodynamic activities. Keyserlingk not only turned down bribes for transcripts of the lectures, but was questioned by chemical companies which secretly attempted to record him. It was at his suggestion, and for the sake of safeguarding against industrialists, that biodynamic preparations were perhaps given code numbers – the famous 500, 501 and so on that still endure today.

By 1933, Steiner’s books had been banned by the Nazi party from public libraries in Bavaria, and as a result the majority of biodynamic farmers in Europe remained quiet on their activities until 1945. In the wake of the Second World War chemical fertilisers, pesticides and fungicides skyrocketed, perhaps reducing the speed at which biodynamic agriculture was adopted. The slow adoption of biodynamics may also have been in part to do with controversial elements of other philosophies put forward by Steiner, a claimed clairvoyant (amongst other things) Many of his philosophies also contained aspects that were demonstrably nationalist and racially hierarchical.

A quiet wine revolution

What proved the greatest boon to biodynamics worldwide was its adoption, from the late 1960s, by some of the greatest winemakers in the world. It began in Alsace, with Eugène Meyer, whose doctor had suggested biodynamic agriculture after Meyer’s eye had been exposed to a chemical spray in one of his vineyards. In 1980, Meyer’s vineyard was the first to achieve Demeter certification, and the Domaine is still Demeter certified today.

Alongside Alsace, biodynamic agriculture slowly began to take off in other French regions; the Loire, where La Coulée de Serrant introduced biodynamic practices to Savannières, the Rhône, and – perhaps most tellingly – Burgundy, where domaines such as Leflaive, arguably the producer of the finest white wines in the world, testify that biodynamic agriculture not only saved certain of their vineyards, but increased their quality in the process. Indeed Leflaive tested the practices by dividing a vineyard into three sections – one farmed conventionally, one organically, and one biodynamically. Only the biodynamic portion saw soil stimulation to its deepest level.

Many of the winemakers who adopted biodynamic principles had previously farmed organically. Biodynamics was their levelling up – a supercharging of the soil through sensitive practices and wholesome, natural preparations and, by extension, a marked elevation of the flavours in their wines. Today a telling number of the finest wines – not only in France but around the world – are farmed biodynamically.

To Ireland and to whisky

Biodynamic agriculture has been a quiet presence in Ireland. In 1985 the Biodynamic Agriculture Association of Ireland (BDAAI) was formed in recognition of the rapid changes in agriculture and with the intention of looking at improving soil health. As recently as the early 2000s, some of our biodynamic growers remember quiet meetings of like-minded iconoclasts – of biodynamics being something that was not discussed terribly loudly. Even in 2020 there were only 93 hectares recorded as being farmed biodynamically in Ireland by the Agricultural and Biological Sciences Journal. By contrast, Germany recorded over 84,000, the UK 3,800.

Whisky, too, was slow to catch on – indeed biodynamic barley was not used whatsoever until our founder, Mark Reynier, distilled biodynamic English barley on Islay in 2011. There was no biodynamically-grown barley in Ireland whatsoever until brave growers Trevor Harris, Alan Mooney and John McDonnell took up our challenge. Trevor has since been joined in his biodynamic explorations by his brother Graham, and we take all the biodynamic barley we can get our hands on.

The results of biodynamic agriculture are now available for whisky enthusiasts to freely taste for themselves. Just as those great winemakers noticed a heightened vibrancy, an electricity to their biodynamic wines, so blind sensory analysis in our lab reveals an increased intensity in our biodynamic spirit whenever we test it against either organic or conventional. We have released our first vintage in Single Malt form, and an experimental Micro Cuvée with our gastronomic friends at Frenchie. And now, our first biodynamic Cuvée Concept – Cuvée Luna, our next point of the journey, that uber-organic intensity of flavour is now available to whisky connoisseurs worldwide.

It may have taken whisky 100 years to catch on, but biodynamic agriculture need be a dirty little secret no longer. It’s time to go back to the future. Our new Biodynamic whisky, Cuvée Luna, is available to buy here.