All types of products, including wine, claim many things on their labels and in their advertising to show how ethical, healthy and good for the world they are. Often this is more marketing than reality. For wine, some claim to be organic, eco-friendly, and/or contributing to charities. I want to focus on the latter and examine if it’s something wine lovers should support.
Thinking critically about wine & its impact
First of all, there’s already a lot of material out there about what natural, organic and biodynamic wines are along with wine and health. Plus, eco-friendly wines may include the above since it has to deal with use of pesticides and other chemicals, but it may also include conservation, sustainability and lowering their carbon footprint. For example, something as simple as bottle weight can make a big difference in lowering greenhouse gas emissions. These are all important topics that merit discussion and examination to see how strongly producers adhere to what they claim they do and how much we should encourage all producers to do more. However, I won’t get into these topics and will focus on wine charities.
Secondly, when questioning whether we should buy charity wines, I’m not going to talk about the quality of the wines. I certainly haven’t tasted all of them and that’s partly subjective like any other wine. It also depends on what type of charity it is. If it’s a charity auction with millionaires involved, I’m sure the wines are fancier while wines sold for charity to middle class non-connoisseurs are probably cheaper. Either way, the focus should be giving and not necessarily the quality of the wine.
However, I am drinking one charity wine for this article as a case study and will include some tasting notes. In fact, I got the idea for this topic when I saw this charity wine in the supermarket. I wondered if I was actually helping the world by buying this wine.
Knowing that many corporations fail to do what they claim they do in terms of ethics and charity, it makes sense to be skeptical about wine businesses too. Even though I don’t have the time or means to do a real investigative piece looking into the financials of wine companies, I still question how much charity wines actually do to help good causes. Although I don’t expect a definitive answer, I hope to help us think critically about the issue.
Phony Philanthropy
Philanthropy from corporations and billionaires is dubious at best. In most cases, billionaires gain more in tax deductions than they give away, and what they give away often goes to foundations that they control and only have to spend 5% of in the US. That 5% can go to for-profit causes, their donors’ interests, family, lobbying and branding by putting billionaires’ names in museums, hospitals, and universities, which conduct research to support their business. For example, an oil company could use their “charity” to sponsor research to be less critical of fossil fuels in global warming. Similarly, Bill Gates’ donations to Africa go to help big agricultural companies he’s invested in to take over the food markets in Africa which undermine the voices of locals.
Less than 10% of billionaire charity money actually goes towards public needs. Even if they do spend the money they “donate” on real causes, it still represents a tiny percentage of their total wealth.
Moreover, it cuts away at democracy since that money is taken away from tax revenue that the people could decide how to use rather than one billionaire. Some say for-profit industries and billionaires can do better than the government. Although that may be true in some spheres, we have to consider that corporations spend billions lobbying the government to weaken democracy, put corporate desires above the people’s needs and reduce or actually sabotage the roles and effectiveness of government.
Plus, private industries have been doing the work of the government for decades, so many government failures are really corporate failures. This is because there’s often a conflict of interest. For example, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency shouldn’t be run by someone who works for the fossil fuel industry. Basically, corporations and billionaires are claiming they know better how to solve the problems they created in the first place.
Charity Helps Branding and Sales
At every level of businesses, it’s also clear that charity and claiming to be socially responsible helps create brand loyalty and increases profits according to Forbes. Over 80% of American consumers say they care about charities, have a better impression of a product if it claims to also care about these issues and are willing to change brands to a company that cares about the same issues. Companies know this and use charities to hide and justify their greed or unethical practices. One everyday example is the recycle symbol on packaging. All packages have them now to give the impression of being an environmentally friendly company, but in reality many of them can’t be recycled or won’t be recycled.
In addition, corporations, who on the surface seem to care about your causes, in reality do things that hurt your causes and support political candidates who prioritize corporate wealth over your cause. They may claim things to get consumers on the left and right, or whichever is most profitable at the moment. A company might use a slogan like “Black Lives Matters” after the George Floyd killing and “Support the Troops” during the Iraq War to look better in the public while supporting policies or candidates that push towards unjust wars that put troops in harm’s way, reduce benefits for soldiers and hinder voting rights for African Americans.
Is the Wine Industry any Different?
Ultimately, the wine industry, like any other industry, is concerned with profit above all and many labels today are owned by mega-corporations and billionaires while smaller wineries and labels are just like startups that get bought up by Google, Microsoft, Apple or Meta. For instance, some of your favorite labels like Mondavi, Prisoner, Schrader, Kim Crawford, and Meiomi are now owned by one company, Constellation. Hence, the wine industry is not immune to these problems of corporate power and questionable “giving.”
Types of Wine Charities
I’ve run across several types of wine charities and have more questions than answers about their effectiveness:
1. Companies and owners can donate directly to causes due to catastrophic events and/or they regularly donate to certain causes like cancer research or poverty. In these cases, we often see the announcements of their pledges, but we rarely check to see if they actually do what they pledge and how it’s implemented.
2. Sometimes there is a collaboration of a non-profit with other aspects of the industry like retailers, importers or producers. A wine business can also create their own non-profit. This usually results in a “charity” label, where up to 100% of the profit from this specific wine goes to a charity or multiple charities.
For example, there’s the Folds of Honor Napa Cabernet. It’s a charity to help children of fallen victims in the military. It has its own wine label using a professional winemaker to assemble a quality wine for a good price so that it actually sells well as a product and raises money for the charity. Although this charity is highly rated by charity monitors, the problem for many products is that it’s not always clear what percentage goes to charities and again, if someone actually checks to see if they follow through. Most consumers don’t have the time to check.
In addition, some of the charities are to solve issues the company creates. For example, in Bordeaux there have been reports of higher cancer rates due to industry practices. Therefore, they should be obligated to give to cancer research and not just voluntarily donate. I’ve also seen a charity wine to support their vineyard workers, and I wondered why they don’t just pay the workers more in the first place. Companies that claim to have ethical labor practices need to be monitored by third parties too. In some cases, like with Starbucks, they create their own ethics standards monitoring organization, which of course says they do everything great when other organizations say they don’t.
3. There are charity events like raffles and auctions that raise money from donated wines. For example, the Hospices de Beaune Auction raises money through auctions for the Hôpital de Beaune and heritage projects. They’ve been doing this charity since the 19th century and there are parades and other events throughout the town. Similarly, there’s the Collective Napa Valley (formerly called “Auction Napa Valley”), which organizes charity events involving auctioning of wine. They admit and are trying to remedy the fact that these charities have been rather elitist and don’t involve a wider range of people. Do these charities just help the rich feel better about themselves? Could real change happen if more people are mobilized?
4. Another major way I see wine and charity together are Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) charity wine sales. Multi-Level Marketing is a nice way to say pyramid schemes. For example, there’s One Hope Wine, which recruits people to start their own wine business in which 10% of their sales go to charity. However, the purpose is still to make money and most of the profits go up the pyramid in the scheme and lower-end recruits have little chance of making a profit. Wine for Humanity is another MLM charity wine business that is slightly better in that they don’t focus as much on recruiting.
These MLM charity wine companies, like many MLMs, recruit people who are looking for a side hustle to help make ends meet. Adding the charity component targets people who perhaps feel selfish when they do aggressive sales, but feel more motivated when they think they’re helping others by doing it. Plus wine is a fun way to do it. Although I like the idea of educating more people about wine, these groups seem to overemphasize sales over the charity or their recruits.
5. Finally, there are some ways wine industries can support local communities without giving to charity. Sometimes this involves government aid and research too. A bigger name winemaker can help lend their brand, expertise and equipment to get higher prices for local farmers’ grapes. This is the case with Psi, a label of Dominio Pingus in Ribera del Duero. In Chile, small independent wineries started by locals and international winemakers have made similar investments in local grapegrowers to revive lost varieties, use local, sustainable, traditional methods and get higher prices for their grapes than they would have. I’ve written about the rise of Pais or independent wineries like Garage Wine Co. I’ve also written about Tayu, a project with the large commercial producer, San Pedro, to make wines with indigenous Mapuche communities.
In the case of Tamarugal in Chile, it’s the government and university who play a role in experimenting with plantings and wines for local communities to eventually use as a means to build the economy.
Lastly, I should mention that small farmers have organized themselves and created cooperatives to pool all their resources together and compete in the wine world. I like these examples because they use more of a bottom up, collaborative and “teach the poor to fish” type approach rather than top-down donations.
Isn’t some charity better than nothing?
One can argue that no company or product is 100% ethical and good for the world. Therefore, someone might say it’s better that they give something rather than nothing even if they get tax breaks for it and they give less than you had imagined. It’s still a win-win, isn’t it? In many cases, industry leaders and the wealthy may have good intentions, help thousands of people and bring recognition to important causes while selling a product people want. Furthermore, some say one needs to make a lot of money if one wants to have any real influence on society’s problems. The ends justify the means.
On the other side of the coin, others say “the ends are the means.”* We must take into account that not everything (e.g. military, healthcare, education, other basic needs) should be guided by profit first. Even if we are guided by altruistic intentions, it’s important how one obtains profit too. Are donations enough to offset the negative impacts of businesses that involve environmental destruction, war, poor wages and working conditions, circumventing democracy, lying, and selling harmful and addictive products? If we did an audit of the positive and negative impacts of corporations, would the positive come out ahead? Do the donations and ethical branding serve to pacify our collective actions to demand better from our leaders?
The wine industry certainly has to ask these questions too. Given how wine lovers and winemakers are so obsessed with every detail of winemaking, they should also be able to think critically about the ethics of wine at every level in addition to the larger systems that create and perpetuate many of our problems in the first place. As a start, although there are official certifications for organic/bio winemaking, perhaps there should be more for ethics and charity on wine labels.** We could also support small, independent wineries and co-ops, which aren’t necessarily perfect either, but represent a more bottom-up approach. I’m sure those in the industry have more ideas.
*This is a paraphrasing of “The means must be as pure as the end, for in the long run of history, immoral destructive means cannot bring about moral and constructive ends.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
**A German initiated certification called FairNGreen attempts to certify environmental and social responsibility.
Case Study: Patagonia Conservation Wines from Chile
About a couple months ago, I started noticing a new label in the supermarkets that said “Patagonia” on it. The wines are relatively cheap at $8-11 a bottle. They make varietal Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Carmenere and Cabernet Sauvignon. Upon closer inspection, I was disappointed to see that they weren’t actually made in Patagonia and are sourced from various places in Chile, most likely in the typical regions of the central valley. However, I also noticed that it advertised itself as a charity wine, so I decided to investigate a bit further. 
On the label, it says that it is certified Carbon Neutral and a Certified B Corporation, which is a certification for businesses who show transparent social and environmental practices. They commit not only shareholders but all stakeholders. This means it uses good practices in terms of charity and employee benefits. It also has a 1% for the Planet Certification, which means they give a certified donation of at least 1% of annual sales. These are all independent monitoring certifications.
If you look at the website, they lay out what their donations will go towards, but it’s also on the back label. They have 4 focus areas in Patagonia: marine life conservation, wildlife conservation, expanding and maintaining national parks/forests and clean water. The picture on the front label shows the pristine coastline of Patagonia, further creating its environmental focus image. So far, everything sounds good. 
Digging deeper, I learned that only 1% of their sales are donated specifically to the Rewilding Foundation (see below). However, it’s not clear if this is an initiative of this foundation, a wine producer or both. It’s also not clear who the producer is, but the website tab heading shows Cono Sur, so perhaps they are involved. Overall, given how much the label and website projects the idea that this is all about helping conserve Patagonia, 1% is, to say the least, underwhelming. In comparison, another Chilean charity wine from Leo Erazo called S.O.S. Pudú Conservación gives 100% of their profits from this cuvee to help create a 30h sanctuary for flora and fauna in Itata.
Environmental Hero or Too Much Power?
Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia
The Rewilding Foundation itself is not free from controversy either. It’s a charity based on the legacy of Doug Tompkins, who died kayaking off the coast of Patagonia in 2015. On one hand, one could say Tompkins is the greatest environmental donor ever. He bought and eventually gave back to the governments of Chile and Argentina 5.7 million hectares of Patagonia for conservation.
However, to amass the wealth to do so, he had to use cut throat business and labor practices in the two businesses he founded: North Face and Esprit. Speaking of the clothing industry, they’re the ones who created a mountain of discarded clothing in the Chilean Atacama desert so big that it can be seen from space.
Tompkins also used similar practices to buy as much Patagonian land as he could in the first place. He fought for-profit special interests groups, but also undercut local concerns and the governments. Many Chileans were rightfully concerned when an American bought so much land given their history of CIA sponsored coup d’etats and colonialism. Although he eventually did donate all the land back, a lot was riding on the whims of one unelected man.
On a related side note, Tompkins is the one who inspired Yvon Chouinard’s Patagonia company, which is known for having better labor and sustainability practices than Tompkins’ companies. Chouinard also made headlines saying he was donating his whole company to help the environment. However, it’s still the same story of tax breaks and family controlled foundations playing a role. Again, how the money is used will depend on the whims of the family no matter how good their intentions are now.
Conclusion: Should we buy charity wines?
Although consumer power through purchasing choices, boycotts and shaming organizations with bad practices are ways to make changes, bigger changes happen when more people get involved in their local communities and join larger movements to make changes from the bottom up. Leaving it up to billionaires is risky.
In the wine industry, there are examples of movements at every step in the process from grower to consumer, but many still follow the models I outlined above, which often feel more like they’re doing charities for PR rather than real activism.
At best, buying charity wines helps put a band-aid on suffering, but almost never deals with the root of the problem. For example, the Folds of Honor charity might do everything right to raise money to help the children of fallen soldiers, but couldn’t we do more to stop our government and military industry from getting involved in more wars in the first place? Can’t we tell our senators to compensate the victims of war more rather than leaving it up to a charity?
At worst, charity wines are borderline scams since companies can profit more than they give away by being a “charity” wine.
As a wine lover and activist, I don’t need a good cause to buy and enjoy wine nor do I need to buy/sell something to support a good cause. Sometimes our voices are needed more than money. Grab a nice bottle and have a deep discussion about what you think at your next wine tasting!
Tasting Notes:
2022 Patagonia Nature Rules Sauvignon Blanc Chile
Relatively shy nose with a touch of floral, citrus and jalapeño with white fruit. The palate shows upfront fruit with plenty of acidity, light+ body and a very savory but long finish-savory herbs and just salinity. Ultimately a typical solid Chilean Sauvignon Blanc. The salty taste makes me think at least some of it comes from San Antonio/Leyda or a Casablanca vineyard closer to the coast with salty ocean air influence. The website seems to imply that Cono Sur is part of the wine side of this project, and they source from both San Antonio and Casablanca. 89