154: Is Wine Certification Worth It? | Marketing Tip Monday

The number of winery businesses has grown, on average, 4.5% each year for the past five years, with over 7600 wineries currently operating in 2022. Among the dizzying sea of wine options, having a certification differentiates your brand!

Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer-form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, these twice-monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.

Today we look at how adding a certification logo to your label can increase your wine sales.

When wine shoppers pick your bottle from the shelf and see a certification logo like SIP Certified, they can feel good knowing that they are supporting a system of winegrowing that is done with conscious care for the people and the planet.

Consumers are looking for Sustainability 

In terms of where consumers believe sustainability is the most important, unsurprisingly, it's the industries that are part of their everyday lives -- especially products as opposed to services.

According to Morning Consult's 2022 Sustainability Report: What Sustainability Means to Consumers, when asked about the importance of sustainability in a variety of industries, over 80% of respondents said it's important in the food and beverage industry.

If you are a SIP Certified wine brand, you fit the ticket! Since you're doing all of the hard work to become certified you can easily take the next step to put the logo on your bottle.

Why Certify Your Wines?

If you're going through the process to certify your vineyard or are sourcing sustainable grapes, you may wonder why you should take the time to add the logo to the label and certify your wines. The answer is simple: consumers seek easy ways to find and identify sustainable wine.

Wine labels are one of the most frequently used sources for identifying sustainable wines -- which makes sense! Unless a consumer knows where you source your fruit or that the vineyard named on your wine label is sustainable, how else would they be able to know that your wine was produced with sustainably grown grapes?

Putting a certification logo on your bottle is the best way to ensure your product can easily be identified as sustainable by consumers when you aren't there to tell them.

Are you eligible to use the sip certified logo on your label?

Any wine made with at least 85% SIP Certified fruit -- estate or purchased -- can bear the SIP Certified seal. All you need to do is complete a Wine Application and send it to a Wine Inspector. The inspection is all done remotely via email exchange of chain of custody documentation.

Visit our Get Certified: Wine page to read more about wine certification, and email [e-mail] if you have any questions.

Check out the show notes for links to this article and all of the consumer research resources mentioned and to sign up for our biweekly Marketing Tips newsletter. Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.

References:

• **SIP Smart Training online course
• Is Wine Certification Worth It?
• Marketing Tips eNewsletter
• SIP Certified