June 2015 – I Should Probably Change

Wine test week

Last week I decided to test the theory that Fairtrade wine isn’t as good as non-Fairtrade. So I bought four bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon.

– Vintage Roots – Protea Reserve Organic, Fairtrade – £8.99

– Sainsbury’s Organic, Fairtrade, no added Sulphur – £6.50

– Co-op Fairtrade – £6.99

– Two Raven (non Fairtrade) – £6.99

The testers

I meet up every other week with a lovely bunch of ladies from my church and they didn’t take much persuading to be my wine guinea-pigs! The test was pretty simple, four shot glasses (yep it was pretty classy!) of numbered wine, vote for your favourite and your worst.

The results

So before I get to results it worth saying that few of us loved any of the wine but that probably means we should steer away from Cabernet Sauvignon rather than all Fairtrade wine. By far the least popular was Sainsbury’s Fairtrade, Organic, Sulphur free offering, this made us all wonder whether we’ve all got taste-buds which favour sulphur?! Maybe that’s a whole other blog but if you’re interested in the Sulphur debate check this out.

The winner was Vintage Roots, they are an online organic wine company. I’m going to talk a little more about them next week when I round up, but the bottle we had was Ethical Consumer Magazine’s ‘Best Buy’ and it seems most of my ladies agreed.

So what did this week tell me?

Well I don’t think I’m totally ready to write off Fairtrade wine, I realise the bottle that won was the most expensive. This possible goes to show that the ‘sweet spot’ theory is right, the people at Naked Wine put it like this;

‘When it comes to wine, a small step in price = a HUGE leap in quality and taste

By spending £8-£10 for a bottle of wine, you’re actually getting more than DOUBLE the quality of wine than a £6-£7 bottle …pretty impressive huh?

Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Here’s how it works…

As the price of a bottle increases, more of your money goes towards the delicious juice in the bottle rather than tax, duty and other boring stuff that adds nothing to the taste.’

I think there’s really something to be said for shopping around and trying a few Fairtrade wines to find something that will equal it’s less-ethical brothers and sister in your own personal taste test. Maybe shelling out a little more to get quality in the knowledge that the wine-maker is getting a fairer deal. Co-op have some on offer this week if you want to start your own quest!

The final thing I learnt was if you don’t particularly like red wine you don’t make the best wine taster, I think I’ll probably stick to the organic beer!

Fairtrade wine and the weekly shop

I started this blog back in December by asking one simple question ‘how do my choices oppress others?’ or in other words ‘did someone suffer for me to live this way?’. These are questions I keep coming back to.

I think most of us would want to avoid wine that is created in exploitative labour conditions. It seems the only way to be certain is to buy Fairtrade wine when buying from countries which lack enforced employment law. South Africa seems to be one of the biggest offenders on this one. War on Want produced this excellent report* highlighting the struggles, particularly of women, who are only given seasonal work, entitling them to few rights. They highlight the huge demand from the UK, the incredible buying power we wield and the pitiful amount of Fairtrade wine that is produced.

I made it my mission this week to see how easy it is to buy Fairtrade wine at the supermarket since that’s where the vast majority of wine sales are made.

My shopping trip

Co-op seem to be way out in front when it comes to stocking Fairtrade wines with an impressive selection of Co-op own brand alongside other names. I was disappointed when I visited a huge Tesco Extra to only find one bottle of Fairtrade wine on it’s many packed shelves. Sainsbury’s and Asda do slightly better but I certainly wasn’t overwhelmed by choice.

There is plenty of criticism of the quality of Fairtrade wine from connoisseurs. This writer suggests you buy wine when it’s on offer from one of the Fairtrade wine-producing countries (South Africa, Chile and Argentina) and give the money you save to Oxfam which I suppose is one way to deal with it, though it doesn’t exactly challenge the status quo.

I want to put this quality problem to the test so a wine tasting seems like the only appropriate thing to do, come back next week to hear the results!

*the report’s from 2007 so a bit outdated I know 🙂

Wine and the environment

In last week’s blog I wrote that I was going to try and work out how to be an ethical wine drinker. It seems from the comments I’ve recieved online and in person there are lots of people who would genuinely like to know about this one.

I embarked on some research and found that there are a few things to consider. This week I’m going to think about the environmental effect of wine making and next week the effect on people.

Ingredients – Is it organic? Back in the clothing challenge I looked into what ‘organic’ meant. Wine can, of course, be made organically by treating grapes nicely! Until 2012 the difficult thing with wine was that, in Europe, it couldn’t legally be labelled as ‘organic’ but rather ‘wine made from organic grapes’ allowing the process to involve non-organic treatments. These rules have now been changed to cover the entire wine-making process which in turn means a lot more organic options on the shelf (though there’s still some questions about this). Vintage Roots specialise in organic wines and I’ll come back to them next week. But it seems if you are concerned about the impact of wine-making on the environment organic is a good way to go.

Where’s it from – carbon footprint?
I was fairly surprised to find out that the UK is the world’s largest importer of wine. Wine is arriving in various way to get into our glass. Distance travelled matters, but almost as important is mode of transport. Generally people seem to agree that shipping is better than roads which itself is better that air. A study in 2007 found that, for people living in New York, it was ‘greener’ to consume a glass of French wine that had been transported by sea, than a glass of Californian wine transported by road (this fact makes my head hurt a little)! Tesco have switched to trains and barges and claim to have cut CO2 by 80% by doing so. The problem is when you are stood in a shop looking at a bottle there is no way of knowing how it’s got there due to no legislation, making the decision really tricky. One option would be to avoid wines from Australasia and South America as they are most likely to have clocked up the ‘food miles’ but mostly you seem to have to take a bit of a punt or do a lot of research.

So this week I’ve learnt the best option for the environment is a seafaring organic wine, next week I’ll consider the effect of who’s put it in the bottle!

What about wine?

This month I’m going to be exploring good wine! I want to find out what makes wine ‘fair-trade’ and how about all the others? Are there questions to consider before I pick up a bottle?

This week I intend to research what the ethical issues surrounding wine are and then move on to which wines we should be drinking and of course the important question ‘are the actually nice’?!

I’m no wine connoisseur so please do give me your tips, pointers or questions you’d like answering on this month’s quest!

This probably needs to involve a taste test…