SONOMA WINE SUSTAINABILITY LOGO

THE SONOMA COUNTY WINEGROWERS held its annual meeting with a focus on the positive and an image for the future with a new label logo.  Approved after a couple years of development, the logo includes Sonoma County in large font and box with the phrase “Sustainably Farmed Grapes” in a circle around the box.  The logo has the same design theme as both the winegrowers’ logo and that of the Sonoma County Vintners.  Winegrowers president Karissa Kruse said the logo is on the labels of nearly 24,OOO cases of wine that are ready for shipment.  That news was also in a press release issued by the Winegrowers, which is also continuing to make progress on its goal of having all the vineyards in the county certified as sustainable.  To date, 92% of the county’s roughly 6O,OOO acres of vines have undergone a sustainability assessment, and 72% have been certified.  More than 14OO individual vineyards have been certified, and 75 wineries have also been certified.  The logo, which is on labels of Ferrai-Carano and Dutton Estate Winery wines as part of a pilot program, is a key element of the Winegrowers’ strategy to successfully market the county’s sustainability.  “For the first time, we now have a logo for the label,” Kruse said.  To capture millennial interest Kruse said the Winegrowers worked with market-research firm Wine Intelligence on how consumers perceive sustainable products and found that 68% of high-frequency wine drinkers would opt for a sustainable product.  In a straight preference study between a wine with the sustainable logo and one without, more than 9O% of consumers chose the bottle with the logo.  It is was particularly popular with consumers from the millennial generation.