Mike Turner applauds three women winemakers from Juvé y Camps, Quinta do Noval and Monfaucon, and looks at the struggles that women in wine still have to face.
There’s this American singer and songwriter called Ben Folds whose first solo album had a title track called “Rockin’ The Suburbs”. It starts off with the tongue-in-cheek lyric of “Let me tell y’all what it’s like, being male, middle class, and white!” The frustration of the song is that deep down, in society anyway, you’ve not got much to moan about. I remember listening to this at uni over a decade ago and chuckling that as far as I was aware, none of that stuff mattered anymore anyway, society had moved on, right?
Ausenda Matos, Quinta Do Noval
But then a couple of weeks back I met Ausenda Matos. She’s the Cellar Master of Quinta Do Noval, one of the most prestigious Port houses going. She’s been working at the Quinta for a couple of decades now, is great to listen to, and has some great stories about how she got into wine in the first place.
But one of her stories left me having a ponder afterwards. It’s when she spoke about her struggles against inherent sexism when she was starting out, and at times still has to cope with, and how she came through it.
I’d like to firstly point out that this is not a culture at Noval or anything. Noval deserves huge credit for being the first Port house to appoint a woman as Cellar Master. They couldn’t have given a stuff about whether she was a man, a woman, or Ziggy Stardust. She was/is great at what she did/does, and she got the job. As it should be.
What got me thinking, though, was whether I’ve just missed the struggles of women in the workplace. I’ve just never thought about it. My mum was a brilliant doctor, my sisters are both successful and my wife is just incredible. Why would it ever enter my head that they weren’t equally capable of doing anything just based on gender? I saw a bit of stuff that was appalling when I used to work in banking, but I’d just assumed they were isolated incidents of morons being morons.
The fact that Ausenda had to work double hard to win over the respect of her male cellar hands as recently as it was, was a bit of a shocker to me. So I guess I just wanted to write this piece to raise a metaphorical glass to Ausenda and her triumphs and successes. And extending it to all the women of the wine world that have faced, or worryingly enough continue to face, the same issues.
The current climate and the future are definitely looking rosier. There is a celebration of Women in Wine throughout the world, with get-togethers, awards ceremonies, and a plethora of focused events, which includes Wine Australia’s Women in Wine Awards event coming up in September. It allows us all to celebrate the successes of women in what, without me actually realising it until recently, is probably still a male-dominated industry.
Dawn Jones-Cooper from Monfaucon
Talking of winemaking awards, one of my favourite winemakers in the whole wide world is Dawn Jones-Cooper at Château de Monfaucon, and I spend most of my time with 20h33 trying to get private clients to try her wines. She’s based out in Entre Deux Mers in Bordeaux, and tells me that quite a few of the regulatory staff that she deals with from the CIVB, a growing number of world class winemakers, and château owners are women. Gender is seemingly a lessening issue in arguably one of wine’s stuffier and old school regions.
Meritxell, Gloria, and Anna from Juvé y Camps
I’ve also been fortunate enough to recently be on a trip to Penedes to meet the new team at Juvé Y Camps, the Gran Reserva Cava aficionados. Now headed by CEO Meritxell Juvé, she’s taken the reins of the company from her father and run with it, bringing in a new additions to the team including new assistant winemaker Gloria, and marketing guru Anna. It’s arguably the most enthused I’ve been about a wine company in a very long time, and not just because the wines are absolute knockouts.
I think in an industry that gets accused, and fairly, for doing the same bloody things the same bloody way, and often failing to engage the audience we’d like to, it feels a bit strange that change clearly hasn’t always been embraced with two very widely extended and open arms. It’s great to see so obviously that that is changing quickly, and about time to.
Cheers to all the amazing Women in Wine
