Two tests.
No exceptions.

Certified Organic

The producer holds active, current third-party organic certification from a recognised accredited body — among them Demeter, USDA Organic, Ecocert, CERES, BioGro, Soil Association, and Naturland. The list is not exhaustive: Free Bacchus will recognise any body that conducts independent third-party audits to an equivalent evidentiary standard. Track A is the only path to the highest listing tier, and carries full point eligibility with no cap.

Verified Chemical-Free Practice

Some genuinely excellent producers farm without synthetic inputs but hold no formal certification — often for reasons of cost, philosophy, or regional infrastructure that does not yet serve their category. Track B exists so they are not unfairly excluded. It is deliberately difficult to qualify for, and the bar is non-negotiable. A producer qualifies only when all three conditions are met:

1. Independent corroboration from two or more sources that are not the producer itself — an importer, a sommelier, a journalist, a third-party publication — describing the farming practice.
2. Direct or near-direct confirmation from the producer or their importer of the specific practices in question.
3. A named, producer-specific reason why formal certification has not been pursued. A generic industry trend toward natural farming is not sufficient; the reason must be specific to that producer.

Producers verified under Track B are capped at the second-highest listing tier, regardless of quality score — because formal certification carries an independent audit and renewal process that Track B, by definition, does not. The cap reflects that difference in evidentiary strength honestly, rather than treating the two tracks as equivalent.

Scope and the path to Reserve

The purpose of this rule is worth stating before the rule itself: Free Bacchus exists to reward whole-operation conversion. Expanding certified production — one more parcel, one more cuvée, one more line — is the outcome this platform is built to encourage. The scope rules below are written as a ladder, not a gate.

Producer-level tiers score sustainability at the scope actually verified. A producer whose entire estate and production hold certification receives full farming and practice point eligibility. Where certification covers part of an operation — a certified estate range alongside a conventional négociant line, or a single certified cuvée within an otherwise conventional house — the sustainability score is weighted to the certified share of production, and the producer’s tier reflects that weighting. A producer’s tier therefore rises as certified scope expands. This is the same principle codified for sake in Section 5, applied to every category: certification is recorded and displayed at the scope actually certified, and is never generalised beyond it.

The practical consequence: 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. Quality corroboration is a gate every listing must clear; certified scope is what ranks producers within it. A single outstanding certified cuvée remains fully listable — displayed at SKU scope, with its quality standing on its own merits — but it does not lift the tier of the house around it.

Free Bacchus also recognises movement. A producer actively expanding certified scope can carry an “expanding certified scope” flag on their record when both of the following are documented:

1. Parcels, products, or facilities formally entered into conversion or certification with a named certifying body — self-declared intent is not sufficient.
2. A documented conversion start date or certification application on record with that body, consistent with the evidentiary discipline applied everywhere else in this standard.

The flag does not alter the current year’s score — the score reports what is certified now, and the flag reports what is underway. This mirrors the approach of the EU’s own organic framework, which grants in-conversion production a distinct labelled status without granting it the organic logo.

The producer-year, not the vintage

Organic and biodynamic certification is granted at the level of the farm or producing entity, on an annual renewal cycle tied to the growing season — not at the level of an individual wine, spirit, or vintage. A certifying body does not re-certify a producer per label; it certifies that producer for a given harvest year, and that status covers everything they bring to market within it.

Annual re-verification

Every Track A producer is re-verified once per year, on a schedule timed to when the relevant certifying body’s renewal decisions would reasonably have been finalized for the prior harvest — in practice, a Q1 review window covering the preceding calendar and harvest year. Each annual check consists of:

1. Registry lookup against the certifying body’s own published record. For Demeter-certified producers, a direct query against Demeter International’s certified operator database, or Demeter USA’s member records for U.S. producers. The equivalent applies for USDA Organic, Ecocert, BioGro, Soil Association, Naturland, CERES, and others, using each body’s own verification channel.
2. Status logged against the producer record. Confirmed active, lapsed, suspended, or not found — together with the date the check was performed and the source consulted.
3. Escalation only on change. Status confirmed unchanged requires no further action until the next cycle. A producer who no longer appears as certified, or shows a status change, is flagged for deeper inquiry under the same evidentiary standard used at initial listing, and held at the appropriate tier pending resolution.

What re-verification does not rely on

Two sources are explicitly insufficient as stand-alone evidence of current certification status. We name them so the limitation is visible rather than quietly assumed away.

Certification logos on labels or import documentation. A producer placing a certifying body’s logo on a label — including labels cleared by a government label-approval process — confirms only that the producer is willing to make the claim publicly. Label-approval authorities review labels for accuracy and required disclosures; they do not cross-check certification claims against the certifying body’s membership records. A logo is corroborating context, never a substitute for the registry check.

Prior-year Track A status alone. Because certification lapses, is suspended, or is voluntarily discontinued, a designation from a previous annual cycle is not carried forward automatically. Each annual re-verification stands on its own evidence.

The lighter annual re-confirmation

Track B producers hold no formal certification to check against a registry, so they are not subject to the registry-lookup mechanism. Track B status is re-confirmed on the same annual cadence through a lighter check: reconfirming that the original three Track B conditions still hold, and noting anything that has materially changed — including a Track B producer who has since obtained formal certification, who is reclassified to Track A at the next review.

The brewery and the farm are not the same entity

Sake differs structurally from wine in a way that matters for sustainability verification: the brewery and the farm are, in nearly all cases, separate entities. Most sake producers do not grow their own rice — they purchase it from contract growers, agricultural cooperatives, or the open market, and only a small number operate their own farm or farm subsidiary. The wine-derived assumption that the certified producer is the farmer does not hold in this category, and Free Bacchus does not pretend it does. Three rules follow.

1. Certification is listed at the scope actually certified. Organic certification in sake (JAS, USDA Organic, EU Organic) frequently attaches to a specific label brewed from a specific contracted organic rice source — not to the brewery as a whole. Where a certification is SKU-specific, Free Bacchus records and displays it as SKU-specific, and never generalizes it to the producer’s full range.
2. The rice-sourcing model is documented as part of verification. Every listed sake producer’s record states how the rice behind the certified product is sourced: estate-grown or own farm subsidiary, named contract growers, cooperative purchase, or market purchase. The farming layer — where the organic claim actually lives — sits outside the brewery’s walls, and the strength of the claim depends on the durability of that sourcing relationship.
3. Annual re-verification confirms the rice source, not just the certificate. Japan’s rice market has been under acute pressure since 2024: sake-rice prices roughly doubled for the 2025 harvest, and the reversal of the traditional premium over table rice has pushed a growing number of farmers out of sake-rice cultivation entirely. Certified organic sake rice is a small niche within that shrinking base, which makes the single contracted grower behind a certified SKU a genuinely fragile link. For sake, the annual re-verification in Section 3 therefore includes confirming the certified rice source is unchanged — a lapsed or substituted source is treated as a certification-scope change and triggers the same escalation.