Assessing sustainability performance: a comprehensive overview of the Portuguese wine sector

Abstract Sustainability assessment is a very subjective and complex procedure. However, whether to cope with climate change, market pressures or new environmental policies, winegrowers are today looking for ways to improve and measure their performance. Nevertheless, there is still a great demand of more information and better evaluation methodologies as most of general assessment frameworks are environmentally focused, non-context-comprehensive or even unfit to evaluate permanent crops such as viticulture. To consider context-comprehensiveness is therefore seen as fundamental in research of this nature. Our objective is to explore nationwide perceptions of upper echelon individuals from the Portuguese wine industry regarding sustainability issues and better ways to assess it. By covering nine of the 14 wine regions in Portugal, the aim is to spot intercultural trends and get a wider picture of the sector´s sustainability awareness. A grounded theory approach was used for the complexity of the topic and for allowing to uncover potential perspective-paradoxes or trade-offs. After collecting data through in-depth interviews, an inductive qualitative-content analysis was applied using IRAMUTEQ software. Results displayed key criteria and insights grouped in four clusters from three distinct ramifications. Beyond the mention of critical factors about the sector´s environmental impacts from the production to packaging phase, distribution and transportation, concerns regarding intergenerational equity gap and non-equitable development opportunities for rural areas were also gathered. One ramification was based on the need to have access to proper sustainability assessment tools. From the urgency to develop a sustainability framework or even certification scheme for increasing consumer demands and export market pressures, to the importance to provide a practical toolkit with lifecycle guidelines, user-friendly and able to support decision-making, two clusters were created. This study reported findings can serve as a reference to wine managers and policy-makers pursuing sustainable development goals.