What does “sustainable” mean on a wine or spirits label?

It is a claim rather than a scheme, unless a named certifier is attached to it. Free Bacchus records sustainability programmes on the producer record, and they never substitute for organic certification.

What does “practising organic” mean?

That the producer says they farm organically and has not been audited. It is often true. It is still not evidence.

Reading the label

Certifications explained · August 2026

Fourteen marks.
One useful question.

Q: What does “natural” mean on a wine or spirits label?

Nothing that anyone has checked. It has no legal definition and no certifying body in most markets. It may describe something real. Nobody verified it.

A bottle can carry half a dozen symbols and almost none of them are checking the same thing. One audits the soil. One audits the company. One audits what the farmer was paid. The question worth asking of any of them is simply: what did somebody actually go and look at?

If you take one thing away

There are standards and there are certifiers, and the label almost never tells you which you are looking at.

A standard is the rulebook. A certifier is the organisation that turns up at the farm and checks. Ecocert is a certifier — in Europe it audits against the EU organic standard, and FR-BIO-01 is its control number under that scheme. So a bottle reading Ecocert and a bottle reading ICEA are not certified to different levels of strictness. Same rulebook, different auditor.

Every mark, side by side

Every certification you will meet on a producer page here, grouped by what it actually does. The chart is the whole set at once; open any mark for what it audits, who runs it, whether it can be withdrawn, and how many houses in the cellar hold it.

The 1 marks that appear on Free Bacchus producer pages
Mark	Role	What it covers	Track A
Organic standards — the rulebooks
	Writes the rules	Organic farming	Not named
A standard What it audits Farming, to the European organic rulebook. No synthetic pesticide or fertiliser, and a conversion period before the first certified crop. Who runs it Written by the European Union; enforced by approved control bodies in each country. Can it be withdrawn Yes. It is defined in law and the certificate can be withdrawn. Held by 122 producers in the cellar The leaf is always accompanied by a control code — FR-BIO-01, AT-BIO-40 — which names the auditor, not the standard.
	Writes the rules	Organic farming	Named
A standard What it audits Farming, to the United States federal rulebook. It governs how the crop was grown — not what happens after distillation. Who runs it The US Department of Agriculture, through accredited certifiers. Can it be withdrawn Yes. The seal is a registered trademark and can be suspended or revoked. Held by 54 producers in the cellar Only certified operations may display it. Seeing it means somebody was inspected.
	Writes and inspects	Organic farming	Named
A standard and a certifier What it audits Farming, to its own standard — which in several areas goes beyond the legal minimum. Who runs it The Soil Association, founded in the UK in 1946. Can it be withdrawn Yes. Held by 2 producers in the cellar One of the few bodies that both writes the rules and does the inspecting.
	Writes and inspects	Organic farming	Named
A standard and a certifier What it audits Farming, to a private German standard that sits above the EU baseline. Who runs it Naturland, a German growers' association. Can it be withdrawn Yes. Held by 1 producer in the cellar Like Soil Association, it sets a bar higher than the law requires.
The bodies that audit to them
	Does the inspecting	Organic farming	Named
A certifier What it audits Whatever standard applies where it is working — in Europe, the EU organic rulebook. Who runs it French-founded, operating in more than eighty countries. Can it be withdrawn It can withdraw the certificate it issued. Held by 69 producers in the cellar The most common name on our pages. It tells you who checked, not what they checked against.
	Does the inspecting	Organic farming	Not named
A certifier What it audits Farms, against the USDA organic standard. Who runs it California Certified Organic Farmers — one of the oldest accredited certifiers in the United States. Can it be withdrawn It can withdraw the certificate it issued. Held by 25 producers in the cellar A US bottle may show CCOF, the USDA seal, or both. They are two halves of one arrangement.
	Does the inspecting	Organic farming	Not named
A certifier What it audits Farms in Italy, against the EU organic standard. Who runs it ICEA, an Italian inspection and certification body. Can it be withdrawn It can withdraw the certificate it issued. Held by 7 producers in the cellar Same rulebook as an Ecocert bottle. Different auditor, not a different level.
	Does the inspecting	Organic farming	Named
A certifier What it audits Farms and products in New Zealand, to its own organic standard. Who runs it BioGro, New Zealand's largest organic certifier. Can it be withdrawn Yes — and it reviews every use of its mark before a label may carry it. Held by 19 producers in the cellar A producer cannot use the mark until certification is complete.
Biodynamic — three separate standards, not one
	Writes the rules	Biodynamic farming†	Named
A biodynamic standard What it audits Farming, to the biodynamic standard: composting, the estate treated as one living system, a planting calendar. Organic certification is a prerequisite. Who runs it Demeter, founded 1928 — the oldest of the three. Can it be withdrawn Yes. It inspects annually and can withdraw the mark. Held by 102 producers in the cellar The most widely held biodynamic certification in our cellar, and the one most people have heard of. That does not make the other two lesser.
	Writes the rules	Biodynamic farming	Not named
A biodynamic standard What it audits Biodynamic farming, to its own standard — which is not Demeter's. Who runs it Syndicat International des Vignerons en Culture Bio-Dynamique. Can it be withdrawn Yes. Held by 23 producers in the cellar A full biodynamic certification in its own right. Château Pontet-Canet holds Biodyvin, not Demeter, and the two audit to different standards.
	Writes the rules	Biodynamic farming†	Not named
A biodynamic standard What it audits Biodynamic farming across Austria, Germany and northern Italy. Every member must hold EU organic certification too. Who runs it The respekt-BIODYN association, founded 2007. Can it be withdrawn Yes — and it publishes its member register. Held by 20 producers in the cellar Because the register is public, membership can be checked against the source rather than taken on trust. That is how we verify it.
Marks that measure something else entirely
	Writes the rules	Soil, animals, workers†	Not named
A layered standard What it audits Soil health, animal welfare and farmworker fairness — on top of organic certification. Who runs it The Regenerative Organic Alliance. Can it be withdrawn Yes. Held by 4 producers in the cellar Organic is a prerequisite, not an alternative. This one sits above it.
	Not stated	Company conduct	Not a farming mark
Not a farming mark What it audits A whole company's social and environmental performance, governance and transparency. Who runs it B Lab. Can it be withdrawn Yes, on recertification. Held by 10 producers in the cellar It says nothing about how the grapes were grown. A B Corp winery may or may not be organic.
	Not stated	Grower pay	Not named
Not a farming mark What it audits What the grower was paid, and on what terms. Who runs it Fairtrade International. Can it be withdrawn Yes. Held by 1 producer in the cellar The one mark on this page that looks at the money rather than the soil.

What the values mean

Role

Writes the rules: The mark is a standard — a rulebook. Somebody else does the inspecting.
Does the inspecting: The mark is a certifier. It audits against a standard somebody else wrote.
Writes and inspects: The body sets its own standard and audits against it. Only a few do both.
Not stated: This page classifies the mark by what it covers rather than by role, so no role is stated for it here.

What it covers

†: Organic certification is required first. The mark sits on top of organic certification rather than replacing it.

Track A

Named: Free Bacchus Verification Standard v2.6, section 2, names this body among those recognised for Track A.
Not named: Free Bacchus Verification Standard v2.6, section 2, neither names nor excludes this mark, and states that its list of recognised bodies is not exhaustive. Not named is not a finding against a mark, and does not mean the mark was assessed and rejected.
Not a farming mark: Free Bacchus Verification Standard v2.6, section 2, names B Corp as recorded and credited on ethics and environmental practice, and never counted as evidence of organic or chemical-free farming.

What “not exhaustive” means. The Verification Standard names seven recognised bodies and then says it will recognise any certification body that conducts independent third-party audits and holds itself to an equivalent evidentiary standard. A mark can therefore be absent from that list and still qualify, which is why the column reports what the Standard says rather than a verdict.

One scheme is missing from the chart for the same reason it is missing from the cellar's logo set. IMO, which certifies our Chilean producers, has no mark here yet and the row would be a row about a logo rather than a standard. The note further down says why.

Last updated 25 September 2026 · Reflects Verification Standard v2.6

Three words that mean nothing on their own

“Natural”

No legal definition and no certifying body in most markets. It may describe something real. Nobody checked.

“Sustainable”

A claim, not a scheme — unless a named certifier is attached to it.

“Practising organic”

The producer says they farm organically and has not been audited. Often true. Still not evidence.

Scope is the trap. A certificate can cover one bottling and not the rest of the range. Where that is the case we say which bottle it attaches to — because the word organic on a well-known name is worth money, and anyone paying it should know exactly what they are buying.

Certified scope determines the producer's tier. Quality corroboration is a gate every listing must clear, not a ranking.

The consequence is the part people argue with, so it is worth stating plainly: a fully certified producer ranks above a partially certified producer of comparable quality, even where the partially certified producer's single certified product scores higher. A certification that covers one bottling remains fully listable and is displayed at that scope, with its quality standing on its own merits. It does not lift the tier of the house around it.

Two shapes this takes, neither of them any particular producer:

An estate certified in full, against a house with one certified cuvée. The estate ranks higher even if the single cuvée is the better wine. The estate has converted everything it farms; the house has converted one wine.
A distillery with one certified expression and an uncertified range. The expression is listed at its own scope and says so. The distillery's tier reflects the share of production that is certified, which is one bottling.

The reasoning matters more than the rule. If a single certified flagship could outrank a fully converted estate, the standard would be telling every producer that one halo product is the efficient path — rewarding the opposite of what it exists to encourage. Scope weighting is why a producer's tier rises as certified scope expands, and why a house holding one certified cuvée can see the route from where it stands to the top tier. Read the rule in the Verification Standard.

How this maps to a listing

Every producer here is verified down one of two tracks. Track A is formal third-party certification, confirmed against the issuing body's own register — every farming mark above is a Track A route. The last two are not farming marks at all, and are recorded for what they do audit rather than counted toward either track. Track B is documented chemical-free practice without a certificate, and it is deliberately harder to qualify for: it needs corroboration from independent sources, direct confirmation of practice, and a documented reason the producer has not certified.

A missing certificate is not, by itself, evidence of anything. Neither is a present one, until somebody checks it against the register.

One scheme on our producer pages has no mark here yet: IMO, the Swiss-founded Institute for Marketecology, which certifies our Chilean producers. We would rather show nothing than show the wrong organisation’s logo.

The marks shown are the registered trademarks of their respective owners and appear here for identification and explanation only. Their appearance is not an endorsement of Free Bacchus, and Free Bacchus is not certified by any of them.

Read the full Verification Standard → · Glossary of terms · Browse the cellar How this is applied to a wine list

Fourteen marks.One useful question.