Wine is part of the recent global trend for healthier food sources. However, there is no commonly agreed upon global certification for wine. In fact, wine has unique characteristics that make its designation as ‘sustainable' problematic. There are three distinct obstacles to developing a global sustainability framework for wine. First is related to the consumer and their lack of knowledge and information. Second is based on producers' attitudes. Third stems from the lack of agreement on what exactly certified sustainable wine is. These issues create a negative consumer-producer-certification cycle resulting in confusion and ineffective development and implementation of a widely accepted framework. This limits the global wine industry from developing large scale, measurable, and global sustainability successes. The authors make some recommendations as to how to overcome these issues. This includes education, standardization, a need for continued research, and some form of regulation to avoid deception and confusion for consumers to overcome the information problem.
TopIntroduction
Over the past four decades, there has been growing global consumer interest in healthier lifestyles and in particular the food that they eat and drink. Sustainably produced wine is a unique subset of this desire for healthier food sources. As a result of growing consumer interest there has been increased attention to sustainably produced wine in the industry, and at various other levels including government, academia, institutions, and associations (Santini et al., 2013). However, wine has unique characteristics which make its designation as ‘sustainable’ problematic.
Historically, wine dates back to ancient times and was a part of people’s daily diets in historical wine regions (like France or Italy) and also for farmers or working-class people (Alonso Ugaglia et. al., 2021). In more recent times wine has become a hedonic good consumed in social situations and with status symbol implications (Charters & Pettigrew, 2008). The attributes of wine have been transformed because of this change in status. Consumers view wine differently and this is aided by wine producers, their marketers, and motivation to maximize profit. In addition, recent trends of increasing disposable income in wine consuming countries has led towards increased consumption of environmentally friendly food products, including wine. Wine has increased in quality to meet changing social beliefs. Also, it has incorporated production methods that meet consumers’ environmental beliefs via organic, biodynamic, Fairtrade, natural, and sustainably produced wine (Carbone, 2021).
This paper will initially explore what sustainability is and its place in the wine industry. The role of government and regulations in the wine industry are then discussed. The chapter discusses the juxtaposition of widespread regulation of almost all aspects of the wine industry in most wine producing countries. This is however contrasted with the very limited involvement of government and the absence of binding regulation on wine producers in the production of sustainable wine in those same countries.
This chapter identifies three distinct obstacles to developing a global sustainability framework for wine – summarized in Table 1. In addition, the authors make recommendations on how to overcome these challenges are made. We believe that this chapter will be informative and useful for customers, producers, marketers, researchers, and those learning about wine and sustainability.
Table 1. Summary of major obstacles
| Number | Source | Existing Obstacle |
| Obstacle 1 | Consumers | Lack of knowledge about sustainability + wine |
| Obstacle 2 | Producers | Not convinced that they should change – high risk/costs if consumers don’t buy |
| Obstacle 3 | Certifications | Divergence across certifying bodies + lack of public information |