Producers have nose for ethical trading

Mar 13 2009 by Helen Savage, The Journal

THE wine industry is going green. New Zealand says that 80% of its vineyards are committed to sustainable winegrowing and aims to achieve total coverage by 2012.

Organic viticulture is all the rage in France, where the national organic wine fair, held a few weeks ago, attracted 30% more visitors than last year.

Social responsibility also sells bottles. Fairtrade wines can now be found in every major supermarket. So maybe it’s a sign of the times that Gateshead’s Ethical Superstore, which sells everything from eco friendly nappies to organic vodka, also lists more than 80 wines.

It’s a very impressive and well chosen range, but in order to learn more about what makes a bottle of wine (or a pack of nappies) ethical, I went to meet Twanna Doherty, the Ethical Superstore’s head of business development, and John Hinton, the head of ethical sourcing.

Ethical Superstore was set up in 2006 by Vic Morgan and Andy Redfern. Like Twanna, they had worked for many years for Fairtrade pioneer Traidcraft, now one of Ethical Superstore’s close neighbours in the Team Valley.

Their vision was to offer a much broader range of products which, as John explains, “enables people to buy in line with their own ethical standards. We try to give people detailed information about our products to help them make an informed choice.”

It’s an approach that’s neatly summed up by their slogan: “Buy What You Believe.”

Items are stocked if they fulfil criteria such as organic, Fairtrade, eco friendly, recycled, vegetarian, vegan or energy-efficient. “We look at each wine and check that it ticks one or more of our boxes,” Twanna says. “We want a quality product. And if we don’t have a champion in-house, we look to a number of partners for help. There’s no one here that’s a wine expert, so we rely on ex-Waitrose buyer and master of wine Susan McCrath.”

She is also one of the Ethical Superstore’s main suppliers through her own business, Ethical Fine Wines, based in the South West. “Susan acts as a kind of category manager for us,” Twanna says.

It turns out that the main boxes a wine must tick in order to be ethical are based either on how it’s made (organic, biodynamic or “sustainable”), or its social impact – Fairtrade, or if it comes from South Africa, Black Empowerment.