5 minutes with Kate Venugopal, Wine Institute of California

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 27 May, 2025

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we talk about these methodologies – organic, biodynamic, regenerative and sustainable. There’s a desire for people to rank them in an order, create some sort of a hierarchy.

I’m on a personal mission to level the playing field, emphasise that each of these programmes is incredibly valuable, and it’s just not fair or accurate to say one is better than the other. They are different. They have different emphasis. They fit different businesses better. They fit different regions – there are some regions in the world that couldn’t certify organic if they wanted to. But that doesn’t mean the certification they seek isn’t as good.

So, the emphasis really is on what is a vineyard or winery doing to drive change? Not thinking about a logo, but thinking about the practices that are really going to benefit the operation? So, there is a natural desire to create some sort of step. But I don’t think there is a logical step, a gateway programme.

Then you advance to [regenerative agriculture], there are too many variables – we all tend to want to simplify it, and I don’t believe it’s the right way of thinking about it. A lot of information is exchanged across these sustainable programmes. It’s refreshing that there is more collaboration, more willingness to share, and the question is, how do we leverage and amplify it?

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