Obstacles to Developing a Wine Sustainability Framework

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.