Dear Ana

This letter/essay was written in 2023/2024 for a wine magazine that did not end up publishing it. I’ve decided to publish it here for my friend Ana and other women working in wine. Please note that some of the figures and information may be out of date.

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Dear Ana,

The night you left me those voice notes I had forgotten what it means to be a woman working in wine. These days, I’m slightly removed from the heart of the industry, choosing to write about it safely from the sidelines, rather than fully immersed in it, so it felt a world away.

But when I replayed your messages, hearing the anger, frustration and confusion in your voice, it all came back. Like you, I once wondered, was it me? The one who took things too personally, the one who couldn’t accept the rules of the game?

I now know better, having spent the past few years trying to understand, or rather, come to terms with an industry that is inherently sexist and machista.

This is not an exaggerated statement or the musings of a radical feminist, although I’m sure many would be quick to slap that label. It’s the truth, one that you and I both know, but that rarely gets attention, even by those it harms.

What’s worse is the veil that’s continuously pulled over our eyes by mainstream wine media, which paints a picture of progress and equality, thereby gaslighting our reality and experiences.

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I remember reading, back in 2021, in an article entitled “Making Wine is a Woman's Thing”, where the late writer and producer Victor de la Serna claimed that sexism, or machismo, in the world of wine was largely a thing of the past. Yes, the industry was once closed to women because of the “harshness” of the work involved, he argued, but things have really changed. In the almost formulaic fashion of these types of articles, he then listed a handful of notable female winemakers, sommeliers and critics as proof of just how open and thus not sexist the industry was. He even posited that what was driving this new era in Spanish wine was female winemakers' “sensitivity”.

It would have been quite comforting if his argument wasn’t laced with sexist stereotyping, and if it were true. Sure, there are women in wine, and more are entering the field but an overview of the industry isn’t particularly encouraging. The gender ratio of winemakers, for example, at least those registered with the Spanish Oenology Federation, is overwhelmingly male: 70% to 30%, according to data collected by Spanishwinelover.com in 2021. The picture is brighter–as far as numbers go–for female sommeliers but on an institutional level, things are downright dismal. Out of the 101 denominations of origins, only five are currently presided by women. This might explain why a label such as Bodega Frontio's Follaco, which has an image of a woman's breasts as mountain silhouettes with the sexual play on words, can get past strict label (and legal) requirements of the DO–or anyone else who saw it, signed off on it and passed it along until it reached store shelves. (Coincidentally, this producer happens to be the president of his DO). 

But such is the state of mainstream wine media, and the leading voices within it that deem sexism unworthy of proper examination. It seems that certain kinds of wine writers–namely, male–can propagate false narratives about women in wine, thereby perpetuating a culture where gender discrimination persists. It’s hardly surprising, then, to learn that winery owners still ask women invasive (and illegal) questions about their marital status, reproductive plans, or family responsibilities during a job interview.

**

Lately, it feels as if sexism has been whitewashed by discourses of authentic wines and the media proclaiming a new dawn in Spanish wine. It’s as if by employing the words rebirth and revolution the industry can wash its hands or turn away from one of the thorniest issues. And so women’s presence is limited to lazy listicles and tired stories that appear just once a year, on March 8th, where sexist tropes of female winemakers' “sensitivity”, “intuition” and “motherly patience” are as common (and outdated) as pairing red wine and meat; where writers can carelessly refer to a female winemaker as a “femme fatale”, as was the case of a prominent Bierzo winemaker, while her male counterparts get the titles of geniuses, artists and rebels. 

This speaks to a larger issue, though, that of female representation in wine media.

Women’s contribution to the history of Spanish wine is deep and has been fundamental to today’s rich and varied landscape and yet, it’s nowhere to be found. Not in the pages we read, the stories we hear, or the myths and legends that make up wine culture. It’s not by chance that some of the most impressive vineyards, say, the old bush vines in Priorat, or traditional training techniques, such as cordón trenzado in Tenerife’s Valle de La Orotava, still exist today. This menial and manual field work was left to women to do alongside domestic chores, and it was a way for women to make some coin when men left the countryside for the cities in the 1950s. Yet these stories are rarely given the space, the seriousness and most importantly, the recognition deserved.

“The history of wine has been told by men,” the wine journalist Ruth Troyano once told me. “And until recently it was only narrated by men for certain media and guides.” 

It’s become clear to me that in wine history-writing and myth-making, women are neither protagonists nor characters in a story but an accessory to male-centered narratives. Narratives that tend to follow a similar structure: a group of male winemakers/growers who have “rediscovered” a particular region, sometimes with the lone female in tow, often, usually the daughter-of, a woman of elite status, a category that neither you nor I, Ana, fall into.

Present day Priorat comes to mind, with the mythology around the Gang of Five. On an international level, we’ve got the Douro Boys and the Barolo Boys. Without discrediting their work, one has to wonder, were these narratives an accurate reflection of what was happening on the ground, or were they selected, told and retold by the loudest and most powerful voices in the industry? In a wine media landscape that has historically been male-dominated, which stories have been cast aside because they did not fit the bill of a traditional (male) hero? 

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In Punch Drink Magazine, John McCarroll wrote about the re-politicization of wine, stating that “for most of recent memory, the way we approach wine—from the level of the wine critic to the wine clerk—has been systematically depoliticized.” He lists numerous offences that have come to light in various parts of the wine-producing world, and asks readers to engage politically with wine. While I applaud the sentiment, I’m left wondering how we can engage politically with a system that devalues women’s experiences, ignores their contributions and has done a solid job of erasing them from the culture at large. 

Ana, you’re not crazy. It’s not all in your head. What you see reflected in wine media is like looking at a carnival mirror, a complete distortion, and it’s a total mindfuck when your day to day reality is otherwise, when the discrimination you’ve experienced is as real as the paper between your hands.

“Would this happen to a guy?” you asked me.

Sadly, this question has become the barometer with which we measure sexism in our industry today, a question only to be found in private WhatsApp messages.