Making A Real Difference To People’s Lives

Our winery and many of our co-operative growers are situated in the agriculturally rich La Rioja province, but there are many remote rural communities within the region which lacked basic needs such as access to regular clean drinking water, a good education and healthcare.

Fairtrade was introduced to ensure a better deal for growers and workers, and it has enabled our co-operative to make a real difference to the quality of local people’s lives, by investing money raised through the Fairtrade Premium into local community projects.

In 2013 we took a further step to show our commitment to Fairtrade by becoming certified as an organisation of small producers under the OPP (Organización de Pequeños Productores) scheme.

This means at least half of our members have to be small-scale producers and at least half of the wine volume sold needs to come from these members.

But it also requires us to use our Fairtrade Premium to invest in projects that benefit the economic and social development of our small producers.

The OPP certification signifies 100% of La Riojana’s production and growers are Fairtrade certified, making us the largest producer of Fairtrade certified wines in the world.