BevMo and Target Reaction to Gallo, Whole Foods and Napa Brands Increasingly Going Organic

Is organic at a tipping point? When Gallo goes organic, that might be the case. In any event, do not miss my story this week in WineBusiness.com, which is the most popular on the site at the moment. It covers organic wine developments at Gallo's Black Box brand, the Central Coast's rapid organic expansion in both large growers and artisanal producers, and the doubling in the number of Napa's certified organic estates in the last 6 years. 

In case you were wondering, Gallo did not tell anyone about their Black Box plans except the USDA's National Organic Program, where I discovered (on the USDA Organic Integrity Database website) that the wine giant had applied back in April for organic handling certification for four Black Box wines.

At Tuesday's session of the International Bulk Wine & Spirits conference held in South San Francisco (an event I covered for another story for WineBusiness.com), I asked the top wine buyers from BevMo and Target what they thought about Gallo testing organically grown Italian boxed wine imports for its Black Box brand this fall. 

Jeff Feist, of BevMo: 

"What if listen, if Gallo's doing it, they're doing it for a reason because they see the trends. They have the data, much more data than we do...I tend to believe it because they're pretty good at what they do...So if Gallo's doing it, my guess is you'll see a lot of other companies tests that as well, because Gallo probably doesn't jump in without doing a whole lot of research. So I think that's a good trend.

Ryan Pandl, of Target: 

I think you'll see people start to take credit for it. I know we have a lot of import wine right now that's organic, but we're not talking about it. I think you'll see, "Oh, this was already in the organic. Why don't we talk about that and get credit from the guests for doing something that's important to them."