There's more and more producers claiming to produce sustainable wines -- and wine stores claiming to sell them. But a lot of them aren't walking the walk. We're at a moment when Monsanto claims to be following a sustainable model.

Thirst was founded on the notion that we will sell only delicious wines made as naturally as possible. We search out wines that aren’t on steroids--what we like to call slow wines. Slow wines are the opposite of industrial wines. Industrial wines are mass-produced wines made from high-yielding irrigated vineyards, with grapes grown with herbicides and pesticides, mechanically harvested, engineered with lab yeasts, artificial flavors and stabilizers.

What's a slow wine? It's wine made from vineyards without pesticides or herbicides, and without chemical additives or added flavors in the cellar. Slow wines are made sustainably, organically or biodynamically, on a smallscale, from grapes grown in low-yielding, dry-farmed vineyards. Slow winemakers harvest by hand by careful selection. Slow wines aren't made with laboratory yeasts but with ambient yeasts so that the fermented grapes can naturally express themselves and the place from which they come (terroir). New oak barrels, if used, are used judiciously. Many winemakers who take these approaches do so without certification, simply because they believe it's the way wine should be made.