Enotria launches ethical social media wine

Enotria has launched a wine into Tesco completely designed through a social media competition and which benefits farm workers in South Africa.

Enaleni’s Dream is a new range of two wines for the supermarket, a Chardonnay and a Shiraz, which were chosen by Tesco customers in a blind tasting.

The wines are produced from vineyards in Stellenbosch formerly owned and run by Schalk Visser and now managed by the 23 families who work on the farm and to whom Visser recently turned over ownership to.

Wilhelmina Pietersen (pictured), now a shareholder and co-owner of the vineyard, was in London to help launch the wine at the Tesco Wine Fair.

She told the drinks business that she felt extremely “privileged” to see the finished wine.The wines are vinified and bottled by Stellenbosch Vineyards, with whom Enotria has a partnership.

As with all Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) projects, all profits from the sale of Enaleni’s Dream will return to the community who will then gather to vote on how best to distribute the funds.

While a great part of the money will be returned to the community directly to benefit, for example, education and health care.

However, Pietersen also added that she hoped there might be funds available for the planting of more vineyards, in particular more Shiraz.

As well as benefiting the farm workers at Enaleni, Enotria has said the wine can, tentatively, claim to be the first crowd-sourced wine in the UK.

Andy Rawlinson, off-trade business manager for the company, told db that the idea for a wine designed through social media had originally been thought up by Enotria’strade marketing manager, Harry Fawkes, around three years ago, “but, social media then wasn’t what it is now.”

The idea was proposed to Tesco who accepted it.

Rawlinson continued that, with the ethical side of the project at its core, the idea was also to engage ordinary consumers with wine.

Once the wines had been selected through a blind tasting, Tesco’s social media followers were invited to submit designs for a label and name – the entry did not have to be a finished example, a picture of detailed description was enough.

The shortlisted designs were then professionally designed and the winning project voted for.

The competition was won by Rebecca Boamah a housewife from Buckinghamshire, who also won a trip to the farm to see the wine being bottled.