“I think my wine is like a barefoot child, requiring love and care,” said winemaker Marta Casas, raising his glass to the light.Below her, Penedez’s vineyard rolled almost into the sea, but she could be almost anywhere Spain.
While they are struggling to enter the male field of haute cuisine, more and more Spanish women are seeking a career in winemaking. Compared with 10 years ago, the number of participants in winemaking courses has tripled.This got an additional boost when Almudena Alberca was manufactured in 2018 Spain’s first female wine master, One of only 149 in the world.
There is no doubt that they are very good, in fact very good. The question is, are they better than men? “In general, we can tolerate suffering better than men,” said Anna Cannan, winemaker at Clos Figueras in Priolat. “I also want to say that women are more detailed, but this is a generalization.”
“We are more refined, more precise, and more patient,” said Bárbara Palacios, whose last name is actually synonymous with rioja. “You have to spend time between the vines and understand what they need and what the soil is like.”
“Women are very intuitive and we are curious,” said María Larrea, who leads an all-female team of six winemakers. CVNE Winery In La Rioja. “We are also very tenacious. Winemaking is not something to do in the short term. It requires a lot of patience, but in the end it is more about personality than gender.”
“We did not intend to be a wine cellar run by women,” Larrea said. “In La Rioja, and throughout Spain, many women are studying oenology. We did not look for women, but for people with suitable resumes and suitable personal information, and it turned out that they were women.”
Like many of Spain’s most successful female winemakers, Cannan and Palacios were fortunate to be born in a well-known winemaking family, and this surname helps counteract the potential misogyny in male-dominated and traditionally restrained businesses.
Will many young women who are studying oenology find it harder to get involved? “In general, if there is no family relationship, it is more difficult for women to find work,” Kannan admitted. “This is quite a physical job, so taverns usually prefer men. As a result, many women end up in the laboratory.”
Marta Casas and María Elena Jiménez were not born in the wine industry, but married to it. Both were trained as scientists, but the sister-in-law received retraining as a winemaker in the Parés Baltà wine cellar in Penedès.
“I believe women will study things more deeply,” Casas said. “We look for their origins and consider the consequences of our decisions. We look for feelings, we want to convey feelings, even though we also have a tendency to overthink.”
Although María Vargas from Marqués de Murrieta bodega from Marqués de Murrieta bodega is one of the few Spanish women to receive a 100-point wine from the master wine master Robert Parker, Cannan said that all the attention is still being paid to men. And women. Win most of the prizes.
This is one of the reasons why she helped organize the Annual Fair of Priorat Women Winemakers and supports groups such as Mujeres del Vino.
“It’s a bit like we are saying, hey, we are here, we are making wine,” she said. “People don’t realize that there are so many women making wine.”
“But when you say, let us have a women-only wine group, some people will say, oh no, I am not a feminist because they worry about what people will think. Before women truly have confidence in themselves, we There is still a long way to go in Spain.”
“Women are present at all levels of cellar work, but like other parts of Spanish companies, there is a lack of women in senior management positions,” said Mireia Torres, managing director of Jean Leon in Penedez. “For example, we are behind the northern countries. We are not as good as France in this respect, but better than Italy.”
Wine making is a labor of love, a slow and unstable process that requires patience and tolerance. There are many setbacks along the way. In some ways, this is no different from raising a child, but does it mean that women are inherently better suited for this task than men?
“We are instinctive caregivers,” Palacios said. “You have to consider not only the harvest this year, but also the years to come. We suffer with the vines, and wine is like a child going through stages, and you care about the outcome. This is an expression of yourself.”
Cannan added: “I don’t think you can scientifically prove that women make better wine than men. After all, some mothers are more focused than others, and the same thing applies to female winemakers.”
“Wine should take us on the journey of its origins and tell us something about the people who made it,” Casas said.
Nowadays, this person is more and more likely to be a woman.
