By Andrew Nelson

My wine opener bites into the cork of the Cabernet I’ve bought to share with a group of friends, and I ease it out with a satisfying pop. After pouring a shimmering splash into each extended glass, I watch as everyone swirls it, breathing in its deep cassis fragrance. My guests are here to weigh in on a category of wines I didn’t know existed until recently. Every one of the wines I’ve gathered for our informal tasting is made from organic grapes with no added sulfites, and the unexpected labels create a stir.

“Who cares if the stuff’s organic,” somebody cracks. “Can it still save me from the Brie?”

Everyone gets the joke. There’s growing evidence that moderate consumption of alcohol can enhance a healthy lifestyle; for instance, the phenolic compounds and antioxidants in wine appear to protect against ills such as heart disease, diabetes, and gallstones. “It’s pretty clear,” says Marcella Newhouse, an epidemiologist at Vermont’s Department of Health, “that one to two glasses a day of any sort of wine is good for people.” But that brings up an interesting question. If drinking a glass of wine every night with dinner is good for your health, is drinking organic wine even better?

The logic seems irrefutable. Organic wine is grown without pesticides and harmful chemicals, and it’s bottled with no added sulfites. In fact, going organic would also seem to get environmental Brownie points because it helps support sustainable, chemical-free farming practices in winegrowing regions.

And then there’s the question on the minds of the guests at my party: Does choosing organic wine for health and environmental reasons mean compromising on flavor? I finish pouring the last drop of the organic Cabernet and turn to my hand-picked jury. “So,” I ask, “is it any good?”

Current trends suggest the answers to all these questions are yes. No figures exist to chart the growth of organic wines in this country. But anecdotal evidence suggests that after a slow start in the 1990s, when efforts to market organic wines fell flat, there’s been a major turnaround. In California, the source for 90 percent of domestic wines, the number of grape growers registered last year with the state as organic tripled from only five years ago. Many organic growers hail from California’s Anderson Valley and Mendocino County regions, already noted centers for organic produce. France is another big source, but wines made with organically grown grapes are being cultivated around the globe. Marc Jonna, national wine buyer for Whole Foods, counts four Argentine organics among his bestsellers.

Michel Ginoulhac, a buyer for the San Francisco-based Organic Wine Company, tells me he shipped 30 percent more cases of organic wine last year than the year before. “Organic wine’s becoming a real cool thing,” Jonna says.

Prior to World War II, the American wine industry was primarily composed of small, family-run vineyards. But after wine titans—namely the Gallos and Mond...

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