Why one of California’s most powerful wineries is rebranding as an organic company

These announcements represent a dramatic reversal from a decade ago, when “organic wine” in the mass market carried a stigma, suggesting unpleasant off-flavors. “In the past, there was an assumption that if you were buying organic, you were doing a bit of a trade-off,” said Bonterra CEO Giancarlo Bianchetti. That’s changed, he said: “Now organic is more mainstream.”

One analyst, Technavio Research,expectsthe organic wine category to grow by 7% year over year in 2022.

Fetzer’s name change is largely symbolic; in practice, not much at the Hopland company will shift. The company has made wine under the Bonterra label since 1991, as a sub-brand under the larger Fetzer umbrella. Essentially, the company is switching its flagship product: Now, the Fetzer label will be a sub-brand under the Bonterra Organic Estates umbrella.

By now, it’s commonplace among California’s smaller and higher-end wineries to promote their use of organic or other ecologically friendly farming practices. Thenatural-wine movementhas encouraged consumers to ask questions about the environmental impacts of the wines they buy, bringing jargon like “biodynamics” and “sulfur additions” into the vernacular of some wine-drinking circles.

But however culturally important they may seem, those wineries (and their customers) represent a minuscule coalition compared with giants like Gallo and Bonterra. It’s the conduct of these larger companies, ultimately, that will determine whether most of California’s vineyards are farmed with organic materials or synthetic chemicals.

Fetzer Vineyards has been a powerful force in Mendocino County, and in the larger California wine industry, since Barney Fetzer founded it in 1968. With his 10 children, Barney Fetzer found success in the 1970s and 1980s selling large volumes of affordable wines. In 1992, for areported $82 million, the family sold the business to Brown Forman Corp., the Kentucky corporation that owns brands including Jack Daniel’s. Then, in 2011, Brown Forman sold Fetzer to the Chilean wine company Viña Concha y Toro S.A. The price this time:2.38亿美元.

Concha y Toro was most attracted to Fetzer because of its sheer scale, as a wine sold throughout the world, said Bianchetti.

“The size of Fetzer and the distribution ability of Fetzer was of interest for us in that moment,” he said. Its organic sub-brand, Bonterra, was intriguing, but it wasn’t what drove the business at that time.

But Bonterra has experienced huge growth since then, rising from a 220,000-case annual production in 2012 to 550,000 cases now, said Bianchetti, who expects it to reach 600,000 cases soon. It now represents 40% of the company’s total volume and has eclipsed the Fetzer label, which is at 400,000 cases. (The winery makes other brands besides Fetzer and Bonterra, including a bourbon barrel-aged wine called 1000 Stories.)

That growth is due to the increasing appeal of organic wine in the marketplace, though Bonterra has also benefited from being in a price segment — $10-$15 per bottle — that is growing faster than the sub-$10 price segment in which the Fetzer-branded wines fall. Later this year, the company will release four new Bonterra wines that are even pricier: Chardonnay,Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Pinot Noir that will sell for $19-$21.

Wines made under the Fetzer label are not organic, said Bianchetti, and there are no immediate plans to convert them. He did not explain why. But generally, it costs more to produce organic wine than non-organic wine, which can make it a tough proposition at the $6-$8 price that most Fetzer wines sell for.

By highlighting Bonterra in its name, Bianchetti said he hopes to emphasize that this company has been a champion of organic farming for decades, long before it was in vogue with American wine drinkers. “We’re not newcomers,” Bianchetti said. “This is the moment to share with the world that we’ve been doing this for so long.”

The Fetzer family started using organic farming practices in 1987, and the company institutedbiodynamics— an even stricter regimen that requires farmers to follow the lunar cycle — in 2000. Last year, it earned the still-stricter Regenerative Organic Certified status for the 960 acres of vineyards it owns in Mendocino County.

Achieving these certifications can be logistically challenging, requiring new inspections every year. Each certification comes with its own requirements. To label a wine “organic,” the grapes must come entirely from a vineyard that has been certified as organic by a U.S. Department of Agriculture-accredited agency, such as California Certified Organic Farmers. Beyond the farming, there areadditional specificationsfor how the wine is made; winemakers are allowed to add only a limited amount of sulfur dioxide, a preservative.

Since 2015, the winery has been a certified B Corporation. Parent company Viña Concha y Toro is the largest winery to hold that distinction in the world, according to Bianchetti.

“We think we can have an impact,” said Bianchetti. “This is what we’re trying to achieve — to generate change.”