Wine and sustainability at 360 degrees: Feudi di San Gregorio is B-Corp certified

Being a B-Corp company means not only seeing its commitment to being environmentally sustainable certified, but also socially, in its relationships with employees, suppliers and the local area. “It means making commitments that go beyond the certification of products, and making a path that leads to improving a little bit at a time, day by day”. Thus Antonio Capaldo, at the head of Feudi di San Gregorio, one of the most important realities of Italian wine which, after Equalitas certification, has also obtained B-Corp certification, the only case in the sector in Italy to date, as WineNews is able to anticipate.
“We hope to set an example. I believe that you can’t call yourself sustainable if you don’t pay your employees adequately, beyond the minimums in the contracts, if you don’t protect the landscape and invest in the community by also funding cultural and social initiatives, if you don’t make long-term agreements with suppliers, if you don’t have transparent administration, in every sense. And B-Corp’s is a path that leads to that, that makes you measure yourself on many aspects every day, and raises the standards in the company. Standards that have to be shared with all employees, from the first to the last, and, in fact, to achieve this we started by doing training, more than a year and a half ago. And, in our case, I have to say that it’s a path that compacts the company, makes everyone feel a part of achieving the goals, and made me realize how, often, those who do the smallest work are sometimes much closer and more involved than other company figures and roles”.
In Italy, Capaldo explains, “we are not the first B-Corp wine company that (Perlage Winery and Cielo e Terra are also certified this way, ed.), but we are the largest and the only one that also has Equalitas certification, while in the world there should be more or less 60 B-Corp wineries, including Chile's Concha y Toro”. An important recognition, the one achieved by the company led by Antonio Capaldo, and not taken for granted. The B-Corp standards, which allow continuous and concrete measurement of the company’s performance on the different axes of its sustainability program, are today the most widespread but also the most rigorous in the world: out of more than 200,000 companies measured to date, only 3 percent have in fact met the requirements of excellence established by B-Lab, the international body that confers the certification. In Italy, there are 150 B-Corp companies overall.
“Achieving B-Corp certification is a great encouragement to continue working in different directions, respecting our suppliers and customers, our daily work and the economic and social goals of the company. It is also recognition of our commitment to sustainable action, environmentally, socially and economically, seeking to preserve the beauty of our land and the integrity of our community in order to leave a better world than we found. And then the beautiful thing”, Capaldo adds, to WineNews, “is that you create a network of companies that share the same values. We, for example, are now 100 percent renewable energy, also thanks to a partnership with another company B-Corp”.
Feudi di San Gregorio, a note states, has developed several projects in recent years, from the implementation of cultivation methods with an increasingly lower impact (developed in partnership with national and international research centers), to the adoption of increasingly sustainable packaging components, to the exclusive use of energy from renewable sources, to projects in the social sphere (such as participation, as a founding member, in the San Gennaro Foundation). The perimeter subject to certification includes the entire Tenute Capaldo Group: in addition to the winery in Irpinia, also the estates of Campo alle Comete in Bolgheri and Basilisco in Vulture, both organically run, and the two Marennà-branded restaurants (on the farm and in Capodichino Airport).
“In the coming years”, Capaldo continues, “we will aim to strengthen ourselves further, creating stronger and stronger interdependencies with our suppliers and customers. In particular, we will present a new initiative in support of the San Gennaro Foundation, work on the energy recovery of all processing waste and make the vegetable garden in our Marennà restaurant a central place in our welcome for all families. During the Christmas season, moreover, thanks also to our collaboration with the large-scale retail trade, we will make consumers participate in our sustainability journey by offering Fsc paper packaging-instead of wood-on which we will tell about these choices of ours”. B-Corp is part of a path undertaken by Feudi di San Gregorio for years; it follows the company’s transformation into a Benefit Corporation (May 2021), obtaining Equalitas certification from the Ministry of Agriculture (August 2021) and recently joining Co2alizione Italia (May 2022), where more than 60 top Italian companies have decided to commit to climate neutrality, included as a goal in their Articles of Association. With the B-Corp certification, achieved also thanks to the support of Nativa Regenerative Design Company, Feudi di San Gregorio confirms its willingness to continue to achieve ambitious and measurable goals in the field of sustainability.
“The B-Corp movement was born more than 15 years ago”, explains Paolo Di Cesare, co-founder of Nativa”, to demonstrate that companies can create a positive impact on people, communities and the planet. Today, with more than 5,000 B-Corp companies and over 200,000 using its tools, we are at a turning point, achieved through the realization that sustainability is not a practice or a process but is the company itself. Congratulations to Feudi di San Gregorio which, by achieving certification, demonstrates its commitment to a new way of doing business, in which the generation of value for all stakeholders takes a central role along with the generation of profit”.