Do eco-friendly wine certifications matter to consumers? And how accurate are consumers’ perceptions of various eco-wine categories when it comes to understanding what eco-wine labels mean?
Data show these categories are impacting both consumer behavior and sales:
- 60% of younger (20 to 40) and multicultural consumers want greener wine, sustainable or organic.
- A recent Wine Market Council study conducted with Ethnifacts found 58% to 61% of younger consumers (20 to 40) prefer sustainable, family-owned or organically grown wines.
- Organically grown wine sales were up in 2024, despite market declines in other categories.
- While overall wine sales declined, recent sales data show organically grown wine purchases rose 2.6% last year (according to NIQ). Bonterra’s supermarket-priced, certified “Made with Organic Grapes” wines were up 16% in the first quarter of 2024.
New Eco-Friendly Wine Study
The latest Wine Market Council online survey of 1,500 consumers, conducted by Wine Opinions in February, dug deeper into greener wines in a recent webinar titled “Eco-Friendly Wine Study: Consumer Beliefs and Motivations.”
Of the consumers surveyed, “896 were from the Wine Opinions consumer panel, which tracks frequent, engaged wine consumers,” said market researcher Christian Miller, “plus an oversample of 607 less frequent and younger consumers to balance frequency and age, recruited via Cint.”
Inside the Trends: Interest in Better Personal and Worker Health, Climate-Friendly Practices
Do consumers have accurate perceptions of what sustainable and organic mean? The study found 73% of respondents understood “organic grapes” while 56% said they understood what “sustainably produced” meant in wine.
The researchers also looked at what consumers associate with each type:
“What we see here is where sustainable has its real toehold is in water conservation, minimization of greenhouse gas and considering the safety of workers and residents,” said Wine Opinions’ John Gillespie.
“On the flip side, organic meant more to consumers than sustainable when you were talking about no pesticides, no GMOs… and they’re healthier for you.”
Greener Wines: To Buy or Not to Buy
“The top reason for wanting to buy is supporting farmers and supporting wineries that produce such wine,” Gillespie said. “These are the people who have a more generalized eco-concern.”
On the flip side, consumers who want greener wines often can’t find them on the shelf, the study found. “People who are concerned about climate change, the highest percentage of those who don’t purchase sustainably produced organic or organic grape wines, say it is because they never see them in the market,” he added.
Surprisingly, Alternative Packaging Ranked High Among All Age Groups
What consumers are overwhelmingly interested in, according to the February study, is eco-friendlier packaging, including lighter-weight wine bottles (71% to 83%), canned wines and boxed or Tetra Pak wines.
Said Wine Market Council’s Liz Thach, “This surprised me because I did a survey two years ago, and this did not come up very high at all with consumers… It sounds like consumers are really starting to be more educated. There’s more information out there, and they’re recognizing the benefits of lightweight bottles. 70% of them now. So if you’re not doing lightweight bottles, you may want to consider it.”
Lighter-weight bottles also have economic benefits, she said.
“Companies like Jackson Family, who have invested in it, have actually saved millions of dollars, too, in their production. So there’s another financial reason to do so, which, of course, in this challenging environment, makes a lot of sense.”
Takeaways for Marketers
In addition to switching to lightweight bottles, Thach recommended prominently displaying eco-wine seals on labels and packaging.
“We found the younger consumers are even more interested in the social/health aspects of sustainable or organic wines,” she said.
She advised marketers to make the certification seals bigger on labeling. “There’s got to be some way to get that information [across],” she said, “and communicate both the environmental and the social [benefits]. We can’t say ‘health benefits,’ but we can say ‘fewer additives,’ things like that.”
Her advice to marketers? “Say ‘better for the earth and better for me, or better for the community.’ That kind of thing. It is a super important message to get out.”
Green wine labels don’t override all the other factors when it comes to buying wine, though, Thach said.
Over time, she said, studies have found while about a third of consumers are eco-minded, overall “consumers are still looking for good taste, quality and price first… Then, sustainability is that plus.”
A comprehensive report on the full survey is available to Wine Market Council members.
