The market for sustainable wines is growing every year– yet there is no clear way for consumers to determine which wineries are sustainable, and what that term even means! This is a major problem for consumers as well as wine retailers, who themselves acknowledge they often don’t know the difference between organic, biodynamic, natural, or “sustainable” winemaking.
A Consumer’s Guide to Sustainable Wine will fill this void. The guide defines what “sustainability” means in the wine industry, and goes one step further by proposing an assessment of the sustainability performance of wineries and vineyards. To achieve this my team at Sustainable Business International, has created a Robert Parker-type rating system called Wine WATCH™, not for flavor and taste, but for sustainability. Wine WATCH™ aims to be a global standard of sustainability assessment.
Unlike critics tasting reviews– Parker’s 100-point rating and Jancis Robinson’s 20-point system, among others –the Wine WATCH™ rating tells consumers where the wines they select fit on a continuum of environmental and social responsibility performance. This process involves a complex assessment of the practices and certifications for each vineyard and winery.
As an executive for Starbucks, I led the team that created and launched C.A.F.E. Practices, influencing global standards for environmental sustainability and ethics throughout the coffee industry, with major focus on equitable supply chains.
My love of wine started as a passion project, but now it is my main avocation and occupation. These days my focus is on the wine consumer, revolutionizing how wine drinkers understand and enjoy sustainable wines, all leading to my goal of a more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible planet. I want fine wine that is sustainably produced to be accessible to more people. And I want consumers to choose sustainable wine.
Those choices will be made easier with the new rating system , Wine – WATCH™, a sustainability rating system that promotes two interrelated ideals– human rights and environmental sustainability. For today’s consumers, sustainability increasingly means not only climate action and conservation but also fairness to workers, social equity, and commitment to communities. Yet, obtaining pertinent information about a wine can feel overwhelming and difficult.
The solution is Wine – WATCH™, a new system of measuring and communicating, credibly, easily, the overall sustainability of a winery. Wine WATCH rates a winery’s practices and scope of operations according to five pillars, hence the acronym: Winemaking, Agriculture, Transportation, Certification and Humanity.
