If you want to live a green life, or even a good life, it helps to know about biodynamic wine. Many of the top producers in the world are turning to this earth-friendly style of viniculture. The problem is that very few consumers know what biodynamic wine really is. Like the word literally, the word dynamic is so overused that it literally means nothing. My Concise Oxford mumbles something about “active, potent, energetic” and I suppose this is about as good as it gets for our purpose. Biodynamic wine is wine that’s made with an awful lot of attention to the life energy in the wine. And if that sounds a little fluffy, it is.

Like Anglicanism and Catholicism, biodynamic and organic wine overlap in so many respects that they are often confused by less spiritually developed people. Both are made without any chemical fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides or genetically modified grapes. To be certified organic, the wine must be made without sulphur dioxide, a preservative used by 99% of wineries in order to stabilize their wines. Sulphur D. sounds nasty, but it’s virtually essential and its noticeable absence is one of the reasons why organic wine often has a bad name.

Biodynamic wine may have sulphur dioxide in it, but in all other respects, it goes far beyond the commonsensical requirements of organic farming. That’s because Biodynamism is the brainchild of a German occultist and polymath named Rudolph Steiner (one of his architectural designs is pictured above). Steiner believed that any fruit (including grapes) can be supercharged with life-sustaining energies that arise from the earth, the zodiac and the planets. These energies can be drawn into growing plants by spraying them with homeopathic mixtures made from herbs, manure or minerals that have been primed for this purpose by maturing them in the horns or innards of various animals. In this sense, biodynamic wine isn’t really an item on the vegetarian menu.

After the jump: More about the winemaking process that takes literally the potent potable synonym "spirits."

I’ve only drunk one wine that was so good that it made me weep: Nicolas Joly’s 2008 Coulée de Serrant, a Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley in France (96/100). The 2008 vintage hasn’t been commercially released in Ontario, but you can still find the older Nicolas Joly 2006 Coulée de Serrant ($89.00, Vintages #88229) in the LCBO.

I started the waterworks before even tasting the wine – the bouquet was enough to set me off. It was utterly unlike anything I have ever smelled: a mixture of fresh peaches, carmelized apples, ginger, beeswax and the crust of a crème brûlée. I grant I’ve employed this sort of list before when writing about wines, but the difference with the Coulée de Serrant was that the flavour of every fruit and food was so vivid that I felt I had a separate bowl of each ingredient before me, like a baker before he starts making a pie.

This wine manages to pull a trick so perilous that few wineries try anymore: controlled oxidation. That is to say, the Coulée de Serrant is given a fair amount of contact with the air, which introduces characteristics resembling a Sherry or a Madiera: rich flavours of nuts, brioche and baked fruit. In decades past, oxidation was more common, but it’s fallen out of fashion because it usually saps a wine of its vivacity. What Nicolas Joly does so elegantly with the Coulée is to use the richness of slight oxidization without losing any of the wine’s life.

After the jump: Matthew reflects on the madness and genius of Joly's process.

After he died, Winston Churchill bequeathed to posterity one final stumper. Throughout his life, he ate heavily, breathed through a cigar and drank more liquor than Charles Bukowski (starting at 11am with whiskey or a pint of champagne). When he was asked the secret of his longevity, he replied "Sport — I never, ever got involved in sport." This is the Churchill Paradox. You can guess about risk factors, healthy living and genes, but no one really knows how long they’re going to live.

I had this in mind when I had dinner with one of the longest-serving winemakers in Australia, Wayne Stehbens of Katnook Estate. He pointed out that almost all wine critics (including your reporter) have a bad habit of closing their wine reviews with prognostications about the wine’s lifespan: “drink or hold for 3 to 5 years” or “best between 2015 and 2018.”

These predictions generally follow the conventional wisdom that only ultra-premium wines can go past the 10 or 20 year mark. Australian reds — especially those that sell for under $50 — are rarely included in this club. Wayne tactfully calls this rubbish. “They lie!” he says, jabbing his menacing finger in the direction of my rack of lamb. “These critics are wrong. It will go a lot longer than they realize.”

To prove his point, Wayne brought several Katnook bottles to dinner — some from the 1990s and others from the vintages that are now in the LCBO. By opening yesterday’s wine, he wanted to show what today’s will be like tomorrow. His 1996 Katnook Merlot was stupendous; after 14 years, it was intense and going strong. Without declaring an upper limit, I would certainly say that it can evolve into its 20th birthday. That’s more than I can say for my cat.

After the jump: Matthew unearths what makes Katnook wines special, and recommends one particularly amazing bottle.

Malbec is a moody grape — at its worst, it’s parsimonious or simple, but in the right hands, it can be intense, brooding and delicious. Last week I reviewed two good French Malbecs. Although France is the home of this varietal, its popularity there is declining because it rarely develops its best expression outside the tiny region of Cahors near Toulouse. In Argentina, however, Malbec has flourished so well that it is now the national varietal; there is something about the Argentinean terroir that can bring out the lush quality of the grape without sacrificing its customary grip and structure.

Unfortunately, the commercial success of Malbec has led Argentina to flood the market with cheap, boozy incarnations of the grape — sometimes it seems Argentina is in a race to Australia to see who can debase their own currency the fastest. That’s why I’m pleased to report that, on May 29, Vintages is releasing an excellent Argentinean Malbec, the sort of bottle that should lead the way.

After the jump: Matthew reveals and reviews said Malbec, as well as a Riesling that's tantalizingly named "Narcissist."