Decades ago, on my first visit to Italy, while having lunch at a winery in Piemonte, they presented us with their farm’s peaches for dessert. It was an event that opened my eyes — and palate. I had never tasted anything so expressive, so pure, so beautifully simple. Fortunately, I was ready to comprehend the experience.

I was still new to the wine business then, but I had been learning how to taste — to focus for several years. I was ready to appreciate that peach. There are many things we eat that taste good, but few that make our life more complete—both in experiences and our quality of life. Flavors like that take me back to my grandparent’s farm. They were organic farmers and never even knew it. My memories of the flavors of my grandmother’s cooking still inspire me. That peach in Italy gave those memories back to me.

As Biodynamic farmers, we often discuss the environment and soil health, but the greatest gift of Biodynamics is how delicious things grown this way taste. In those flavors, we find produce packed with nutrition. Real flavor and health are intertwined. Perhaps the words energies and flavors should be interchangeable in Steiner’s writings.

Highly processed wine and foods cheat us. By turning up the volume on a few tastes that evolution has taught our brains we need to survive, they deceive our palates and deliver gift-wrapped poison.

This week, we harvested our first peaches from our food forest at Troon Vineyard & Farm. As you see from the photo above, they’re beautiful, full of Earth’s energy and, take my word for it, delicious. When introducing Biodynamics at Troon, my first goal was to repair the soil and make better wines. While that certainly has happened, it was only the beginning. Now, there are vineyards and acres of orchards, vegetables, cider apple trees, hay fields, and livestock. Today, not only are our wines in wine shops and restaurants, but our produce is on restaurant menus, in grocery stores, and on our farmstand. The energy of the Earth combined with our work now touches many people.

A grape, a peach, or a tomato may seem like simple things, but they are miracles. Industrial agriculture rips all the magic out of them. Biodynamics nurtures that magic and, in the process, nurtures us.

Biodynamic farming sounds complicated, but it is simple in many ways. We are only trying to work with nature and express those energies the way nature evolved them to work. If we do our job, those energies—those flavors—will be captured in what we grow and the wines we craft.

The wine business is divided between those that produce beverage alcohol and those that simply honor the grape. The food industry has the same divide. In simplicity, you find both the flavors and quality that make our lives more compelling and engaged with the universe. Authenticity is a natural thing.

We must start paying attention to what we eat and drink and relearn how to taste. Our culture has lost that ability, and it’s killing us. Nutrition and flavor are connected, and the relationship is complex, but eating well is simple. The Slow Food movement has it right. Take time to taste.

When you eat a peach, eat a peach.