Photo by Jane Fullerton Lemons
Women winemakers discuss their experiences in the Virginia wine industry.
Virginia’s flourishing wine industry has grown in scale and reputation in recent decades, but the women who aspire to become winemakers continue to face challenges as men fill more than 80 percent of those key roles.
For Kirsty Harmon, general manager and winemaker at Blenheim Vineyards in Charlottesville, those challenges have evolved from what she encountered at the beginning of her career, when people wondered whether she was capable of doing the work or driving a forklift.
Photo by Jane Fullerton Lemons
The wine festival featured several Virginia wineries.
“There's a lot less surprise when I come upstairs to meet a group, and they're waiting for the winemaker,” she said. “When I first started at Blenheim, I would come upstairs, introduce myself and people would always say, ‘no, no, we're just waiting for the winemaker.’ I guess they were waiting for an old French guy in overalls to come up the stairs.”
Emily Hodson’s experience was remarkably similar at Veritas Vineyards and Winery in Afton where she is head winemaker.
“My biggest challenge was that people would want to talk to my dad and not me, even though I was the one doing all the ordering and actually had the understanding at the level needed,” she recounted.
Overall, women do indeed fill a large number of the jobs in Virginia’s wine country, including leadership positions such as owner and general manager, according to a recent report commissioned by Virginia Women in Wine.
But in the crucial role of head winemaker, women fall significantly behind as only 17 percent of Virginia’s winemakers are female. And the Old Dominion is not the only place where the gender gap persists. Those numbers put Virginia on par with the national average of 17.8 percent, but ahead of California where 14 percent of winemakers are women.
A Scientific Approach to the Art of Winemaking
Against that backdrop, four distinguished winemakers gathered recently at the Winery at Sunshine Ridge Farm in Gainesville for a panel discussion sponsored by Virginia Women in Wine dubbed “My Life in Wine” that focused on their experiences.
All four winemakers recounted how they were drawn to careers that were decidedly not 9-to-5 desk jobs, offering plenty of time outside, walking through the vines, with no two days the same.
While each started somewhere else before finding her way to the wine cellar, there is a common denominator: Each has a background steeped in science. These scientists possess impressive degrees in microbiology, biochemistry, statistics, and neuroscience —and that’s before they added on their degrees in viticulture, enology, and fermentation science.
Given those pedigrees, it’s not surprising they unanimously agreed that winemaking is more science than art.
“Everybody thinks we make wine when we're blending at the end of harvest,” said Hodson. “But it's really out in the field, seeing what potential we have and what the grapes have in them that year. And every year, it's a little bit different.”
That systematic — yes, scientific — approach allows the winemaker to create a plan, but then understand when and how to alter that plan.
“That kind of science is an essential part of understanding the possibilities of what you could make,” said Jocelyn Kuzelka, a winemaker and cidermaker who is cofounder of Daring Wine & Cider Company in Stuart.
Rather than approaching the project with a hammer to pound out the same Apothic Red every year, she said, “part of the beauty is being able to meet the grape where it's at and to make it into something delicious and enjoyable even in the years where maybe everything didn't turn out perfectly.”
To put it another way, once the science is in place, the art can happen.
Building a Pipeline for the Future
While the environment for women in Virginia’s wine industry is changing, these winemakers agreed there is still plenty of room for improvement. “To this day, when I'm standing next to my husband, people address questions to him that he cannot answer,” said Françoise Seillier-Moiseiwitsch, owner and winemaker at Revalation Vineyards in Madison.
Seillier-Moiseiwitsch, a mathematician with a Ph.D. who shifted from an academic career to full-time vineyard management, said she’s particularly concerned about attracting the next generation of winemakers.
“I think the biggest challenge is actually the pipeline — having expertise in the vineyard, in the cellar, in the tasting room,” she said. “So we need to really go out there and try to recruit young people to work in all aspects of the wine industry.”
All four of these scientific winemakers noted that they came to the industry somewhat accidentally — that growing up, they hadn’t realized these were attainable jobs. That’s why having the visibility of women doing different jobs is essential to provide both an inspirational vision and a realistic perspective of working in the wine industry.
“Hopefully, more people will take more chances and give people the opportunity to rise to the occasion,” Kuzelka said. “More often than not, that's what women in particular in this industry want to do.”
As Virginia wine continues to earn recognition in the wine world, such as a recent story in The New York Times, these winemakers who happen to be women are excited to be part of that future.
“The quality has increased by leaps and bounds in the last 15 years, and sometimes it takes a while for insider information to get out,” said Harmon. “I don't think any of us would be involved in Virginia winemaking if we didn't think it was going somewhere and had a place.”
For more information about Virginia Women in Wine, visit the website at https://virginiawomeninwine.com/.
