WHAT IS "AGRICULTURE RAISONNÉE"?

The Rives-Blanques winemaker, who is a man of few words, succinctly sums up Agriculture Raisonnée thus : it's good for three things: one it's good for the environment; two , it's good for the vineyard workers, and three , it's good for the consumer.

Generally speaking, Agriculture Raisonnée offers a sensible and practical approach to respecting the environment, limiting health and safety risks in the vineyard, and in the case of farms, protecting the wellbeing of animals.

Rives-Blanques was amongst the first in France to be officially recognised for implementing these environmentally-friendly practices in the vineyard.

Hovering somewhere between being a philosophy and a guideline, its mandate is enshrined in 98 clauses (of which 26 apply exclusively to farms with livestock), condemned by some as a vague engagement of good practices, while criticized by others for being too severe and restrictive.

The conditions of Agriculture Raisonnée are highly structured and tightly regulated, and cover virtually every aspect of viticulture: from technical training for staff, management of green areas around the vineyard, use and non-use of ‘soft' chemical products, safety training, preservation of animal habitats, use of exclusively organic products, and the management of water and effluents, to the maintenance of machinery and the disposal of used product packaging. And this is not just a woolly wish-list: receipts of disposal have to be produced, and proof of practice has to be shown.

Vineyards who put up the Agriculture Raisonnée sign are independently audited every five years. They are also obliged to undertake extensive soil tests every six years. But a large part of the practices are not systematic at all: they are reactive, dependent on the changing demands and conditions of nature. And, as a spin off, it is certain that the winegrower who follows this philosophy/guideline knows and understands his land and his vines very well indeed.

Having once been 100% “bio” and nearly lost a good part of the vineyard as a result of not being able to spray against a bio-proof disease called Flavescence Dorée, Rives-Blanques embraced the Agriculture Raisonnée alternative as the intelligent approach to environmentally-friendly grape-growing. Even without knowing about the constraints and demands in terms of product use, staff training, safety measures, organic practices and so on, any visitor to Rives-Blanques will know from the wildlife, the birds, the wild flowers, the clover between the vines and our weeds, that this is an environmentally-friendly place. Which is not to say that Agriculture Raisonnée is necessarily our destination point, because there is nothing in those 98 points that says you are not allowed to go beyond them.

In fact, the field of mauzac for Cuvée Occitania, surrounded by woodland, south sloping, and well ventilated, is ideally positioned for taking Agriculture Raisonnée a step further, and is fully organic.

For more information, visit the French Forum of Environmentally Friendly Agriculture (FARRE) http://www.farre.org.

Acceuil