| A number of professions have
traditionally attracted one gender or the other. Men, for
example, have dominated professional sports, law enforcement,
and construction, while women have long been a major force in
education, nursing, child care, publishing, and public
relations. Today, as both men and women become comfortable
with challenging centuries-old stereotypes, the rigid traditions
that have pigeonholed both sexes are becoming obsolete.
And what about the wine industry? Like
many professions, it's been male dominated for a long
time. Wine history is peppered with the contributions of
influential women, but, on the whole, their role has chiefly
been relegated to the laborious, boring tasks of harvesting
grapes and sorting them. Perhaps the first truly important
female contributor to the wine industry was the French widow
Madame Cliquot, who, in 181, created and refined the intricate
system of clarifying Champagne known as riddling or remuage.
This system, still in use today, is considered the best method
for the task.
Fast forward almost two hundred years and it's
obvious that when it comes to women in wine, times have changed,
and -- as far as I'm concerned -- for the better.
WOMEN WINE MAKERS
Three short decades ago, I would
have been hard pressed to come up with the names of three
influential female wine makers in all of the United States.
Zelma Long of course comes to mind as one of the industry's early
pioneers. Trained in the sixties at the Robert Mondavi
winery, she soon became wine maker at the Simi Winery, where she
produced a number of landmark wines.
It wasn't, however, until the
decade of the nineties that women wine makers began to take center
stage on the California wine scene. Heidi Peterson Barrett,
Helen Turley, an Mia Klien are three of America's finest wine
makers -- of either gender. It's interesting to note that
many of today's most sought-after California wines were
transformed from grape juice to wine with the knowing guidance of
female hands. Screaming Eagle, Grace, Dalle Valle Peter
Michael, and Colgin are a few of the wines that fetch record
prices at today's wine auctions. Other influential women
wine makers are Veronique Drouhin of Domaine Drouhin in Oregon,
and Marimar Torres and Merry Edwards in California. |
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