Wednesday, May 12, 2021

What's the Matter with Drizly? It's Telling Consumers Wines are Organically Grown When They're NOT

You may have seen the recent article published by Drizly's trends section


Featuring some Nielsen stats, and quotes from an all organic/biodynamic importer, it tells readers, "By exploring data from across the Drizly platform, including the category’s top brands, retailers can tap into natural, organic, and biodynamic wine trends to maximize sales in the years to come."

But guess what. Most of the rest of the article goes on to quote "data" that is wrong AT LEAST 80 PERCENT OF THE TIME.

First of all, the "data" makes the elementary mistake of thinking that brands are organic. If a producer has an organically grown wine, then aren't all of their other wines also organically grown? 

No, Virginia. That's not how it works. In my database of 1,800 organically grown wines in the US, about two thirds of the wineries with organically grown estate wines ALSO BUY non-organic grapes and make different, non-estate wines from those grapes. 

The article then proceeds to list Drizly's data on its top 5 natural, organic and biodynamic brands.

I was a little miffed when I saw this list, because I thought it was quite inaccurate, but then I am always on the hunt for new wines to know about from organic or biodynamic vines, so I called and emailed Belle Glos to ask about their organic or biodynamic program. Barry Sheridan, Vice President of Strategy & Commercial Growth, at Copper Cane, which owns Belle Glos, replied.

"This is the first I’ve seen this and I’m unaware of any information or assertion provided directly to Drizly regarding any of our wines being organic," he wrote in an email reply. 

He did say the Belle Glos wines were vegan, but I didn't see "vegan" in the headline on the Insightful Article. He emailed back later to say he would try to get the listing fixed. That was April 27. Today is May 14. Nothing has changed.

FLOWERS VINEYARD AND WINERY

Let's look at the "number one" brand on this list. According to Drizly, all of the wines below are from organic grapes, but, in fact, only the wines in the second row - made in tiny lots and costing $80-100 - are. [They are the only all estate wines.] 

These are made in such small lots, and sold primarily at the estate or to the wine club, that it is extremely unlikely that these wines are sitting in the wine shop down the road waiting for a Drizly driver to bring them to you, unless maybe your address is, like, in Beverly Hills.

I visited Flowers when it first opened at its elegant new digs in Healdsburg and have since written about it. At the time, I clarified which wines were indeed from the organic estate vines (certified in 2020) and which were not. But the majority of the grapes for almost all of its wines come from "sustainable" - i.e. chemically farmed - vineyards. 

Flowers does use native yeast on all its wines but that is not the usual sole criteria for a natural wine. And I have never seen Flowers saying they make natural wine. (Did I miss something?) 

The Flowers wines - in the top row only here in the photo below taken from the Insightful Article - are $35-55 and are made with sustainable grapes in very large quantities.

Only the far more expensive wines in the second row are sourced solely from the organic (just certified in 2020) vines which were "in transition" during these vintages.

Here's the individual "organic" wine listing for one of the non-organic wines. You will notice under "Features," the listing says "organic."


But it is not.

Let's try another one - from Faust, also owned by Hunneus - which also owns Flowers.

Here's the wine description that appears below the picture on the Drizly website. Notice it says "organic" under the "Features" section, too.

But this $55 wine is not organic.

Faust is in the process of certifying a different vineyard as organic, and that vineyard is the source of grapes for Faust's $85 The Pact Cabernet Sauvignon.

So, sorry, Drizly, you're batting zero so far.

At number three on the list, Bonterra is obviously organic and or biodynamic. So perhaps if Drizly's categories were corrected, it would be number one. But Bollinger? I clicked around on the website and looked at most of the Bollinger wines on the Drizly site. No individual wine I clicked on said "organic." One said vegan. 

So was the person behind the database thinking that vegan meant natural or organic or biodynamic? 

Ok, so the article had a SECOND list - not of brands but of individual wines. I hoped for better, but not much. I mean, how bad could it be? 

Again, the only wines on this list that are actually organic are the two from Bonterra which are clearly labeled on the wines that they are "Made with Organic Grapes." So Bonterra would have been first and second on this list if the list had been accurate. But two out of 10? I want my wine seller to be better than this.

So overall, 80 percent of the wines are not correctly represented. Pity the poor consumer trying to buy organic.

I called Drizly to discuss, thinking they could use some help. Not possible to get through. I contacted BevAlcInsights by Drizly and received this email in reply. 


"Still a category on the rise." Very funny. (I did email them and tell them I had a database and would be happy to discuss how they could use it. No response.)

While the email mentioned "sustainable wines" the headline and the lists did not. And Alice Feiring would roll over in her grave to hear the word "sustainable" as having any place in a definition of natural wine. RAW Wine, the definitive natural wine fair, says in its criteria for exhibitors, "The entirety of the domaine from which the grapes are issued must be farmed organically and/or biodynamically."

If a producer were to say that a wine is organic when it is not from certified organic grapes, the producer would be violating federal law. 

Biodynamic claims are also legally protected by Demeter USA. 

Would that there was a law making it a federal offense for wholesalers and retailers to represent wines as organic or biodynamic when the grapes are not certified. 

Can you imagine buying vegetables at a supermarket that told you the produce was organic when it was not 80 percent of the time? 

As a postscript, apparently after receiving my email, the folks at BevAlcInsight added this note to the bottom of the article.

Hello? Sustainable does not mean producers who work organically. It is a different standard altogether.

It wouldn't be so bad if the Insightful site had not taken it upon itself to create these bogus lists and prominently feature their errors. 

Let's help them improve their batting average, shall we?

For now, perhaps they should not tell us what's organic until they get their act together. That way unsuspecting consumers looking for organic will not be duped.

UPDATE

In response to this post, Drizzly updated their site and removed the wine lists in question, publishing this very welcome response:

**May 19, 2021: Updated to remove a section of this article which highlighted top brands and products on Drizly due to potential inaccuracies in brand and product specific data

Thank you, Drizzly.

4 comments:

  1. Can't wait to try a few of these wines! I do love Flowers winery. Thank you. Keep up the informative pieces. As a somm, I am always up for reading more. If you are ever in Sonoma CA, look me and my wine touring business up! Cheers. https://www.vinesofsonoma.com

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  2. Hello. "Wines made from organic grapes" DOES NOT EQUAL ORGANIC WINE. To be organic wine, using organically grown grapes is the first step. The crucial most common next step is that adding any SO2, sulfur dioxide, means NOT organic wine. Frey makes organic wine, and as far as I've ever seen, Bonterra makes wine from organic grown grapes. The story ends there. They add sulfur dioxide. I'm going to guess wildly, but 99.9% or 99.99% of wines any consumer finds in a store are NOT organic. Unless you have a merchant who specifically searches out and carries fully "Organic Wine", all of the other nice practices are just that, nice, but the wine will probably have a long shelf life. Organic Wine, no added sulfur, will on average, have a shelf life less than 2 years. Buy them, enjoy them, drink them, but don't store them for any length of time, unless at 45 degrees or less.

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    1. I am well aware that USDA Organic Wine is different from what most people think of as organic wine. Almost all certified organic grapes in the U.S. go into wines that are made with limited amounts of sulfites.

      In my database of organically grown wines from estate vines or organically certified wines, there are a total of 1,653 wines. Of these 1,430 wines are from organic grapes and 460 are from biodynamic vines (which may or may not be certified organic). Only 108 are USDA Organic Wine (i.e. made without added sulfites).

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