Peter Mitham explores the relationship between wine, biotech and genetics in Wines and Vines Magazine. If you are concerned about GMOs in your food, it might be time to start considering your wine too. The days of shopping at the farmer's market and grabbing whatever bottle is on sale at the wineshop to pair it with are drawing to a close. To learn more, you can start with the Wines and Vines article.

UPDATE:

Dr. Steven Lund, Assistant Professor of Viticulture/Plant Omics at The University of British Columbia, shared his thoughts via email:
“Dear Mr. Nicalo,

This morning, I forwarded to our project team Mr. Mitham’s interesting W&V article on the social sciences aspect of our grape and wine genomics research. One of my lab’s graduate students followed up by navigating to your website whereupon he discovered your most recent blog posting. While I absolutely respect everyone’s entitlement to his/her opinion, your October 22 blog content is way off the mark with respect to its implications regarding the research targets of our project, and it unfortunately further sensationalizes genetic modification through factually incorrect information. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of our social sciences research in this project will be to foster education about applications of genomics research in grapevine to the wine industry through biomarker development, which has absolutely zero to do with commercializing genetically modified grapevines and wines."

I appreciate Dr. Lund's concerns. My aim is not to sensationalize his work, merely to get people to begin thinking about the process of winegrowing and making. We have been pushing for people to consider wine in the same respect as their food for years. To be clear, I do not think he is trying to support GMO wine. My point is simply that it is time to begin carefully considering the process behind the wine we drink in the same way as food.

I do not believe that his wine research encourages genetic modification of grapevines and wines directly. It does seem to support a genre of reductionist scientific research that has proven dangerous and shortsighted for agriculture at large.

The language the UBC team uses to describe their research suggests significant overlap with the efforts to improve the chemical composition of our foods. Dr Lund writes, "We are also using comparative biochemical genomics to advance our understanding of the antioxidant capacities imparted by vitamin C and anthocyanin flavonoids with the goal of developing molecular tools for marker assisted breeding in raspberry and engineering improved anthocyanin compositional chemistry in wine grapes."

What are your thoughts? What do you think of wine in our larger food system? What do you think of chemical-technology driven approaches to agriculture versus skilled farming combined with scientific knowledge? Do you think biomarkers will be used primarily by industrial winemakers or artisans? Please share your views in the comments below.