Tuesday twaddle: I moderate a panel and reconnect with a friend
This Thursday, Sept. 11, Women for Winesense,cwhich hosts events on various topics throughout the year and also provides scholarships for women pursuing careers in wine, is doing a workshop and panel, and they’ve invited me to moderate it. I gladly accepted, for this is a great honor.
My six panelists—three mother-and-daughter teams–are Amelia and Dalia Ceja (Ceja Vineyards), Herta and Lisa Peju (Peju Estate Winery) and Janet and Delia Viader (Viader Napa Valley). The event will be at Silver Oak, on the Oakville Cross Road. It’s part of a silent auction; my panel begins at 7:15.
The topic of women in wine—and diversity in general—has been quite important to me for many years, for a variety of reasons. Wine traditionally has been totally dominated by men—white men, for that matter–in Europe as well as in California, although obviously things are changing rapidly, and have been for some time now.
My panelists are going to talk about their experiences and thoughts, and since the daughters are joining their mothers, it will be interesting to hear about the shifting perspectives of the generations. Maybe the mothers felt more acutely the difficulties of being women in Napa Valley; maybe the daughters don’t feel things that strongly. Obviously, the family connection plays a part in their experiences: they’re not just young women starting out in the wine industry, they’re second-generation kids of successful parents. Anyway, the changing face of the wine industry, which includes the advent of Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans, is a pleasure to behold.
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Got my new Wine Enthusiast in the mail and scanned the “Forty Under Forty” cover story.cThat theme was a great success for the magazine last year, when I contributed to it, so it’s not surprising they decided to do a repeat. Of course, it’s somewhat arbitrary, this business of picking forty people under the age of forty; for every individual named, there are a hundred doing equally relevant work in the wine business. But I must say Enthusiast’s selection is an interesting one. I don’t know most of the people they chose: the one I know best is Alan Kropf, who by coincidence I have a phone appointment with today, on another matter. Alan did an article on me in an issue of Mutineer in 2011. I can’t find the link online, but here’s one to a cartoon he did prior to that that I really enjoyed. It’s very funny.
It was great chatting today! Thanks for the blog shout-out!