Grape & Wine Certification

Grape & Wine Certification. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The Northwest-based LIVE program was awarded an official international endorsement of its independent, third-party sustainable vineyard and winery certification program. Chris Serra, executive director of LIVE explains.

SERRA: The organization that endorses us annually is called the IOBC and it stands for International Organization for Biological Control and they’re an organization of academics and researchers that put together these standards and sustainable viticulture that we base our standards off of. We approached them in the late 90’s to get some sort of accreditation, sort of certify the certifier.

The IOBC promotes the use of sustainable, environmentally safe, economically feasible, and socially acceptable control methods of pests and diseases. Serra says they don’t make a habit of endorsing very many groups.

SERRA: What they do is they use a few organizations around the world to sort of act as a test organization for their standards so we’re one of those. There’s another in France and another one in Spain.We’re their test case for wine grapes.

So what does this mean for producers here in the northwest?

SERRA: So they can then go ahead and potentially export their apples let’s say to a foreign market and it qualifies for Global GAP accreditation which is what a lot of the foreign markets require to actually sit at the table and be able to sell their fruit. What it means in the northwest, IOBC isn’t necessarily recognized as an accreditation in states but it is in Europe and it is in the pacific Rim.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.