I encountered some really wonderful people following the vintage of 2016, little did I know that I would be surrounded by some amazing women in the wine industry.
In January, I made my way over to Western Australia where I met an incredibly hard cellar worker named Anna who, along with Julien- the assistant winemaker, run the show at Flametree under the guidance of Cliff Royal. Anna and I worked many long nights in the late Australian summer running the press during our white wine processing. I was always impressed by Anna’s endurance, and speed. She was able to climb barrels like a monkey, preformed a stack of work orders and never complained. In total for the 2016 vintage at Flametree (with contract wine included) 4 of us were able to process 700 tonnes of fruit. Needless to say, Australia has grown adept to working smarter with less labour cost due to the higher wage paid to cellar workers, with pumps that automatically turned off when they ran dry to complete a racking whilst preforming another task, automatic tank cleaning procedures that both cleaned the pump and the tank. Aussie winemakers are smart and efficient, I’ll give that to them for sure,
I interviewed for my next vintage, I originally had spoken to Hanna Chort, the co-winemaker at Eric Kent and Ernest winery. My friend and roomate in Forestville recommended I work with her. We became good friends later on in the vintage, after we were able to figure each other out, but I ended up working for her friend Suzanne and her husband Chris at Horse and Plow. The love story begins....
When I began working at Punch Down for Horse and Plow, I immediately felt at home. I remember sorting fruit early on in the season with Suzanne who asked me which kind of fruit I wanted to work with. Nebbiolo is some kind of obsession of mine, but I didn’t immediately come out with that, because I also like working with funky and unheard of varietals too-- which is why I think I fit so well in with Horse and Plow, they make a variety of wines ranging from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to Cab Franc and Gewürtztraminer, all of which I was tickled pink to work with (I especially fell in love with the Grenache programme, Suzanne’s baby with whole cluster carbonic maceration).
While working many a fruit sort, I encountered some prejudices from staff toward Suzanne working at the winery. Workers would ask me questions regarding the fruit, rather than her- perhaps because they knew who I was, but Suzanne told me that she had encountered these problems since she began her career in wine. Hanna was known as a bitch at the winery- she is a very strong willed woman who has a particular way she wants things done, which- if a male winemaker had the same requests would likely be overlooked or perhaps would be called passionate for his work. These two ladies I met and worked with were probably the biggest reasons I settled into my work, I took off with Suzanne’s idea for a pot luck lunch (she definitely deserves the credit, bringing us Pot Luck Fridays though!). I’m not sure if she initially understood how insane I am when it comes to food! She had enjoyed a daily lunch with a glass of wine in her days at Comte-Armand and wanted to bring that to the Horse and Plow crew.
I was also fortunate to be sent down to Robert Sinskey vineyards for an early morning pick where I was fortunate to meet the vineyard manager, Debby Zygielbaum. A Sonoma native who speaks great vineyard Spanish, I wanted to be her best friend. I felt sort of in the way taking pictures at the 4am pick of Pinot Blanc, where the pickers were hustling to finish as quickly as possible the rows (they are paid by the bin), Debbie jumped out the truck to tell the workers where the next pick was going to be and hopped into a Bobcat with forks to load up the truck for delivery to the winery... I was in a daze. Luckily, we got to talk a bit more when we walked down rows to count the vines that were just picked. She talked about the increasing acceptance of women and LGBT people in the industry-- we are in a bubble after all in California, I recall her saying.
Even in the month of December, working at Wallys-- I was reminded of perhaps the first female winemaker I was familiar with, Elisabetta Foradori and her amazing story of taking over the family winery after her father had passed away turning the obscure varietal of Teroldego into a sought after cultish wine. The same goes for Chiara Boschis of E. Pira & Figli, perhaps not as well known as Aldo Conteno or Gaja, but a monumental producer in the world of Barolo.
As a man, I can’t speak about any difficulties encountered firsthand in the wine industry, but I can say that for me- 2016 has been an eye opening experience understanding how much of an influence women have in a heavily male dominated industry.
