'Common Sense' on biodynamics, and why the most misunderstood farming philosophy in wine is also the most logical

Hugo Lefort of Domaine Hugo, based here in the south of England, said something to me recently that has been rattling around ever since.

“Biodynamics is just common sense.”

That sounds almost too simple. But the more time I spend with the farmers and winemakers who practice it, and I’ve now been visiting them for the best part of twenty years, the more I think he’s right.

So let me try to explain what biodynamics actually is. Not the caricature, but the reality.

How Biodynamics differs from organic farming:

Organic farming sets a floor. It tells you what you cannot use; no synthetic pesticides, no herbicides, no artificial fertilisers. It protects the vine and the soil from chemical intervention. That matters enormously. But organic farming is essentially a set of prohibitions. It tells you what to stop doing.

Biodynamics goes further. It is a positive, active system - a way of farming that treats the land as a living organism, interconnected with its surrounding ecosystem, the seasons, the soil, the atmosphere, and the rhythms of the lunar calendar. Where organic farming removes harm, biodynamics seeks to restore and amplify life.

How it differs from regenerative farming:

Regenerative agriculture is the newest term in this conversation, and it overlaps with biodynamics significantly — both are concerned with rebuilding soil health, increasing biodiversity, and reversing the damage done by industrial farming. But regenerative is a broad umbrella, a philosophy without a fixed methodology. Biodynamics is a specific system, codified by Rudolf Steiner in his 1924 Agriculture Course, with defined preparations, a planting calendar, and a structured relationship with natural cycles.

How it differs from natural wine:

Natural wine is a winemaking philosophy - governing what happens in the cellar. No added yeasts, no additives, minimal sulphur, no manipulation. Biodynamics governs what happens in the vineyard. The two often go together, and share an underlying respect for the integrity of the raw material. But a wine can be biodynamically farmed and then heavily manipulated in the winery. And a wine can be natural in the cellar but farmed conventionally. They are related ideas. They are not the same thing.

Now back to common sense.

Preparation 500, one of the foundational biodynamic preparations, is cow manure, packed into a cow horn and buried in the soil over winter. Six months later it is excavated, diluted, and dynamised in water before being sprayed across the vineyard. It sounds eccentric. What it actually is, is a supercharged compost preparation that rebuilds microbial life in the soil. The cow horn creates an anaerobic environment that concentrates beneficial bacteria. The end product is free, natural, and extraordinarily effective. What’s not to like?

The lunar calendar - planting and harvesting in rhythm with the moon’s cycle, is increasingly supported by science. Moisture and water move through soil in response to lunar gravity, just as the tides do. Vine growth responds. The research is now substantial enough that many conventional agronomists take it seriously. What was once called esoteric is looking more like ecology.

And yet. There is still a gap.

How did Steiner, this remarkable, visionary thinker at the turn of the twentieth century, arrive at such a precise and effective system? How did he understand, decades before the science existed to confirm it, that the health of a vine was inseparable from the health of its whole ecosystem? How does the astrological calendar, with all its complexity and ancient symbolism, map so consistently onto what farmers actually observe?

I find this gap interesting rather than troubling. Every profound philosophy has one, a place where the theory runs to the edge of what can be explained and something else takes over. Call it mystery. Call it accumulated wisdom. Call it the kind of knowledge that precedes its own scientific explanation by a generation or two.

Winemakers who work with the biodynamic calendar will tell you, almost universally, that it makes a difference. Not all of them can tell you exactly why. But they keep doing it. And the wines keep making the argument for them.

Hugo is right. At its core, biodynamics is common sense - the common sense of understanding that a farm is not a factory, that soil is alive, that an ecosystem in balance will produce something an ecosystem under stress never can.

The mystery is the bonus. And maybe it’s best left that way.