Moonvine
About Moonvine
A biodynamic calendar for wine tasting and the garden, made by one person and calculated on your own device.
Who makes it
Moonvine is made by Colin Hanson, an independent developer. It is not affiliated with the Maria Thun calendar, its publishers, any certification body or any wine producer. There is no advertising and no sponsored content.
How the calendar is calculated
The Moon’s position is computed on your phone or in your browser, with no server involved, using Jean Meeus’s astronomical formulas and the open-source Astronomy Engine. Moonvine then applies the traditional sowing-calendar rules: unequal zodiac sectors for fruit, flower, leaf and root periods, plus pauses for lunar nodes, perigee, eclipses and planetary aspects. It is an independent implementation, not the official Thun calendar, so dates can differ. How the calendar works describes the method, and why calendars disagree shows how to compare two of them.
Where it stands on the evidence
Day types are a tradition. A controlled blind tasting published in 2017 found no reliable difference between fruit and root days, and Moonvine says so wherever the calendar is explained. The calendar is a planning ritual that costs nothing to follow; your own palate decides. Read the evidence.
Free and Premium
The web calendar is free. In the apps, today, past dates, saved times and community voting are free; annual or lifetime Premium adds future dates, widgets and day-change alerts. The apps need no account, no name and no email address. Privacy policy.
Languages
The website is published in English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian and Polish. The iPhone and Android apps ship in the first six.
Corrections and contact
If a guide has a mistake, or a date disagrees with another calendar you trust, write to colin.hanson.89@gmail.com. Reader questions have already led to changes in how Moonvine handles traditional pauses.
