Giving Tuesday, Wine Style

Radical generosity.

That’s a phrase that’s caught my eye for this year’s round of Giving Tuesday — today — when consumers proactively “zoom out” their holiday spending to also include support for nonprofit or philanthropic organizations. Giving Tuesday is stickiest when the recipients are meaningful to the givers.

Which brings us, for the purposes of this column, to Giving Tuesday, wine style.

Many wineries, from New York to Texas to Washington state, have incorporated a philanthropic “line item” into their business plan, most often geared toward a mission that resonates with the owners’ or winemakers’ personal histories and interests. Authentic examples add a humane and compassionate layer to the narrative of the winery, and offer another point of access and relevancy to their audience.

If there’s a cause that resonates with you, take a few minutes this Giving Tuesday to explore options of wineries who support it. If clean oceans speak to you, consider Head High Wines. To support access to healthcare for vineyard workers, check out Vital Wines. If you’d like to support research into cardiovascular disease, have a look at the work of the Leducq Foundation through Ehlers Estate. For a broader perspective, see ONEHOPE’s $9 million track record of donating ten percent of every purchase to a local or global cause of the giver’s choice; the company also assists and enables consumers to fundraise, through wine, for a nonprofit. On a micro scale, consider Cellar Angels, which I profiled in this column a few years, which focuses on little-known wineries in Napa and Sonoma.

The list certainly (and happily) goes on.

Here are three additional wineries worth considering in light of Giving Tuesday.

When Regenerative Agriculture is on Your Mind

Sandhi Wines in Santa Barbara, California has timed the public release of their inaugural, and limited production, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to coincide with Giving Tuesday, to benefit the White Buffalo Land Trust (WBLT). WBLT’s nonprofit focus is on developing systems of regenerative agriculture and land stewardwhip, in order to address issues of climate, biodiversity, public health and food security challenges.

Empowering Latinx and Hispanic Vineyard Workers

AHIVOY, which stands for Asociación Hispana de la Industria del Vino en Oregon y Comunidad, was founded and is led by successful Latinx wine professionals to provide education and professional development opportunities in the Oregon wine industry. The bilingual Spanish and English professional training and immersion program expands opportunities within the industry, and creates awareness of potential career, entrepreneurial and leadership opportunities. The opportunities to give on Giving Tuesday is through a direct donation via their website and/or to support any of their community of wineries and organizations who sponsor AHIVOY.

Giving Even When It Isn’t Giving Tuesday

Tarpon Cellars, spearheaded by winemaker and founding partner Jeremy Carter, lives and breathes its commitment to community every day of the year. You sense it through the words of their stated mission and moreso through their actions in the marketplace. (They’ve even teamed up with Spotify to share the good vibes.) Community, heart-first, wins. They donate a dollar from every bottle sold to the Georgia Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and see philanthropy as a core tenet of a sustainable business model. “Our goal is to not only create wines of unsurpassed quality,” they say, “but we want our consumers and members to know that they are contributing to a force for greater good as well.”