The following article is reprinted with permission from wines-israel.com. Note that I believe that there are some errors in the discussion of Jewish law as some observant Jews hold no problem with women leading kiddush or serving as mashgichot (kosher supervisors). Or, as in the case of all matters – 2 Jews, 3 opinions.
As we look back in history at the subject of women & wine, it is immediately apparent that the bias against women in the wine industry has been abhorrent, but this did not start with Judaism. It began in the very earliest wine cultures. In ancient Egypt jars of wine were placed in the tombs of the Egyptian upper classes to ease their way in the afterlife. Egyptian women were not entitled to this in case they were to become intoxicated in the next world.
Ancient Greece was no better. Men used to gather to meet and drink. Women were only allowed to participate as accessories – to serve wine or act as prostitutes. Whilst for a man to become drunk was almost praiseworthy, for a woman to be seen drunk was the equivalent of being a loose woman. The Romans were even worse. They even prohibited women from serving wine.
As far as Judaism is concerned, according to the letter of Jewish law things are reasonably equal. Both men & women have to drink four glasses of wine at Passover. Jewish law does not forbid a Jewish woman from winemaking, only stressing that a Sabbath observing Jew must make the wine. In practice though, the results of subsequent interpretations ensure a quite different reality. Women are excluded from kosher winemaking worldwide because of the orthodox Jews rules on gender separation. Only a man can decree if a wine is kosher and a man has to lead the Kiddush, the sanctification with which Jews begin every festival and every Sabbath, with the blessing over wine.
The Catholics were as bad too. European winemaking survived the Middle Ages largely because of the Catholic Church. Many of the New World vineyards were first planted by Catholic missionaries. But Catholics excluded women from winemaking too.
In France even quite recently there was a superstition that a menstruating woman winemaker would damage the finished wine. This bias against women has lasted even until this generation. The Bordeaux Brotherhood also discriminated against women. The Confrèrie of St. Emilion only inducted its first woman in 2000.
Quite apart from historical prejudice or religion, wine has always been seen as a men’s preserve. Work in the vineyard & winery was heavy, physical, and took up long, unsocial hours. The vineyard and winery became a place for men only.
Furthermore the enjoyment of wine became a man thing. There were men only drinking clubs, and tasting events, where men gathered to share Parker scores and boast about which wines they had last night. In England the port was passed around the table, but only after the woman had left the room.
However women came to the fore in a very important facet of wine enjoyment. They were proved to be better tasters. There were two groundbreaking studies, one in Cardiff, Wales, and the other in Pennsylvania, USA, which both showed that women consistently outperformed men in matters of odor identification and smell. Furthermore another study at Yale identified that about 25% of the population had the potential to be super tasters, with the ability to taste more sensitively than the remainder of the population. The so-called super tasters had more taste buds and a greater sensitivity to taste differences. The researchers found that women formed the majority in this category.
Furthermore it was realized that men tend to categorize wine more using the left side of their brain. Scores, ratings and all the details surrounding the wine are important. Whereas women, are more likely to use the right side of the brain, which is more sensory, creative and artistic. A man is generally interested in the minutiae of the wine. A woman is more interested in the taste. Marketeers were slow to realize that the bulk of wine purchases was not made by men, was by women in supermarkets.
So women are better tasters than men, and they buy more wine than men, but it still took a few women pioneers and a few centuries to break the glass ceiling.
The trailblazers were really four women in the 19th century. These four women played a crucial part in running their businesses when fate left the winery in their hands. Veuve Cliquot and Pommery in Champagne, Ferreira in Portugal and Penfolds in Australia became the companies they are today purely from the management of the women who had to take the reins of their family businesses. The stories of Nicole-Barbe Ponsardin, later known as the Widow Veuve-Cliquot or La Grande Dame, Madame Jeanne-Alexandrine Melin Pommery, Dona Antonia Adelaide Ferreira and Mary Penfold are each worth telling on their own. They were women of immense courage and good sense and extraordinarily successful considering the prejudice they came up against.
Until the 1970’s women were not only scarce in the world of wine, but virtually non existent. However in the last 30- 40 years, there has been a welcome turnaround. Women have succeeded to permeate into every aspect of the wine trade. There are winery owners, winemakers, researchers, educators, sommeliers who are women and they compete on an equal level with men, often surpassing them. The wine trade is richer as a result.
A few of the most notable women to contribute to making the world of wine a better, more advanced & professional place are listed below.
Winery owners like Corinne Mentzelopoulos, who single handedly revived Chateau Margaux, so it returned to its place as one of the leading Bordeaux wineries. Baroness Philippine de Rothschild took over Chateau Mouton Rothschild and the built a global empire called Baron Philippe de Rothschild SA. Lalou Bize-Leroy, ousted from Domaine Romanée Conti, started her own winery called Domaine Leroy and become one of the foremost owner winemaker women producing some of the finest wines in Burgundy.
In California, some of the most prominent winemaking g icons in the New World wine revolution were women. Heidi Peterson Barret, winemaker and owner of La Sirena in Napa Valley has made many of the region’s most sought after wines. Helen Turley is another winemaker/ consultant who makes some of California’s most expensive cult wines. Zelma Long was a winemaker, beginning her career at Mondavi. Then she went from winemaking to management and became the first woman winemaker to become President and CEO of the major winery when she took over Simi Winery in 1980. She now owns Zelphi Wines, is also a flying winemaker and a much sought after consultant. Since 2002 she has also been the winemaking consultant for the Golan Heights Winery. In Australia today, Vanya Cullen is an owner, managing director and winemaker of Cullen Wines. This she has achieved in macho Australia, where women wine judges for tasting competitions were forbidden until recently.
One of the most significant developments to advance the understanding of wine tasting was the development of the Aroma Wheel at the University of California at Davis. This was compiled by a woman, Dr. Ann Noble who worked in the Department of Viticulture and Oenology. The Aroma Wheel codifies 132 descriptive words to assist wine tasters searching for the right vocabulary.
Jancis Robinson MW OBE, from England, became a wine writer whose prose matches that of Hugh Johnson and a wine critic held with the same awe as Robert Parker. She edits the main wine reference work: The Oxford Companion To Wine and co-authors the World Wine Atlas. Her television programs where also ground breaking. She has her own website & writes for The Financial Times. Serena Sutcliffe, another Master of Wine, became director of Sotheby’s Wine Department. The auction house was previously a bastion of male domination.
Mary Ewing-Mulligan became the first woman Master of Wine in the US in 1993. She is today known for her educational books ‘Wine For Dummies’, which continue to be a best seller. (The book was recently translated to Hebrew.) In 1987 Madeleine Triffen became the first Master Sommelier in the US. Andrea Immer Robinson became Master Sommelier in 1996 and then continued to become a famous educational figure through her books and television appearances. Up to 2005, there were 15 women Master Sommeliers and 57 women Masters of Wine in the world.
Each of these women are superstars in their own fields, who have encountered prejudice, but have risen to the top of their professions by being the best at what they do. All of them experienced difficulties, but now the integration of women in the wine trade is a fact and it seems inconceivable to visualize a wine world without them. Now there are even wine societies catering for women. Le Donne del Vino was an organization founded for women in Italy, another very conservative country and there are now similar organizations in Germany, California and other countries.
There has also been a breakthrough in Israel. The hardest nut to crack was that of winemaker. Women could not be part of the actual winemaking in a kosher winery, as only orthodox men are permitted to touch the wine, plant and machinery during the production process. However they could be active in the vineyards and take the same managerial role in a winery like any winemaker of a kosher winery.
The pioneer was Tali Sandovski, who became a winemaker at the Golan Heights Winery in 1986 and then studied at UC Davis. She is the winery’s longest serving winemaker. Other women were to follow. Naama Mualem studied in California and Australia before taking over as winemaker at Dalton Winery. Another women winemaker is Irit Shenk Boxer who works at Barkan-Segal, which is managed by her father.
The first female ‘owner winemaker’ was Orna Chillag, whose Chillag Winery was founded in 1998. Now there is also Tzina Avidan from Avidan Winery and Roni Saslove is partnering her father in making the wines at Saslove Winery.
Woman also broke into management of the larger wineries. Ronit Badlerbecame the first managing director of an Israeli winery, managing Galil Mountain Winery. Anat Rushansky Levy is currently managing director of Golan Heights Winery.
Carmi Lebenstein was firstly sales manager and later marketing manager of Carmel Mizrahi in the 1990’s, and she recently looked after marketing at Barkan. The current marketing manager at Carmel Winery is Ifat Rozenberg Moshan. The previous marketing managers of Galil Mountain and Binyamina Winery were respectively Carmit Eherenreiche and Timna Shitreet.
Many of the sommeliers in Israel are women. Hadas Ezer was Israel’s first woman sommelier of note, being sommelier at Keren Restaurant in Jaffa. She is now an importer of fine Burgundies to Israel. Ruti Ben Israel studied in Italy to become a sommelier and returned to Israel to become manager of Carmel’s Center for Wine Culture at Zichron Ya’acov. Debbie Shoham is education manager of the Golan Heights Winery.
Mira Eitan was Israel’s main female wine journalist, writing in the past for Globes and Maariv. She then edited the Wine & Gourmet Magazine for 5 years. She is now the media and communications manager for Carmel Winery and part of their wine development department.
Ifat Rozenberg Moshan, Mira Eitan and Ruti Ben Israel are part of an initiative to organize regular tasting and cultural events for women only on behalf of Carmel Winery. Each meeting is over subscribed. More and more women are having the confidence to participate, taste wine and give an opinion. The development of the women consumer and the flowering of female wine experts is the next trend already underway.
So the glass ceiling is well & truly cracked here too. Thankfully women feature strongly in Israeli wine today and the industry is better for their presence & expertise.
