Cameron Hughes Wine doesn’t own any vineyards, yet it offers exceptional wine at reasonable prices.  How?  Through what is essentially a form of recycling—taking excess wine from some of the best vineyards in the country, bottling it, and selling it directly to wine drinkers. 

This is the way of the négociant, the French term for a winemaker who assembles the product of other growers and winemakers and sells the result under its own name.  Historically, négociants were the dominant force in the wine business, connecting owners of vineyards and wineries with the wine-buying public.

In the past twenty-five years, other business models have succeeded in the wine world, but Cameron Hughes Wine has created its own niche.  Founder Cameron Hughes entered the wine business at a young age, and he uses his contacts to find out which wineries have too much high-quality wine.  Cameron Hughes Wine then acts quickly to “rescue” it before it is blended into lesser wines.  The advantage of the low overhead of this unique business model allows Cameron Hughes Wine to offer super-premium wine and make it available at exceptional prices as part of its Lot series. 

This strategy has earned the company lots of positive press and growth, and Cameron Hughes Wine recognizes that as its business grows, so too does its impact on the environment. The company relies heavily on shipping services to receive wines from around the globe and make customer deliveries across the country.  Cameron Hughes Wine decided that if it really wanted to break down the “true” cost of the wine, the environmental impact should be factored into the equation.

Using calculators developed by Carbonfund.org, Cameron Hughes Wine tallied up the emissions generated by its business as a result of travel, freight and customer shipping activities and signed on to the CarbonFree Program to offset its emissions.  By offsetting 150,000 cases of wine—or 1.8 million bottles—Cameron Hughes Wine is the first American wine négociant company to be 100 percent carbon neutral.

“Three years ago we looked in ways we could take responsibility for the carbon emissions resulting from the production and logistics of our wine. Carbonfund.org provided the most straight-forward turn-key program available for us to quantify our emissions and purchase offsets,” said Hughes. “We think Carbonfund.org takes an innovative approach to managing carbon offset programs and they make it easy for companies like ours to get involved.”