What the Letters on Our Wine List Mean

Open our cellar list and you will notice small letters trailing some of the bottles. An S here, an O and a B there, sometimes a V. They are not a rating. Nothing on that list is scored, and a bottle with four letters is not better than a bottle with none.

They are farming and production claims, and each one means something specific. Here is what we mean by each, in plain language.

S is for sustainable

The broadest of the four, and the most commonly misunderstood. Sustainable farming is about the long game: protecting the soil, the water and the workforce so the vineyard is still viable in twenty years. Cover crops between rows. Water use that does not drain an aquifer. Energy and packaging decisions that get counted rather than assumed.

What it does not mean: it is not a ban on every intervention. A sustainably farmed vineyard may still use a targeted treatment in a bad year. The commitment is to the fewest and least harmful, not to none.

O is for organic

Narrower and stricter. Organic means the grapes were grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. The vineyard works with compost, natural predators and mechanical weeding instead of chemistry.

The nuance worth knowing: in most of the world, “organic” certifies the farming, not necessarily the winemaking. A wine can be made from certified organic grapes and still see conventional cellar additions. Certified organic wine is a further step that also restricts what happens after the fruit comes in. When we say organic on our list, we are describing the vineyard.

B is for biodynamic

The most demanding, and the one that raises the most eyebrows. Biodynamic farming treats the vineyard as a single living system: the vines, the soil, the animals and the cover crops all managed together, on a calendar tied to the seasons and lunar cycles. It includes organic practice and goes further, with specific field preparations and a whole-farm philosophy behind it.

Some of it sounds mystical. Some of it is. What is not in dispute is that biodynamic growers tend to be obsessive observers of their own land, and obsessive observation makes better wine, whatever you believe about the calendar.

V is for vegan

The one that surprises people most, because wine seems obviously plant-based. The catch is fining, the clarifying step near the end of production. Traditional fining agents include egg white, casein from milk, gelatin and isinglass from fish. They are filtered out and do not remain in the finished wine in any meaningful quantity, but they were used to make it.

A vegan wine was fined with something else, like bentonite clay, or simply left unfined and allowed to settle. If you avoid animal products, this is the only one of the four letters that speaks to your question.

Why we bother printing them

Two reasons.

The first is that these things genuinely shape how a wine tastes. A grower farming this way is usually a small, family-owned producer paying close attention, and that attention shows up in the glass more reliably than any appellation on the label.

The second is simpler. Some guests care a great deal about how their wine was grown and have no way to ask without feeling awkward. Putting it on the page means nobody has to.

None of it replaces the conversation. If you tell our team what you like, the letters are the last thing we will lead with. But they are there, and now you know what they are saying.

Curious to taste the difference rather than read about it? Our Saturday wine classes pour comparatively, which is the fastest way to learn what any of this means in the glass.

Back to all stories →