An Educated Approach to Wine Marketing

“Food disconnect” is a term used to describe the average consumers lack of knowledge about where their food comes from and how it’s made.

When it comes to wine, most people only see the finished product: what’s in their glass.

For sustainable wine brands, there’s yet another level to this disconnect:

• While consumers name food and beverage as one of the most important industries when it comes to sustainability, more than one in four US adults said they don't know what makes a product sustainable (Morning Consult, 2022).

This introduces an opportunity for sustainable winegrowers and winemakers.
 

Sustainability Sells!

After Kathy Kelley and her colleagues at Penn State University learned about the environmental benefits of using cover crops under grapevines, they wondered if promoting this sustainable practice could be part of a marketing strategy to sell more wine.

When they tested this theory with real-world wine consumers, they found that 72% of the wine consumers surveyed were willing to pay a $1 surcharge to cover associated sustainable production costs, and 26% were even willing to pay a $2 surcharge!
 

Get Specific

It’s important to note that for the participants in the study, simply hearing that a wine brand acted sustainably wasn’t enough – it was learning the importance of the specific sustainable practice that increased customers’ willingness to pay more for the wine.

“… We’re seeing a consumer group that wants to be educated and wants to know exactly what is going on with sustainable wine production,” Kathy says in a Penn State article summarizing her findings. “So, being descriptive about what it actually means to include cover crops in a vineyard is a way to be attractive to them.”

Sharing your sustainable story has many benefits. It can be used as a marketing strategy, it helps combat “food disconnect,” and it helps spread awareness of sustainable practices that protect and regenerate natural resources.
 

Let’s Share Your Sustainable Story!

We know you have a great story to tell and we are here to help you. Sustainable Stories features inspiring, true stories about how SIP Certified members fulfill the 7 Values of the program.

The values are filling up fast! We’re looking for three SIP Certified brands to share how they fulfill one of these values:

• Water Management
• Safe Pest Management
• Energy Efficiency

If you want to see your story featured next year, please reach out to whitney@vineyardteam.org.

We’ll just need a few quick details and a handful of photos to get your story ready to be featured!
 

Sustainable Stories Featured in 2023

You’ve seen these stories featured in:

• Grape & Wine Magazine
  • Sept. 2023 (pg 22).
  • Oct./Nov. 2023 (pg 22).
  • More to come!
• Tell Your Sustainable Story: the free, online course for employees of SIP Certified brands.
• Sustainable Winegrowing podcast’s Marking Tip Mondays.
• Table Signs at SIP Certified tasting rooms.
• SIP Certified Marketing Tips.
• Instagram and Facebook pages.

We look forward to sharing your Sustainable Story!