Since 2020, countless businesses – in the wine industry and others – have pledged to drive more equity and diversity with their work, primarily in response to national calls for greater protection of Black lives. Two and a half years later, many articles attest that few businesses have delivered on their promises. Were some of these promises empty, used to manage public perception with no plans to execute? Certainly. But I’d also like to believe that some of them were made with earnest intention to follow through, but roadblocks presented themselves.
My husband Jon and I started Legend Imports in 2020, after returning from living in Australia for three years. Though we’d always considered ourselves progressive when it comes to the environment, labor, diversity, and equity, living in Australia for an extended period instilled in us a feeling that it’s possible for society to operate in a more enlightened way. Though Australia is by no means perfect, there are universal rights—like healthcare, vacation time, and a livable wage—that are too often missing in the United States.
We took the responsibility of starting a company seriously: if we were going to invest copious amounts of our time, money, and energy in a business, we wanted to make sure it was contributing to a better world, even in a small way. When we launched our company, we also announced a value statement and a pledge to release annual accountability reports to reflect on what we’d been able to accomplish.
Within six months of being in business, a friend introduced us to Pamela Busch, who runs a nonprofit called The Vinguard, an organization that has been “solely focused on fighting oppression in the wine industry through education and representation,” says Busch. The Vinguard was in the process of revising the WINE (Wine Industry Equity) Pledge, which outlines how businesses and individuals in the wine industry can be more equitable, safe, and environmentally responsible.
The WINE Pledge has been a valuable resource for our company to organize our values, articulate and implement goals, and hold ourselves accountable; I am now a member of The Vinguard’s board of directors as well. The WINE Pledge is both a document and a commitment: it serves as a roadmap for helping businesses to hone their environmental and social justice-oriented goals, but it also asks its signatories to submit and report on those goals. To date, 62 businesses have signed the pledge.
The idea is to set a short-term, medium-term, and long-term goal, and then add new ones every year—favoring sustained progress with ongoing assessment over immediate action with zero accountability. To highlight how the WINE Pledge helps wine businesses deliver on their individual goals, I spoke to three companies about their progress—and outlined our progress with Legend as well.
Bay Grape
When California’s Bay Grape, a retailer and wine bar with locations in Oakland and Napa, signed the WINE Pledge, they aspired to donate their space and time to host one event that benefits and promotes underrepresented groups within the wine industry per quarter at each location; incorporate existing annual DEI training programs into routine onboarding training for all new employees, in addition to an annual refresher course; and to replace a significant portion of packaging waste (especially glass) with reusable wine packaging and storage.
Bay Grape’s co-owner Stevie Stacionis reports that the team has succeeded in achieving part or all of these goals, but she acknowledges that it hasn’t been easy. Discussing the second goal of incorporating DEI training programs, Stacionis concedes that “bigger projects like this tend to get back-burnered when you’re constantly just trying to stay properly staffed, get the floors mopped on a regular basis, make sure insurance and permits and licenses are up to date, and just keep afloat.”
To read full article, click HERE.