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212: An Educated Approach to Wine Marketing | Marketing Tip Monday

January 8, 2024 • 2 mins

Do you know where your food comes from?

“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.

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.

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.

We are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.

This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, download the worksheet, watch the videos, and you are ready to tell your Sustainable Story!

Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.