Sustainability at 360 degrees in wine, between mission statement and communication: the Caviro case

Investing in a concrete and articulate way on the theme of sustainability (as many large and small Italian wineries do), putting it down in black and white in a “Sustainability Report” (a practice that is slowly spreading among the leading wine companies in Italy), making it into a major national media campaign aimed at consumers: this is the path of Caviro, a reference reality of Italian cooperation, with brands such as Tavernello (but also with brands such as Cantine Leonardo Da Vinci, in Tuscany, or Gerardo Cesari, in the land of Amarone, ed.), a colossus that brings together 27 social wineries, 12. 400 winemakers in 7 regions of Italy (Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Marche, Abruzzo, Puglia and Sicily), 36,300 hectares of vineyards, 615,000 tons of grapes (equal to 9% of the entire national production), for a production of 195 million liters of wine.
82,000 tons of CO2 of fossil origin saved to the environment, total energy self-sufficiency, with energy self-produced from renewable sources, 555,000 tons per year of agro-industrial waste processed, and a rate of recovery and exploitation of 99% are the key figures of the second “Sustainability Report” of Caviro.
“Sustainable development, the constant, concrete and growing commitment of the Group - comments the president of the Caviro Group, Carlo Dalmonte - is a concept inherent in the Caviro DNA deriving from its founding configuration as a Cooperative: at the center is not only the maximization of profit, but also and above all people and the desire to ensure the satisfaction of their needs without compromising those of future generations”.
“Sustainability is the ability to resist in the long term, to be resilient to all shocks, to survive the worst events. It is the ability to be there tomorrow and the day after tomorrow - underlines Caviro’s CEO, SimonPietro Felice - in ten and a hundred years. And this virtue has become even more important in 2020, the year of the global spread of the pandemic. This critical period has increased the awareness that we are all interconnected, that humankind - even with its technological progress - is still an integral part of Nature and, as such, is both creator of and subject to changes on the planet, starting with climate change: an alarm bell that has been ringing for too long. All of us, in short, are elements of a joint ecosystem, fragile and changing, which must be preserved and protected in every part: nature, territory, people. For this reason, we must be sustainable on an environmental, social and economic level. If one of these three factors is missing, the ecosystem risks going into crisis and undermining the foundations of our well-being”.
Transforming the by-products of the supply chain into products with high added value is the mission of Caviro Extra, a company of the Group, which drives innovation in the research and development of noble products obtained from the waste of the agro-industrial world. In the "From the Vineyard to the Vineyard" project, a virtuous circle has been created that aims to eliminate the concept of waste starting from the vineyard, where every raw material is considered a precious resource, processed and transformed into a new natural ingredient to be put back into circulation; a cycle that unites man and the environment, the grape and the earth, the present to the future. In the 2019/2020 wine year alone, 73,000 tons of pomace and 24,000 tons of lees were transformed into noble products. And it is precisely from this that the new national communication campaign on “Value” started, with which Caviro tells about its circular economy model renewing its sustainable commitment to preserve the value of its resources by recovering the by-products of the supply chain. “With grapes we make wine, with waste we improve the world”, is the claim of the campaign, whose protagonists are the squeezed grapes that take shape in precious jewels: rings, necklaces and earrings. “The goal - explains Caviro - is to tell the extraordinary value of the waste of the vine, with which every year Caviro produces electricity and heat, saves CO2 to the atmosphere, purifies water, creates noble products, biofuel and natural fertilizers to fertilize their vineyards and can re-start production. An extraordinary virtuous circle with sustainability, respect for people and the environment at its center - Caviro’s Values”.
“We decided to communicate the value of our sustainability with evocative images - says Sara Pascucci, Caviro Group communication manager - the multi-subject national campaign is an important step to consolidate, with a print and digital planning, the positioning of Caviro and also present us to the general public as a reference model for the world of circular economy”. The new campaign was created in collaboration with the creative agency The Key of Milan and Stilelibero for Photo production. “At a time when we often talk about sustainability in a banal and abstract way, Caviro makes words follow actions. For us, telling the story of such a virtuous model of circular economy with a campaign was an inspiring and engaging challenge”, explain Andrea Vercellino, art director, and Paolo Chiabrando, copywriter at The Key.