Are women better winemakers?

 at IPNC with wine gals Stacey Gibson, Julia Coney, Cheryl Wakerhauser and Kate Payne Brown

Hi Wine Friends,

Today’s topic may be an odd one, but here goes…

Next week marks the anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. We stand here, 104 years later, on the precipice of electing our first female president. On a personal level, I just hosted two back-to-back dinners with female winemakers. And I spent this past week in reunion with my childhood girlfriends. So women - and what it means to be a woman in the modern world - keeps coming up.

As a woman born into the third (or fourth?) wave feminist era, I’ve always shied away from the early feminist ideal of needing to be better than men. We’re all created equal so let's just be treated equally, right?

But the older I get, the more I see that we are undeniably different creatures. Women and men both have superpowers but, since men have by and large shaped our professional fields, many roles are adapted to male strength: efficiency, strength, focus, stamina and so on.

To succeed in entering said fields, women have donned the proverbial suit and tie, learned those skills and succesfully risen to the top in many arenas.

But so many women (including myself) still feel like we have to ‘act like men’ in order to be taken seriously - whether that means shutting down our emotions, grinding those extra few hours, executing the same routine day-in and day-out or pushing our bodies during phases of the month when they are craving rest.

with Kelley Fox at last week's dinner

So what the hell does this have to do with wine?

The winemaker dinner I hosted with Kelley Fox at Arden a few weeks back is what sparked this train of thought. Our wine dinners have a conversational and educational bent and, throughout the meal, I ask special guests about their winemaking process and philosophy.

When I speak to veteran male winemakers, they tend to get very granular regarding the systems they have developed - their signature recipes, if you will… 15% new oak, medium toast barrels, a dash of whole cluster, two punchdowns per week in a three-week maceration etc. etc.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with creating a structure that works!

But, when I asked Kelley how she made her wines, she barely mentioned process — only instinct. In fact, she barely seemed to recall exactly what steps she had taken or why—“I’m not sure - it just felt right” — hinting that the wines were born more from intuition than deliberation. (The one technique she highlighted was using,"uterine-shaped concrete amphora tanks.")

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard Kelley’s name, given how under the radar she flies. But any Oregon wine fan should know her as a true pioneer and one of our first female producers. She made wine at Torii Mor, Hamacher and Eyrie (where she learned from Willamette Valley godfather David Lett himself), before starting her own brand: Kelley Fox Wines.

For the past decade, she has quietly produced some of Oregon's most elegant and creative wines. She makes Pinot Noir and Chardonnay but also Gruner Veltliner, skin-contact Muscat and Willamette Valley Vermouth. She has inspired and mentored the Oregon wine scene but most consumers don’t know her name.

Side note: I read recently that, since men evolved as hunters and women as gatherers, men are very comfortable (and, in fact, seek out) hierarchical social systems. They have no problem taking orders from a leader on top or stepping into that role themselves. But, for women, hierarchy feels dangerous; it’s safer to be a member of the pack and not appear a threat to others, as you could be threatened yourself.

Is this why women feel so comfortable in the shadows?

It should come as no surprise that, when I asked Kelley to introduce herself and the wines, she instead read a poem by Ursula K. Le Guin.

with biodynamic Champagne producer Clemence Lelarge 

Kelley is not the only one with special gifts. Maggie Harrison of Antica Terra (who’s name many do know) has also alchemized her feminine superpowers into her winemaking - in this case to much acclaim. To blend her coveted Pinot Noirs, she relies on her gift of synesthesia - tasting the color mood, or aura, of a wine to sense where it fits best in a cuvee — and blind tasting barrels based purely on instinct rather than stats on a page.

Similarly, Kate Norris of Division Winemaking Co. describes the emotions of wines and techniques, such as carbonic maceration feeling ‘joyful and yellow.’ And Brianne Day, when wildfire smoke tainted grapes in 2020, relied on her senses rather than science to tell her how the juice was affected. As the grapes were being pressed, she tasted the free-run juice nonstop, trusting her palate to pinpoint the exact moment when bitterness started to show to then hit the brakes.

These winemakers utilize not only their very tangible, trained skills in enology but also their innate skills of female biology.

And we haven’t even talked about biodynamics!

If you follow wine, you’ll know that biodynamics has taken the world by storm. Wineries big and small are converting to this time-consuming and labor-intensive model of farming because they see a marked improvement in not only the quality in their wines but the health of their vineyards.

Biodynamics is built on three major pillars: creating a fully-sustained ecosystem that your vineyard is a part of, growing and naturally producing all of your own fertilizers and composts, and organizing vineyard activity around the lunar calendar.

This last one is what loses people. But think about how the moon affects way water moves on our planet - just look at the tides! It makes sense, then, that it also affects the way water moves in a plant. So wouldn’t picking, planting, pruning or fertilizing based on how water is waxing or waning in a plant makes sense?

Woo woo warning: women’s bodies are also on a lunar cycle. (You didn’t think we were going to talk about periods in a wine newsletter did you!?) The joke is always that women's cycles sync up when we spend enough time together but, in reality, we all sync up to the moon's cycle. Just like the water on our planet, our female bodies also ebb and flow on a lunar rhythm.

There is a huge wave of European winemaking daughters now converting historic estates to biodynamics with immense success.

And did I mention that, on a genetic level, women have 35% more olfactory glands than men, especially during childbearing years? That doesn’t mean we’re born better tasters but it does mean we have incredible potential when it comes to taste and smell if we choose to hone these gifts.

My point is not that women are better winemakers. But women are different winemakers. We have our own set of superpowers and, no matter what field we’re in, we should use them.

Thanks for joining me on these musings. I’ll see you next week (for something less esoteric, I promise :)

Cheers,

Kelsey