ISWN Organization

The International Standard Wine Number organization is a non-profit organization, sponsored by the wine industry.

History

Similar as with the ISBN, the ISWN was created out of practical needs in the information age.
The implementation and administration of the ISWN is organized to leverage the use of Internet's free flow of information. The ISWN organization uses internet e-mail and web services to facilitate the processes of

• identification and authentication of a wine producer or product;
• registration and allocation of a unique code
• search facilities and bibliographical references

Mission Statement

The charter of the ISWN organization is to provide the service of administrating the ISWN standard to the benefit of consumer and the wine industry. We do this through the following activities:

1. advocating the adoption and use of the ISWN standard throughout the wine industry
   Purpose is that the ISWN is used broadly by wine producers and wine merchants, so it can become of broad practical benefit for the end consumer.
   In order for this happen, we stribe to have the ISWN code as a legal requirement on the label of the wine bottle. Upto that point, we encourage and support wineries to print the ISWN code on their products' labels.



2. administration of the ISWN database
   Although the ISWN Reference database is largest database of wines and wine producers worlwide, it still only captures part of all wines and wineries worldwide. The implementation of the ISWN Reference database is an incremental process with iterative phases to initially index and cover everything that exists today, and monitor and improve the quality and global consistency of the data.



3. making the ISWN of practical value to the consumer
   The ISWN is a key to integrate the wealth of scattered public (free) and commercial information on wines available to the public.
   This way, the ISWN Reference database will be of the highest possible practical value to people interested in wine. It has to appeal not just to specialists but also to novices by being easy to use, convenient, and easy to access.
   
   Example: the ISWN Reference database provides an easy way for people in a restaurant to get a maximum of information about the bottle of wine on the table, available at the fingertips of a mobile web access device. Suffices to type in 13 or 17 characters of the ISWN-W or ISWN-V.