By: Becky Garrison
The genesis for Women in Wine Oregon began in 2015 after Susan Sokol Blosser, founder and garden advisor for Sokol Blosser Winery, participated in a U.S.-based wine conference attended by 500 men and women. While serving on a conference panel, she spoke about the Oregon wine culture through the lens of a family business and generational planning.
During the informal conversation that ensued following her comments, Blosser and others realized that even though the Oregon community hosted many collaborative events, these gatherings did not highlight women winemakers. Given Oregon’s history in forging new paths, such as putting wine in a can, becoming a leader in biodynamic farming practices and the farm-to-table movement, they felt the timing was right to launch an organization devoted to highlighting the contributions of women in this industry.
As per the Women in Wine Oregon website, the organization’s mission is to “provide a platform of inclusion for the advancement of female leadership in the wine and beverage industry.” Its mission statement continues with, “We provide opportunities for personal and professional development through an annual conference, community engagement events and a mentorship program. As a membership-based nonprofit, we catalyze ‘fermenting change’ through empowerment, engagement, diversity and accountability.”
Launching Women in Wine
The year 2019 marked the launch of Women in Wine: Fermenting Change, which was Oregon’s first event dedicated to empowering and advancing women in the wine industry. While this sold-out event had to be held virtually in 2020 and 2021 due to the ongoing global pandemic, it returned for a hybrid conference on July 19, 2022. By allowing people to participate virtually or in person, they could attract those who could not travel to Willamette Valley Vineyards in Turner, Oregon, where the conference was held.
This hybrid conference attracted 240 in-person and 85 virtual participants for a day of educational programming led by 18 leaders within the wine industry, along with networking opportunities. Those gathered ranged from industry veterans who have been working in the wine industry since the 1970s to women looking to enter this industry.
The Challenges of Diversity Within the Wine Industry
A virtual session with the McBride Sisters highlighted the association’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, which they describe on their website as recognizing the rich diversity of voices in the region’s wine community, with a focus on opening doors for the many individuals who have been historically underrepresented or excluded.
Raised among the vines of Marlborough, New Zealand and Monterey, California, respectively, Robin McBride and Andréa McBride never knew each other until they connected later in life. They discovered how their mutual familial love of wine stretched across two continents. In 2005, they found themselves in California, where they decided to shake up the industry with their unique blend of new-world finesse and old-world elegance. Thus, the McBride Sisters Wine Company was born in Oakland, California.
Since then, this sisterly enterprise has grown into the largest Black-owned wine company in the United States and is one of the most inclusive, accessible, socially aware and sustainable U.S.-based wineries. Also, through their SHE CAN Professional Development Fund, they invest in the professional advancement and career growth of high-potential, professional women, with a particular focus on women of color working in leadership positions in the wine and spirits, hospitality and finance industries.
Among their biggest challenges was the mistaken assumption that Black women don’t drink wine or they only drink certain types of wine. According to Robin, they addressed this bias by focusing on the aforementioned vision they’ve maintained from the beginning. “Our tenacity and our unrealistic optimism help because we see them as bumps in the road and not big game changers,” she notes.
In a panel titled Connecting through Generations, Tiquette Bramlett, CEO of Our Legacy Harvested (Newberg, OR), and Ximena Orrego, Co-Owner and Winemaker of Atticus Wine (Yamhill, OR), spoke to how the power of community in enabling women of color to enter and succeed in the wine industry. For example, Bramblett founded Our Legacy Harvested with Diana Riggs in 2020 to educate, advance and empower the BIPOC community in the wine industry. In their exploration of how to keep people safe during the pandemic while also amplifying BIPOC businesses, they hosted a block party in McMinnville, Oregon. They knew they were on to something when a woman in her eighties came to them and said she had been waiting for an event like her entire life. “It just broke us to pieces,” Bramlett reflected.
Since that inaugural event, Our Legacy Harvest launched an intern program in 2022 intending to help BIPOC people make connections within the Oregon wine community. Also, they created Diversity & Inclusion Training (DEI) via a partnership with Assemblage, which is an Oregon-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization aimed at addressing disparities within the global wine industry. A winery needs to have completed this DEI training to apply to host one of their interns.
Along those lines, Orrego cited how connecting with Carla Rodriguez, Founder of Beacon Hill Winery & Vineyard (Gaston, Oregon), led to the launch of Celebrating Hispanic Roots. This small group of Oregon winery owners and winemakers who share a Hispanic background came together to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15). After hosting this event virtually in 2020 and 2021, they hosted their first in-person event in 2022.
Jeri Andrews, founding partner of XOBC Cellars (Seattle, Washington), spoke to this winery’s unique role as one of the few LGBT wineries in the United States. The idea was never about money when this winery was founded in 2019. Instead, founders multi-Grammy-winning artist Brandi Carlile, her wife Catherine and their friends, Jeri and Amy Andrews, wanted to make epic wines out of Washington and Oregon that were representative of the terroir and to connect people who historically haven’t been welcomed at the table. “We want to bring other people to the table who maybe felt unwelcome. We’ve got this group of misfits that are part of our community of collectors, and we love it.”
They weave activism into their winery with an organization called The Looking Out Foundation, founded in 2008 by Carlile, along with Tim and Phil Hanseroth. This organization seeks to amplify the impact of music by empowering those without a voice. From neighborhood to nation, they help fund causes and organizations that often go unnoticed.
In Andrews’ estimation, if you want to create change, all you need is a small group operating on the same wavelength. “You’ve got to go where the players are and know how to bring people to the table.” As one example of bringing people together through wine, Andrews cites Brandi Carlile’s Seattle house parties, where music and wine connect people.
Moving from Talking about Diversity to Taking Action
Maryam Ahmed, the owner of Maryam + Company and co-founder of the Diversity in Wine Leadership Forum, spoke about the practicalities of implementing diversity in the wineries. She stresses how it’s a privilege to talk about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging rather than experiencing why these conversations are necessary. “We cannot aim to improve our professional environments without also improving the personal environment within which we live, including our bodies and minds,” she notes.
According to Ahmed, what this privilege means from a hospitality perspective is the need to fight this notion that we have to check our stuff at the door. She opines, “As we serve other people, how could we possibly not bring our personhood into the service that we offer?” At a minimum, she feels when we make these changes, we open the door for more creativity, growth and innovation. That leads to higher retention, innovation and a better bottom line.
She summarized her work to help create more diversity with the ACT (Accountability, Communication, Transparency) framework. The first step is accountability, which means taking ownership of our thoughts, beliefs and actions. We acknowledge there’s an issue and seek out how to fix it.
The answers can be found in communication that can help us align our words with our actions, as well as welcoming the needs of others and sharing our needs with those around us. In our communication, we need to strive for transparency, which puts us in a place of honesty. In this place, we can be positioned to be effective and get the resources we need.
In Ahmed’s experience, this ACT framework functions as a cycle, not a checklist. “This work is an ongoing, lifelong journey and commitment,” she says.
This conversation will continue at Women in Wine Oregon’s fifth annual Fermenting for Change Conference, which will be held on July 18, 2023, at Stoller Family Estates in Dayton, Oregon. More information can be found on their website at…
