Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR) completes global sustainability benchmarking pilot

Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR) has completed the initial phase of a new benchmarking scheme which aims to evaluate the world’s various sustainability standards against a single set of criteria, Harpers can reveal. Today, the wine sector operates within a framework of around 40 sustainability standards globally. If smaller, niche certifications are considered, the number reaches nearly 70. With those numbers rising all the time, producers, distributors and retailers are facing increasing complexity when it comes to deciding how vineyards operate and wine is marketed. Putting forward its own answer to this complexity is SWR’s Global Reference Framework (GRF). Announced last year, the GRF is not looking to replace local standards but instead has begun to assess existing certifications by determining how well they align with a broader definition of sustainability and ensure transparency across the wine sector. Dr Peter Stanbury, research director at SWR, told Harpers: “At the end ...