MEGAN BELL

Winemaker at Margins Wine

‘Certain people are closer to opportunities. But I want to give everyone an equal chance.’

THREE YEARS AGO, Megan Bell was barely surviving. Though her one-woman winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains was frequently featured in the press, she was juggling part-time gigs as a food runner, babysitter, and private investigator just to pay rent. “It’s so hard to make money,” she laments. “Winemakers aren’t good at telling the truth about this.” Bell, by contrast, is completely honest— both about operating a start-up winery (challenges persist, though she does now make a living wage) and about the crafting of her low-intervention wines. The label she introduced in 2017, Margins Wine, is aptly named: she uses underrepresented varieties from underrepresented regions, all grown with cutting-edge organic practices that she teaches to her partner farmers. The approach is only natural, she says. “People are demanding to know how things were made, by whom, and what’s in them.” Bell’s achievements are a culmination of her studies at U.C. Davis’s acclaimed viticulture and enology program. But her ethos is a reaction to her winery experiences across the US, New Zealand, and France, where the workplaces often felt less than fair. One goal, when she can afford full-time employees, is to create an open, nepotism-free environment. “Certain people are already closer to opportunities than others. But I want to give everyone an equal chance.” For now, though, it’s the lesser-known grapes that are getting their shot. Bell’s juicy Santa Clara Valley Mourvèdre and peppery San Benito County Négrette make people fall in love with types of wine they may never have heard of. “I’m excited about alternative ways of doing things,” she muses. The industry is better for it. marginswine.com.

Winemaker Megan Bell in the barrel room at Margins Wine, in the Santa Cruz County town of Watsonville.