Are we drowning in labels? | New Brief #255

The wine world is being flooded with labels. I recently read that Champagne Bollinger was awarded the label “Entreprise du Patrimoine vivant” (roughly “a company that keeps historical tradition alive”); I didn’t even know one existed. On the same day, I saw that a French wine producer had been certified regeneratively for the first time. Regenerative agriculture is about to become big in the US but is still relatively unknown in Europe. There are labels for volcanic wines, old vines (the OIV just defined it as more than 35 years, but do we really need such a definition?), vegan wines, heroic growers and much more.

And this is still before we have even seriously started looking at all the sustainability labels, far more important than the others. Labelling hysteria is big business. The producers of course pay for their certifications so they must think it’s worth it. But does the consumer care about which label(s) a wine has before buying it? When times are tough, research shows that the price determines what you buy. Among wine enthusiasts, it is region or producer, sometimes grape variety. If the wine then happens to be organic, it’s a bonus.

There is a group of consumers who absolutely want organic wine, but that group is small. More people buy organic than this small group of course, but then the organic label is not the main thing. The Swedish monopoly Systembolaget says their “sustainable choice” labelling (a home-grown umbrella label) is selling well, but since most “sustainable choice” wines are – slighlty contradictory – in the lower price ranges (so wines that sell well anyway) it’s hard to know if environment concern really played a role in the decision-making process.

Maybe the group looking at sustainability labels is bigger but probably not. Sustainability labels are so far quite unknown. There is a plethora of them, HVE, Terra Vitis, Fairtrade, Fair for Life, Carbon Neutral, Certified California Sustainable Vineyard, B Corp, Fair ‘n Green to name just a fraction. It is not easy for anyone to keep track of what they all stand for. Everyone wants to work for a better environment but focuses on different things. Maybe it is enough to see that there is a label, any label?

Some include everything from working in the vineyard to social justice. Others are more specific, such as Carbon Neutral, Zero Pesticides (zero traces of pesticides in the wine), Fish Friendly Farming, Salmon Safe (improve water quality), Fair Trade and Fair for Life (focus on workers’ conditions). Bee friendly encourages the planting of certain specific plants and bans spraying when the bees are most active. And so on.

Some labels have caused consumers to open their eyes, or alternatively to be unnecessarily alarmed (depending on how you want to look at it). “Vegan” – how can a wine not be vegan, people wonder, a legitimate question. “Zéro pesticides” – oops, do other wines contain pesticides? (No, hardly.)

Consumers being ignorant or uninterested may not be a big problem. The labels are just as much for the producers themselves. More probably. And that’s just fine. A label, whatever it may be, perhaps makes the producer make an extra effort. A sustainable certification forces the wineries to think about and rethink how they work. That a well-known Bordeaux château becomes B Corp-certified will probably not matter to the customers, but possibly to other châteaux and perhaps to some importers (and the monolith Systembolaget).

Many countries have set goals for their environmental ambitions, goals that will probably not be reached unless the governments tighten the environmental requirements on industry and agriculture. Soon, producers may be so tightly reined in by national or EU regulations that environmental labels on wine bottles will become redundant.

Until then, make time to read the label. And now there is also the ingredient list. My first was on the Beaujolais Nouveau bottle last week. Have you seen any yet?

If you want to know more about labels, sustainability, additives, spraying and how the wine affects the environment for better or for worse, you can read “The wine for the future”, perhaps the only book that in a thorough and concrete way – without myths or tricky shortcuts – covers these questions from a consumer perspective. Already published in Swedish under the name “Framtidens vin” and in the process of being published in English.

If you want an illustration of the sea of certifications – or perhaps we should call it the flood, considering the climate changes we’re experiencing – take a look at the pictures at the end of this text. They are just samples of all the certifications that you may see. All mean different things (generally good things, of course), except the EU Organics label that has a single well-defined and harmonised definition across all countries.

Our short travel notes at the end of the Brief

Perhaps – hopefully – you have noticed that at the end of the Brief, we always have some short text snippets that tell about upcoming wine tours. Maybe you think that it is the same text that is used over and over again. But that is not the case. Every month we make new short descriptions of our trips to give you a different angle, a new perspective on each destination. They will be published later on the travel blog at BKWineTours.com

If you are a little curious about one of our travel destinations, remember to take a quick look at the “travel snippets” at the end of the Brief.

Who is “I”?

Not a philosophical question at all, but just a purely practical matter. The brief is sent every month from Britt’s email address. This does not mean that everything is always written by Britt. BKWine is Britt and Per. We both stand for everything that is included in the Brief, especially the introduction where we share different thoughts and opinions on the wine world. But also the rest. Everything are things that we both stand for. Who wrote it doesn’t matter. Often it’s a bit of both of us. So “I” is actually “we”. As you can see from the signature.

Customised tours too

In the travel notes, you can read about the tours on our “open” program. But we also do many tailor-made trips, for private groups, wine clubs or the like. It can be to anywhere in the wine world. We have experience from around 40 wine countries (yes! Some yet to visit). It can be small groups or large. We have even done a wine tour for one person and for two. Once we had a quote for two hundred (which thankfully never materialised). The number of people is only a matter of price. The wine region to travel to is just a matter of inspiration. Always with transport and guide included, never “drive yourself”. And with some of the world’s leading wine experts as a guide as well. Can it get any better? Contact us if you are curious about a tailor-made wine trip.

We have tours in English and tours in Swedish. We do many more destinations in Swedish since we have many more Swedish customers. But we do all those destinations in English too, for bespoke tours, Bordeaux Burgundy, Rhone Valley, Piedmont, Rioja, Tuscany, Douro Valley, Austria, Sicily, Languedoc, and many, many more. See a longer list below.

The travel season is over. Long live the travel season!

Now all the autumn wine tours are over. It has been – we think – a fantastically successful season but many wonderful visits, excellent wines and gastronomic meals. And lovely travel guests!

It was particularly fun with this year’s new destination – Andalusia with a focus on sherry. All of us who were on that tour probably got a completely new view of what sherry is, it opened our eyes to what fantastic and surprising wines there are in the sherry district. And we got a good dose of Spanish gastronomy. We look forward to our next tour there to share this dramatically underrated wine with more wine lovers.

Winter wine tours

A tour that is really special is our South America wine tour that takes you to Chile and Argentina in January. It is really last minute but we can, as it looks, take a few more guests on this tour.

We have two other very special tours this winter. First, The Great South Africa Tour, which takes you to almost every wine region in South Africa. No more bookings on this.

The third winter tour is to New Zealand. I should probably also call it “The Great” New Zealand tour. Very few seats left on this. Book now.

More info on our wine tours here. “World’s Top Wine Tours“. Tours with the people who know wine and who have an unrivalled experience of wine and tours.

Travel in wine regions with someone you trust.

Enjoy the Brief!

Britt & Per

Wine editors to the national encyclopedia, Forbes.com contributors, award-winning wine book authors, wine tour advisors to the UN and national wine organisations, wine judges … and, above all, passionate wine travellers.

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