Where to watch: Living Wine is releasing in theaters and watch now @ home virtual cinema on Friday, July 15, 2022

One of my favorite staycations is escaping to Temecula aka Southern California’s wine country. The atmosphere, the ambiance, the chardonnay… it’s hard to think of a better way to spend a long weekend. It never ceases to amaze me that the wine I’m drinking during those intimate tastings was once a small grape growing in a vineyard right outside the tasting room walls. The circle of life is really something beautiful. This sentiment–and sediment (sorry, wine joke)–is explored in the new documentary, Living Wine.

Living Wine, directed by novice filmmaker and wine enthusiast Lori Miller, is both an homage to the act of organic winemaking as well as an environmental documentary that highlights the risk our vineyards face today, including global warming, increasing wildfires, and unending drought. One thing that Miller wants to make clear is not all wine is created equal. Just because it grows in the ground doesn’t mean it’s organic. Calling on experience from winemakers Megan Bell of Margins Wine, Gideon Beinstock & Saron Rice of Clos Saron, Darek Trowbridge of Old World Winery and experts Elizabeth Candelario (Mad Agriculture) and Dr. Timothy LaSalle (Center for Regenerative Agriculture), Living Wine is an eye-opening journey into what it takes to go from vineyard to glass and everything in between.

The natural wine movement is about 20 years behind the natural food movement in terms of cultural awareness and accessibility. The subjects in the film passionately discuss their organic grape farming methods, which vary greatly from the methods of more conventional winemakers. Synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use are some of the biggest distinctions between what makes a wine conventional or organic. It’s actually quite shocking to learn that less than 1% of the wine produced in California is all-natural, meaning that most of the wine we drink is full of additives and manipulation of flavors.

So the next time you’re tempted to pick up a bottle of Decoy in grocery stores because you like the duck logo, remember that the little bit of extra effort it takes to acquire a bottle of natural wine is well worth the investment. The environment, your health, and your wine-drinking buddies will thank you.