No label has to tell you
what was sprayed.
Free Bacchus is a verification standard and discovery guide for sustainably farmed wine and spirits, with sake within scope. Every producer listed is verified against a published rubric before it appears, and every figure on this page can be traced to its source.
The short version
A guide, not a shop. We verify, rank and publish. We do not sell the bottles.
Every producer listed is checked against the issuing body’s own register rather than against a label, an importer’s claim or last year’s status. Where we cannot confirm something, the page says so instead of filling the gap.
Why the platform exists
Wine and spirits are farmed products, but the farming is almost invisible to the buyer. A label gives you the vintage, the region and the alcohol content, not what was sprayed or whether anyone independent ever checked. The words that filled that gap, natural and sustainable and practising organic, are largely unregulated, so a drinker who wants to buy differently has to take the producer’s word for it or become an expert.
Free Bacchus started in early 2024, from watching that gap cut both ways. Some small growers farm without synthetic pesticide, carry the cost of it, and are never recognised for the trouble. Others hold every proper label and still do not make very good wine. A certificate tells you how the fruit was grown, not whether the bottle is worth buying, and in a market this fragmented nobody was joining the two up.
The Verification Standard scores the farming and the liquid separately and weights them evenly, which is why certification on its own has never been enough to carry a producer into the cellar. We publish the evidence for both, in language that works for someone who has never heard of Demeter.
The aim is to put the best sustainably farmed wine and spirits in front of the people who buy them, whether that is a drinker at home, a sommelier or a buyer for a restaurant group. Beyond that, we want more producers to make the switch, because the guide only gets better as the field does.
We are not a regulator and have no wish to become one. We cannot grant a certificate or withdraw one, and we do not inspect anybody’s vineyard. We corroborate what the certifying bodies have already established, and we build the thing that makes all of it readable in one place.
By the numbers
Every figure carries its source. Each copies as a complete, attributable sentence rather than a bare number.
Boilerplate
Free Bacchus is a verification standard and discovery guide for sustainably farmed wine and spirits. It verifies producers against a published 100-point rubric, splitting product quality and sustainability evenly, and confirms every certification against the issuing body’s own register rather than a label. It lists 326 producers across 26 countries. Free Bacchus holds no inventory, no alcohol licence and no title to any product, and no producer pays to be verified, ranked or listed.
Wine accounts for 278 of the listings, Champagne 9, spirits 31 and sake 8. A current count is always at /producers — we would rather you counted it than took ours.
The list is still growing
326 is where the cellar stands today, not a finished number. Behind it sits a research database of 1228 producers across 28 countries. All but two of the Gold and Reserve houses already have a page. Silver listings are rolling out now, so most of the growth from here will be Silver.
| 1228 | producers researched and held in the database | 28 countries. |
| 392 | did not clear the certification floor. Each was tested against the certifying registers, 25 of them on an individual ruling | Every one is rechecked if a certificate appears. |
| 535 | scored against the standard so far | 301 not yet scored. |
| 165 | score Gold or Reserve | The top two tiers. |
| 163 | of those have a page today, with 2 still to come | It is not published until its certificate is confirmed at source. No certificate, no page. |
| 341 | score Silver, a listed tier now being rolled out | Each Silver page shows its tier. |
| 163 | of those have a page today, including Audécious, the Founding House, which scores Silver | More go up as they are written. |
| 29 | scored below Silver and are not listed | The rejections matter as much as the entries. |
Producer database, 25 September 2026, commit c630066. A producer appears only once its certification is confirmed at source and its page written.
How a producer gets listed
The Verification Standard is a published 100-point rubric, split evenly between product quality and sustainability. It runs two tracks and there is no third path.
| Track A | Formal third-party certification, confirmed against the issuing body’s own register — not a label, not an importer’s word. | 311 of 326 listings. |
| Track B | Documented chemical-free practice without a certificate. Deliberately harder: it needs corroboration from two or more independent sources, direct confirmation of practice, and a named reason certification was not pursued. | 8 of 123. Capped below the top tier. |
| Neither | Two producers are listed on other grounds and say so on their own pages: Gravner, whose certification the producer declines, and St. George Spirits. | 2 of 123. Named, not buried in a total. |
Certification is re-confirmed annually against the register rather than assumed to persist. Where a certificate covers one bottling rather than a whole range, the page says which bottle it attaches to.
Where this sits next to MICHELIN Grapes
On 7 July 2026 the MICHELIN Guide announced its first wine selection: 94 estates in Burgundy, rated on five published criteria. The first is agronomy, meaning soil vitality and vine health, listed ahead of cellar technique, identity, balance and consistency.
We are not going to claim a race, because there is not one. Michelin and Free Bacchus are two sides of the same coin, both working to further the wellbeing of the wine and spirits industry from opposite ends. Michelin comes to it from a century and a quarter of judging what ends up in the glass. We came to it from the farming, in early 2024, and from the narrower concern that sustainable producers needed more help than anyone was giving them. That both ended up at the same two-part test we read as validation rather than competition. What differs is method.
| MICHELIN Grapes | Assessment. Michelin’s own inspectors judge estates across five criteria, with a panel review. Farming is the first of them, weighed alongside the rest rather than required. One selected estate is described as farmed under non-certified organic practices. | 94 estates, Burgundy, July 2026. |
| Free Bacchus | Verification. Farming is the entry condition rather than a criterion. A certificate is confirmed against the issuing body’s own register before a producer is listed, and sustainability is half the rubric. We publish the evidence, not a verdict. | 326 producers, 26 countries. |
There is no endorsement, partnership or association between the two, and we claim none. MICHELIN Grapes rates how well an estate makes wine, with farming as one input. We check whether the farming claim is true. An estate can be excellent and uncertified, or certified and unremarkable.
How claims are sourced
This is the part we would most like scrutinised.
Certifications are checked against the certifying body’s published register. A logo on a bottle is not evidence.
Producer quotes carry a name, a role, a year and a publication. We do not paraphrase into quotation marks.
Where a figure is not confirmed, the page omits it or says it is unconfirmed. Prices are labelled approximate.
An estate that farms biodynamically without certifying is recorded as practising, never as certified. The distinction is the whole point.
The journal follows the same discipline. If you find a claim on this site you cannot trace to a source, we would genuinely like to hear about it. That is a defect, not a difference of opinion.
Independence, stated plainly
Nobody pays to be verified, ranked or listed. Producer-paid verification, paid placement and score consultancy are refused as a matter of principle rather than price. The party being rated is never the party paying.
There is an affiliated importing company, and it is a separate entity. Audécious holds the licensing and the stock; Free Bacchus, the guide, holds no inventory, no alcohol licence and no title to any product. Verification runs ahead of any commercial selection, never the reverse.
The test of that firewall is whether the standard can rule against our own house, and it does. Audécious is scored under the same rubric as everyone else and does not clear the Gold floor that the cellar’s listings sit on.
Angles we can speak to
| Michelin’s move into farming | What it means that the guide which invented the restaurant star opened its first wine selection with agronomy, and where expert assessment and documentary verification genuinely diverge. | |
| The unregulated vocabulary | Why “natural” and “sustainable” mean nothing on a bottle without a named certifier, and what does carry weight. | |
| What conversion actually costs | Estates that tried, failed in a wet year, sprayed once more and started again. The honest version of a conversion story. | |
| Certification literacy | The difference between a standard and the body that audits to it — the single most common misreading of a wine label. | |
| Regions the trade overlooks | Austria, the Jura, Etna, Ningxia, Martinique: where verified sustainable farming is concentrated and why coverage lags. |
People
| Lewis Fan | Chief Executive. A former developer and restaurateur; the platform came out of choosing what went on a wine list and answering for it. | The standard, verification methodology, the platform. |
| Umberto Luchini | Chairman. Seventeen years at Campari, latterly Chief Marketing Officer of Campari America, where he named and positioned Espolòn tequila. Founder of Wolf Spirit Distillery since 2017. | Spirits industry, brand building, route to market. |
| Ben Figueroa | Digital Strategy & Growth. Currently at Nike, where he has led SNKRS and product launch platforms; previously Meta, Apple and AppLovin. | Audience, distribution. |
| Kevin Yeung | Co-founder. First investor and founding chairman of GogoVan; co-founder of Feeding Hong Kong. | Origin of the company. |
| Andre Ling | Platform Research & Growth. A wine, sake and spirits specialist with eight years in the drinks industry; WSET Level 2 Awards in Wines and in Spirits and the Sake Scholar qualification; more than 25,000 tasting notes across every major wine region. | Producer research; wine, sake and spirits. |
One disclosure that belongs here rather than in an answer to a question. Our chairman founded and runs Wolf Spirit Distillery, which owns and imports spirit brands. None of them is listed in the cellar. If one is ever submitted it will be scored by the same rubric as any other house, and disclosed as connected on its own page.
Contact and assets
For interviews, data requests, or to check a claim before you publish, write to join@freebacchus.com with Press in the subject line. We aim to answer within two working days.
Our logo and crest are ours to share and available on request. Producer imagery is sourced, not licensed to us. We verify that every photograph genuinely depicts the producer it accompanies, but we hold no rights in it and cannot grant any. Please do not lift it. Tell us what you need and we will put you in touch with the estate, who can license their own images.
We will answer a factual query about our own methodology on the record, including where it is weak. If a figure on this site is wrong we would rather correct it than defend it.
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