Fair Trade News
In the Spirit of Fairness
from the More Intelligent Life Blog
by Lucy Farmer
January 2010
When someone says Fairtrade, what springs to mind? Probably coffee, bananas, cocoa, maybe cotton-inexpensive staples, all produced and traded in environmentally and socially "fair" ways. So far, so dull. What about booze? Enter FAIR, the world's first Fairtrade vodka.
The Fairtrade initiative began in the 1980s, when saving the world from poverty became fashionable thanks to events like Live Aid. The aim is to help poor farmers in the developing world by paying an above-market price for their product. (It is a soothing conceit, though not everyone is convinced such measures make the world a better place.) Britain's Fairtrade Foundation certifies products as "Fairtrade" if they meet international standards set by Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International. TransFair USA and TransFair Canada are the North American equivalents.
Thousands of products are now certified as Fairtrade, but alcohol has been slower to emerge. Wine is the front-runner, with over 300 that carry the Fairtrade logo. A recent addition is Poterion Communion Wine, created specifically for trade-conscious clergy. There are also over ten Fairtrade beers and ales on the books, but only three spirits, all rum.
Now there's FAIR vodka, produced by the London-based Fair Trade Spirits Company, which targets a rather different clientele than Poterion Communion Wine. At £30 ($50) a bottle, it might not slip into everyone's supermarket trolley. But FAIR, which won Best Tasting Vodka at the New York Spirits Awards, may help to alter the perception of the Fairtrade consumer from righteous hippie to responsible pleasure-seeker.
Vodka is traditionally made from something starchy-wheat, rye, potatoes. FAIR vodka is made from quinoa grains, sourced from a community of 1,200 independent farmers in Bolivia who are part of a Fairtrade co-operative. (Though to keep costs down, the vodka is also made with ordinary wheat, as Simon Wright reports on his Of+ Consulting blog.) The vodka is then distilled in Cognac. I was told that when the Bolivian farmers visited the distillery, in sleepy rural France, local Frenchmen had never before set eyes on a native South American.
The Fair Trade Spirits Company is already rolling out the first bottles of its next Fairtrade spirit, a goji berry liqueur. Though the ingredients are organic, the bottles can't be labelled as such, because certification requires the machinery used to be organic as well (an organic distillery is not available in France, it seems). The spirit is willing; perhaps the regulation is weak.
Fairtrade alcohol may not guarantee big profits for the distributor, but FAIR will surely provide a boost to Bolivian quinoa farmers. And it is a rare luxury to indulge in a vice with a relatively clear conscience.
~ LUCY FARMER
