Legend Australian Wine Imports, Jane Lopes, Jonathan Ross

The 2022 goals for Legend Imports, in order from short- to long-term, were to make our social media more accessible to blind/low-vision communities; to add two wineries to the portfolio owned by Indigenous Australians or People of Color, and to become a fair-trade certified business. We have made good progress on the first two goals. Making our social media more accessible largely consists of providing image descriptions for our Instagram posts – a simple fix that we hope can have a big impact. There are a few other good guidelines to follow, like minimizing strings of emojis and capitalizing new words in hashtags, which makes a difference to those using readers. We now have a LGBTQ+ and Asian Australian-owned winery in our portfolio, as well as one of Australia’s few Indigenous-owned wineries: good wine and good people who are improving representation for marginalized communities in Australia (and who have made the fabric of our business more complex, thoughtful, and diverse). 

On our third goal, we had to pivot: we realized that a fair-trade certification for an importer would rely on our producers doing most of the work (which we didn’t want to ask of them, nor could we ensure completion). So we have changed this big-picture goal to becoming a B-Corp Certified business. We are relatively early in the process, but look forward to digging in more in 2023. While these goals may be small compared to what needs to happen to ensure a more equitable industry, we are in this for the long haul, and hope to continuously change and grow forward.