Racism, violence, and injustice have no seat at our table. We insist and re-iterate that black lives matter.
We are all aware and moved by the challenging times that face us, from the continuing public health and economic challenges posed by the pandemic, to the outpouring of grief, anger and calls for change that has emerged in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and too many others, and the larger struggle for racial equality and justice that has existed throughout American and world history.
Our vision is to create the most passionate, inspiring, and inclusive wine community in the world. #WineUnitesUs
We believe that wine, as the core of our company, has always been a catalyst for uniting people across oceans and across the table to help unite all origins, backgrounds, orientations, cultures, and communities. This belief remains essential to who we are and how we can promote the critical dialogue and action needed to build a more inclusive wine world.
It is critically important to ask ourselves every day: how can we put actions to our words?
The first step on our path is to re-affirm our values, acknowledge the issue, listen, and make a plan for addressing our role in improving inclusivity and diversity across our organization and our marketing efforts, and to reflect those essential values to our employees, family, extended friends, ambassadors, customers, and business partners.
Our initial steps:
- Matching Donations: Boisset will match employee donations to causes and organizations that support increased diversity, equality and racial justice, dollar for dollar, up to $1,000 per employee and $10,000 total. We are compiling a list of recommended organizations and will accept recommendations. This is retroactive to include donations made prior to this announcement.
- Fundraising Wines: We are working on a cause-marketing program of a special collection of wines signed and designed by our CEO Jean-Charles Boisset, that reflects our commitment to diversity that supports African-American and minority causes and organizations now, as well as LGBTQ causes and organizations and more. We are also exploring how to support scholarships & mentorship programs that encourage diversity in the wine world.
- Listening & Learning: We have met with strong leaders among our Ambassador community and employees who expressed interest in providing their perspective and are open to providing additional platforms for respectful and open discussion.
- Modeling Our Values: We have committed to using marketing images and materials that reflect our vision of a more inclusive wine world. This extends to our collateral, websites, image galleries, social media, guests on JCB Live, and more. This is an ongoing commitment and effort.
- Demonstrating That Wine Unites Us: We are developing a “#WineUnitesUs” campaign to show the incredible diversity we have as a company and as a community, as well as to aspire to be a part of the change we want to see in the wine world.