Women in Wine

An update for 2024:

In past posts, I’ve established that the wine world is pretty White, well it should come as no surprise that it is pretty male too. The Me Too movement has come to the wine world with the disclosures of the many ways women in the sommelier and restaurant service sector have been subject to sexual harassment and sexual assault as they climb the certification or the highly competitive restaurant ladders. I just finished reading Wine Girl by Victoria James- it was a disturbing read as she recounts how she experienced this firsthand. My brief foray into wine in restaurants was brief, primarily because so much of it seemed so slimey. But, I am eternally hopeful that in the world of growing grapes and making wine, the situation for women is better. This month I celebrate the women winemakers.

In the interest of foregrounding intersectionality, I’d like to update wineries that I wrote about in past columns. The Oakland-based McBride Sisters, I proclaim, is the most well-known and widely distributed Black-owned winery in the market. They produce under their own name, but also the Black Girl Magic line of wines. I tried a couple of them last month and they were delicious! They provide a perfect bridge from the value-oriented juice and sugar bombs and higher end, more expensive wines. Ceja Vineyards, with Amelia Ceja at the helm is doing so well that I can’t even buy her wines for the wine club- but they were so gracious when they turned me down and promised they were increasing production. And, I was thrilled when The Today Show did a story on Mi Sueño Winery, owned by the Herreras, with Lorena coming from the wine trail-blazing Robledo familia. Bibiana Gonzalez Rave of Catteleya has been named winemaker of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle and I’ve been proud to sell her Alma de Catteleya wines.

It makes sense that women lead winemaking at 3 of the French Champagne houses’ Napa Valley outposts: Mumm Napa, Domaine Chandon and Domaine Carneros. Why? In the 19th century Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin (the widow Clicquot) and Lily Bollinger revolutionized Champagne after the death of their husbands. Likewise, in Europe where historic Chateaux and Domaines were passed down to sons (notice how man Frères are in the names of French houses), when there were none, the daughters jumped at the opportunity to carry on. In CA, daughters have elevated their father’s wines, starting with Isabelle Simi who took over after her father’s sudden death. She was just 18 and it was 1904. Her most well-known contemporary is Gina Gallo who brought elite wines to the Gallo portfolio. Some of Napa’s most iconic wineries are led by women: Genevieve Janssen of Mondavi, Stephanie Jacobs of Cakebread, Stacy Clark at Charles Krug, and Erin Miller at Silver Oak. And many of the cult favorites are made by women: Cathy Corison Merry Edwards, and Kathryn Hall whose names adorn their wineries, Anne Moller-Racke of Donum Estate, and Sally Johnson at Pride Mountain.

I love to carry wines made by women in my portfolio. My first is Feminist Party (a GSM) made by Sonja Magdevski, whose tasting room is in the tiny town of Los Alamos. She seems to do it all at her winery, Casa Dumetz. When we visited last month, she was serving food on her beautiful patio. She owns the restaurant dimsama and Babi’s Beer Emporium all in old store front on Bell Street. She is tiny, but powerful. I appreciate that how entrepreneurial she is and how she brings her diverse background as an academic, vintner, winemaker and restauranteur together in such a meaningful way. I also feature a wine made by Molly Lonborg of Alta Colina in Paso Robles. I met Molly last summer and I was impressed by how much she made us feel at home and how generous she was with her time- with the wine geeks that we are. Her red wines are powerful, but well-balanced. The white is beautiful (club members, that is the one you are getting). She also had a fun Pètillant Naturel Rosè and an amazing dessert wine. She is committed to bringing along the next generation of women in wine. She helped to create a local group to create mentoring and internship opportunities for viticulture and enology students at Cal Poly SLO and the local community college. Her goal is make the journey much smoother for those starting out than she experienced. The collective, Women in the Room, in Oregon brings together some of the most prestigious labels in the Willamette Valley that are owned by women. They also provide mentoring (femtoring) to the new generation, and hold table talks on topics such as quality of life and navigating tight job. Support their work by searching out their wines; Penner-Ashe, A to Z Wineworks, Adelsheim, Stoller, and Ponzi.

When I first wrote this column in 2021 Bloomberg reported that only 10% of California’s 4,000 wineries have women winemakers, now it’s 14% of our 4,200 wineries. Of course, that seems like a paltry number- nearly 500 spread across a vast industry means that many experience isolation and likely fight for the legitimacy of their expertise and talent. That same article also reports that today women make up half of the graduates of the famous viticulture and enology programs at UC Davis and 45% of the graduating class in the same programs at Bordeaux University. That is impressive and gives me hope that as women continue to move to prominent positions in the wine production side of the industry, that their advocacy and influence will take begin to change the distribution, sales and restaurant side of the house as well. It’s March, drink wine made by women, hopefully your favorite women.