I’m a member of the AWE – Association of Wine Educators, an organisation whose members I highly recommend if you are looking to join wine classes in the UK, or even further afield. 

We recently discussed the phenomenon that is Clean Wine. Wine and wellness is a subject close to my heart since publishing The Drinking Woman’s Diet.

2020 The ‘invention’ of Clean Wine? 

Cameron Diaz’s launch of Avaline as a ‘clean wine’ created a lot of column inches last year. The trade knows what clean wine means – not much – but as damning and sarcastic as the trade has been on social media, the reaction from consumers has been positive – lapping up the ‘clean delicious wine’ quite literally. 

Avaline are not alone 

The Good Clean Wine Company also started in 2020, selling their wines, I quote: ‘minimal intervention, few to no additives, and more natural processes, they’re considered and affordable wines that let you choose easily, live freely, and feel good’.

Dry Farm wines has been around for a little longer and is more transparent. It distributes mainly European wines from small family vineyards that are not irrigated – dry farmed. They talk about natural rather than clean, and their claims are more precise: low sugar (they say Sugar Free qualifying it as 0-0.15g per glass), low alcohol (under 12.5% alc/vol), and additive free, all backed up by lab tests. 

I quote from the website, ‘The only way to really know what is in your wine is to send a sample to an independent lab to analyse it. ‘

Negative by implication.

These statements are more than marketing handles; by calling their wines, natural or clean and new, they imply the rest of the industry as dirty or unnatural. Words like honesty imply dishonesty; transparency implies that ‘normal’ wine has something to hide. Dangerous stuff. 

This is an extension of the booming clean food and clean beauty trend. The owners of The Good Clean Wine Company are both from the beauty industry. It had to happen and the pandemic has only accelerated it. 

Green washing? 

As opportunistic as this seems, what goes into wine is a valid concern for some, often younger, consumers – a demographic that wine producers are keen to engage with, especially the traditional producing regions (France, Spain, Italy) where local consumption is decreasing. 

The sustainable trend was brought into focus at the two-day online Sustainable Wine Conference in November 2020. 1100 participants attended, including 700 grape growers and wine makers, retailers, logistics firms, and the wine trade in general.

Their research found that :

Younger drinkers are more open to sustainability in wine.

Gen Zs have a stronger perception that sustainable wines will be better quality.

Millennials lead the way in terms of purchasing sustainable and environmentally produced wine and 9 in 10 are willing to pay more for them.

Younger consumers are significantly more engaged with sustainability, view it as increasingly important to protect the future, and have a strong affinity towards sustainable wine certifications.

75% of trade respondents feel that the demand for sustainably produced products has increased over the past five to 10 years; and slightly more think it will increase in the next 5 to 10 years.

One session was dedicated to Misinformation in wine: How transparency and science can change the debate on ‘clean’ and ‘natural’ wine. The speakers included AWE member Richard Bampfield MW, Anne Jones of Waitrose & Partners, Felicity Carter now editor in chief of the new PIX platform and their magazine The Drop) and Wellness guru Liz Earle MBE. You can listen to the discussion here.

When America sneezes

The examples above are American, but the trend for natural and clean wines is strong in the UK and Europe too. Wine making legislation in Europe is stricter than in the US, just take alcohol labelling. EU regulations permit a tolerance of plus or minus 0.5 per cent; looser US regulations allow a tolerance of plus or minus 1.5 per cent of alcohol for wines under 14 per cent alcohol, and plus or minus 1 per cent for wines over 14 per cent. This hardly inspires confidence so a reaction is perhaps understandable. The definition of organic also varies from country to country.

Market driven? 

There’s nothing wrong with good marketing and wine hasn’t always shone in this field. Dry Farms talks about ‘ Keto & Paleo Friendly, Vegan and Low Carb Friendly’. Occasionally they mention taste! They both make claims about lack of labelling legislation, the number of additives allowed to be used in wine (70 or 76 depending on the site,) etc. 

This appeals to a desire to understand what is behind the label. These may be new drinkers or drinkers that perhaps don’t already have brand affiliation, or drinkers who have never really given much thought at all to where the wine comes from.  This is also an affluent clientele.

They are selling a dream of healthy, artisan made wines sometimes, ridiculously, even hangover free. They use bio-hackers and influencers such as Tim Ferriss, as ways to market. It also helps when an international film star co-owns the company. Underlying that the purchasing decisions of the younger generation are more influenced by social media, rather than labelling.

Wine business 

Dry Farms is an interesting business model – although they do profile the odd wine maker on the site, there is no catalogue. The consumer does not have a choice of which wines they buy, only by colour, red, white, rosé or sparkling and how many. They select the wines for mixed or single colour in cases of 6 or 12 delivered to you door every month.  It’s a subscription model, another ‘right-on’ marketing trend. 

Avaline does reveal the names of the wine makers they work with except for their red where they say: ‘The winemaking family respectfully asked Avaline to keep their identity confidential’. So much for transparency! 

Wine and wellness

There is a Californian wellness vibe behind these products, and the wine trade dismisses this at its own risk. The global wellness economy is currently valued at $4.5 trillion (2018 data). The industry grew by 6.4 per cent annually from 2015–2017, from a $3.7 trillion to a $4.2 trillion market, nearly twice as fast as global economic growth (3.6 per cent annually, based on IMF data). Revenue growth leaders from 2015–2017 (per annum) were the spa industry (9.8 per cent), wellness tourism (6.5 per cent) and wellness real estate (6.4 per cent).

Wine and health

Wine traditionally enjoys the reputation of a healthy option as far as alcoholic beverages are concerned. Most producers are keen to promote wine as part of a healthy and responsible lifestyle. Health issues are even more front-of-mind given the pandemic. 

Clean wine’s claims bring into focus the health benefits, or otherwise, of wine and alcohol. But can wine ever be considered good for us? It’s a debate the trade needs to take seriously. The sober curious movement is a concerning trend for the industry. Dry January, Sober October and the increase in non-alcoholic options are important trends. The rise of ‘low and no’ alcohol options are all in response to this. 

Alongside the wellness trend there is also a neo-abstinence trend, especially in the US. In 1990, Women for Wine Sense was created by wine makers in the US with the stated aim of improving wine knowledge through education as a counterweight to the anti-alcohol lobby. Their premise is a better understanding of wine leads to more responsible consumption. The success of this organisation has been phenomenal; they now have a network of 10 chapters and growing throughout the US and a charitable arm that sponsors wine education for women in the industry.

Ten years ago, Wine in Moderation was created in Europe. Their social media campaign ‘’Cheers! Tips to enjoy a glass of wine while keeping safe‘ promotes ‘a message to encourage a moderate consumption of wine, and support wine professionals and consumers with positive and motivational words’. ‘Vins et Société‘ plays a similar role in France. Not exactly lobby groups for the industry but showing a responsible face of an industry that is essentially selling a drug. 

And that is a very controversial statement. Purposely so. I believe the wine industry must communicate clearly around the subject and take a ‘reasonable’ stance. If not it may be taken for us. 

At the Fine Minds for Fine Wine forum in Bordeaux, it was brought to the audience’s attention that certain sovereign investment funds were actively disinvesting in companies linked to spirits production (following on from tobacco). The world of high finance may seem a long way from an artisan wine producer – less far from Diageo and LVMH perhaps? The wine trade can’t hide its head in the sand. 

These trends go further than marketing to a subset of rich Californian Millennials looking for guilt free tipples.

Where to go for the answers? 

Pseudo-science peddled by clean wine merchants is seductive as are headlines about wine being good for your heart or brain or waistline, but this is not the answer. Do your research, studies in the press are often misquoted.

Understanding the label

The purchasing decisions of the younger generation are more influenced by social media and media rather than labelling. We know wine labelling can be complicated and certifications (vegan, organic biodynamic sustainable, etc.) are multiple and change from country to country.

I quote from Dry Farms, ‘By law, wine is not required to have a contents label on the bottle. This is based on an ‘old’ agreement between the wine lobby and the US government. As one of the only major food groups without a content label, consumers are left in the dark about what is in their wine.’

Knowledge and information are the best adversaries of ‘Fake news’.  We all know the frustration of looking up information on specific wines for tastings and the dearth of information on many producer websites. I sympathise, we know that many wine producers are neither tech savvy nor time rich. 

With mixed messaging around wine and health, and in the absence of clear communication and labelling from producers (understandable given the complexity of the issue and the size of many producers) where do you go for information? 

The Sustainable Wine forum debate raised the challenge of getting more precise yet accessible information out to influencers and lifestyle journalists about what sustainable production really is. 

For many, wine has the advantage of being perceived as a natural product, but I think there is an urgency to get in front of fake news and give a clear message. 

The AWE is putting together a database of resources with just such information about the important questions that are raised. 

I would love to have your feedback about where you go to get reliable information of the wines you are drinking. Or if you even care? 

An version of this post was first published on the AWE Website.

Want more? If you have enjoyed this post please sign up here  to receive future blog posts directly to your inbox. If you would like to learn more about Bordeaux, you can buy your copy of Bordeaux Bootcamp here, to learn more about Wine and Wellness, you can buy your copy of The Drinking Woman’s Diet here.  

Search for: Search