To get consumers to fully understand the importance of a much-heard word, wine needs to drop the corporate jargon and make it feel real
As a child, I spent many afternoons watching David Attenborough documentaries featuring cheetahs sprinting across the Serengeti, orcas and seals locked in lethal struggles and the mating rituals of very camp male birds.
As Attenborough turned 100 this year, I rewatched some of his extraordinary body of work. It struck me that if I care about animals, it’s probably because he made me do so. His programmes changed the way we all think about nature, from something to be captured, displayed and mastered to something to be observed, respected and protected. In wine, we don’t have an Attenborough, and we are a long way from Life on Earth when it comes to communicating how to make wines that don’t damage our planet.
Sustainability is the ubiquitous heading for the industry’s efforts, as for many sectors, yet one that tends to radiate corporate sterility. Its natural habitat is the annual report. It belongs to people who actually like using LinkedIn, who embrace corporate jargon like “action” and “revert”. As a word, sustainability is as lifeless as a herbicide-blasted vineyard.
Perhaps this is one reason why modern sustainability efforts fail to connect with the people on whom its future depends, despite its existential importance to wine. For most wine consumers, sustainability is almost never a major buying consideration — whether they are browsing Aldi’s shelves, picking bubbles from a fine wine broker, or chatting with their local independent merchant. Using a word none of your customers care about is a problem.
Most sustainability efforts seem to boil down to a proliferation of certifications that bewilder drinkers. Back labels are festooned with B Corp, Equalitas, HVE, SWfCP and dozens more. The practices behind them often have immense value, but almost no one knows what they mean. They reassure professional buyers that supply chains are beyond reproach, but have no use in the wild.
In many ways, the bureaucracy of sustainability has far outstripped the consumer need for it. So how do we get drinkers to understand wine’s myriad important initiatives, from regenerative viticulture to climate-adapted planting and water capture? We have to tell the story without corporate jargon, in a clear way that resonates on a human level for wine drinkers with a conscience. This can’t be done through seminars or press releases, nor on back labels – it has to be done by retailers, sommeliers, influencers and journalists.
For example, a retailer listing Johan Reyneke’s recently relaunched Cornerstone wines could confidently pitch them as “certified sustainable wine” and stop there, yet they have a far more human story to tell. The Cornerstone project funds things like housing and education for employees, several of whom have become homeowners or gone to university as a direct result. “What’s this wine like?” a customer asks. “It’s fresh, textural and gastronomic and it funds black worker empowerment in South Africa,” the retailer replies. Suddenly, the blandishments of sustainability transform into something real. When sustainability comes alive, that’s when it can be understood and supported by everyone.
Just as Attenborough made conservation about beauty and emotion rather than science, wine needs to make sustainability feel good, not just politically correct. Until social justice, good farming and biodiversity truly capture the imagination of the people who sell and communicate about wine, they won’t capture the imagination of those who drink it.
