We would love to tell you women are behind half of all your favorite wines, that they fill your bottles in every region of every country and they’ve historically existed in this generationally artistic and agricultural business. They haven’t been. Women aren’t dominating the field — not in the traditional sense of the phrase. But they are dominating in an entirely different way: the way a vein of gold dominates a sheer granite rock face. From Spain and Portugal to Argentina and Uruguay — there are farmers, creators, business owners, and partners doing the most brilliant, humble, and pioneering work; and they happen to be women. They’re leading a new generation of wine and they’re bringing their daughters with them.
Some of the most famous powerhouse reds that sit atop the white tablecloths of the most classical of establishments are made and led by women, like Begoña Jovellar of Vega Sicilia and Mercedes & Maria Lopez de Heredia of their namesake — helming behemoths of great history and provenance. And there are small-scale vintners farming on biodynamic vineyards around the world, nurturing the flora and fauna around their grapes as they craft the most kaleidoscopic perspectives that exist in a bottle. Clara Concejo Mir is meticulously crafting small production wines from 50+ year old Cab vines in the golden mile of Ribera del Duero. María Barrena Belzunegui is the enologist behind the Azul y Garanza wines that unearth aromatic complexity from the desert-like landscape of Navarra.
Whether or not any of them feel like they have something to prove, they are proving something: the world of wine has places still to go and in many cases it’s a woman taking it there.
And so, in the pages of our wine lists, we toast the women whose stories live in the bottles we love so much.
(Daphne Glorian, winemaker of Clos Erasmus, and Gretchen Thomas surveying vineyards in Priorat, Spain)
This month, we’re shining a spotlight on wines from, but hardly limited to, such craftswomen as:
Francesca Vicent
Mária de Fatima Costa
Célia Alves
Joane Cunha
Marta Pedra
Paula Pivel
Cristina Mantilla
Eliane Lafage
Bridget Deforge
Maria Larrea
Josefina Portal
Maria Vargas
