WOMEN IN WINE

Behind many a great wine, there’s a great woman... we meet the women tasting success on male-dominated soil

The women making waves, and great wine, in a traditionally male domain.

Watch any movie, ad or TV show depicting a woman having a good old catchup with her mates, and she’ll likely have her manicured mitts around a wine glass. It’s a stereotype for a reason. In the United States, 2016 research by the Wine Market Council and Nielsen showed 56 per cent of wine drinkers are women. In Australia, a Ron Morgan study found that in 2015, 49 per cent of women in Australia drank wine in an average four weeks, compared to 41.2 per cent of men. There are wine brands targeting women and women-only wine clubs.

But women aren’t only drinking the wine; they’re also slowly and surely populating the traditionally male-dominated wine industry, from cellar master to sommelier. Last July, London saw the uncorking of a bar called The Lady of the Grapes in trendy Brixton that sells only wines made by women – a toast, if you like, to how far we’ve come.

On the home wine front, praise for women is a goblet that truly runneth over: At the 2018 New Zealand Wine of the Year Awards, the supreme winner was Maude’s Pinot Noir, made by wife-husband-team Sarah-kate and Dan Dineen. In August, the Bayer Young Viticulturist of the Year title went to Annabel Bulk, of

Central Otago’s Felton Road. More women are now Masters of Wine (MWS), says Cameron Douglas, New Zealand’s first and currently only Master Sommelier. Plus “the global Court of Master Sommeliers programmes are also seeing an increase in women attendees and graduates at all levels in their programmes,” he says.

There are scant stats on female participation in our wine sector (New Zealand Winegrowers, the industry body, is now doing its own study), but we do know that women make up 46 per cent of the labour force across winemaking, viticulture, logistics, marketing, sales, admin and senior management. This compares favourably to Australia, where according to an article in the New Zealand Listener, women account for nearly 50 per cent of enrolments in viticulture and winemaking courses, but make up less than 10 per cent of the workforce. “It is encouraging to see how many women are working in what is now New Zealand’s sixth largest export market,” says Nicky Grandorge, national co-ordinator of the Women in Wine NZ initiative (see box).

Some areas of the industry have traditionally been less welcoming to women than others. Kiwi Jenny Dobson was the first female cellar master in the French wine region, the Médoc, and when she first worked dragging hoses and barrels as maître de chai at Château Sénéjac in the 80s and 90s, she was a rarity. She says the “old attitude that the cellar is a ‘male domain’ still lingers”; but change is afoot. “I regularly see French women gaining experience working as cellar hands in New Zealand. They all have ambitions to work in cellars in France and progress to positions of responsibility.”

SUCCESS AND SETBACKS dish Drinks Editor Yvonne Lorkin says she’s not aware of any barriers to women entering the industry, but concedes “it’s crazy there aren’t more female wine buyers out there, especially in grocery, which is where the majority of

Kiwis (mostly women) buy their wine”. The columnist, wine commentator, judge, mentor and mum-of-two, adds, “Supermarket wine selections are yawn-inducingly boring and this could be one of the reasons.”

Cameron Douglas has mentored many young people aspiring to a wine career. And from what he’s observed, women are progressing very nicely, thank you. “Some of the best graduates from wine programmes I am involved with are women. Their influence in the wine world is clear with more women winemakers, wine judges and wine critics having a voice.”

Indeed. But here’s a thought. Is it not rather sobering that, in 2019, we are still doing the

‘yay for women in wine’ thing? Wine writer Vicki Denig certainly thinks so. On the website Vinepair, she professes her ‘hate’ of the word ‘female’ placed in front of any wine industry role. It “shifts the emphasis from the role – and the immense and impressive work it entails – to the gender of the person performing that role.”

After all, why should gender come into it? Douglas: “Wine is still just fermented grape juice and a winemaker’s intervention in terms of wine style, how much oak to use, or not, residual sweetness, what to do with lees – isn’t gender specific. There’s no such thing as a woman’s touch in winemaking; at least in my experience.”

Jenny Dobson strikes a nice balance here – perhaps unsurprising for the woman dubbed ‘the queen of blending’. “For me, it’s important to be recognised as a good winemaker, not a good ‘woman winemaker’.” But she adds, “It may take emphasis on women as winemakers to arrive at a ‘gender neutral’ position.”

Here are four Kiwi industry professionals helping us towards that goal. All women, but first and foremost, all bloody good at their job.