Certification is extremely important because it protects consumers from fraud. 

Organic farming today is based on long-standing traditional farming methods. However, many producers who claim to follow traditional farming methods, and limit or exclude the use of synthetic chemicals such as pesticides, fungicides, etc, are not formally registered with any certification agency verifying and overseeing that the organic regulations are being followed. 

Although growers may claim their produce is organic without certification, certification is the consumer's greatest assurance that the grapes used in the wine were produced in accordance with legally established organic standards, and that the grower has been required to document and demonstrate the organic claim.

All of the wines imported by The Organic Wine Company are made with organic grapes certified by Ecocert (in France) or another accredited agency. At the present time though, the USDA has edicted rules pertaining to the use of the term Organic Wines which bar regularly produced organically grown wines to claim such title if they contain any additional sulfites (SO2) [which is the vast majority].

Moreover, even to claim that the wine is made from organically grown grapes, the winery has now to abide by the NOP (National Organic Program) standards. This sounds good except that it is a virtual duplication of the already existing national programs and cost $1,000 a year plus considerable time. The scandal is that ANY claim of organic culture is now FORBIDDEN for these long standing organic wineries IF they do not accept to pay the price, even if they possess their current national organic certification!

We cannot condone this new demonstration of american imperialism that is void of respect for other standards predating theirs by 20 or 30 years. Therefore we do not push small producers who do not want to increase their costs and their prices. In these cases the Organic Wine Company name serves as a guarantee that the wine has been produced with the same care and attention as their NOP counterparts.

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