Basically, my main goal is to produce excellent, high-quality, unadulterated, natural and healthful wines that look, smell and taste good; and that express the terroir of where they're from; and that are made in a way that is actively beneficial both to my customers’ health and to the environment; and that are sensibly priced.
As I grow my own grapes, AND make my own wine, AND do my own marketing and promotion, I have three main areas or groups of activities that are important to the quality of the final product: 1) farming in the vineyard; 2) winemaking in the winery; and 3) my interaction with the outside world.
So I can start sub-dividing these goals as follows:
1) Sub-goals in the vineyard:
- Produce top-quality, healthy, chemical-residue-free grapes
- Harvest the grapes when they are perfectly ripe
- Harvest the grapes carefully and slowly; remove all leaves, twigs, soil, etc
- Don't harvest grapes that are unripe, rotten, damaged, half-eaten by birds, insects, etc
- Improve and/or maintain the fertility and quality and structure of the soil
- Encourage and/or maintain bio-diversity in my vineyards
- DO NOT pollute the environment (soil, water, air, life-forms) with chemicals
2) Sub-goals in the winery:
- Produce interesting, terroir-expressing, complex, comment-worthy wines
- Produce top-quality, healthy, chemical-residue-free wines
- Use environmentally friendly materials and equipment and techniques as much as possible
- DO NOT adulterate the must or wine with unnecessary substances or chemicals
- DO NOT use intensive intervention techniques or processes
3) Sub-goals for marketing and promotion:
- Sell my wines at reasonable, sensible prices, which are based on the effort and investment made to produce them
- Treat all my stakeholders in a dignified and fair manner. This includes suppliers, employees (when and if I ever have any), customers, share-holders (when and if...), neighbours, visitors and any other persons that I come into contact with for any reason
- Focus on distributing locally directly to the consumer; and when delivering over longer distances, by selecting the least contaminating means of transport
- Make the effort to recycle my bottles; by encouraging my consumers to return the bottles so that I can reuse them
- Use natural cork so as to support cork-oak farmers in keeping that land productive and protected from erosion
- Do not use environmentally hostile petroleum-based plastic or aluminium closures
