world-leading women

members of the Bulgarian Winemaking & Export Association have female winemakers, while the Bulgarian Union of Oenologists is made up of 85 women and 81 men. Ownership of wineries isn’t quite as high, with 35% being owned or co-owned by a woman, but women occupy 80% of finance and marketing roles. It’s a situation that Gilbey, slightly reluctantly, has to concede dates back to the Communist era, when the authorities prioritised gender equality – a legacy embraced by such talented winemakers as Maria Stoeva, winemaker at the impressive small family firm Bratanov in the country’s Harmanli region.

David Williams lists a dozen names he suggests are currently at the top of their game

Viña Leyda (Enotria&Coe)

The Pacific-cooled vineyards of the Leyda and San Antonio Valleys are the source of more than their fair share of Chile’s most exciting wines – wines that have added a new, nervy, cool-climate dimension to the country’s colour palette over the past couple of decades. Intriguingly, two of the most significant creative forces in these relatively new wine regions have been women winemakers. María Luz Marín of Casa Marín in San Antonio was the forerunner, breaking the glass ceiling to become Chile’s first female winemaker and, in 2000 when she founded Casa Marín (itself the first winery on Chile’s Pacific Coast), winery owner in Chile. Marín was joined a few years later by Viviana

Viviana Navarrete Katie Jones

Navarrete, who has won numerous awards for her work since taking up the reins at Viña Leyda.

Even as it retained a pervasively maledominated winemaking culture, France always had its share of influential women in wine (if not necessarily winemaking) from Champagne’s Madames Bollinger and Pommery, to Burgundy’s Lalou Bize-Leroy and Anne-Claude Leflaive and Bordeaux’s Corinne Mentzelopoulos (Château Margaux) and May-Eliane de Lencquesaing (Château Pichon-Longueville, Comtesse Continues page

Yealands was founded in 2008 with the main goal of being one of the most sustainable wineries in the world We were the first winery in the world to be certified carbon zero from day one. We’re part of International Wineries for Climate Action. Our solar panel installation is about to become the largest in New Zealand again. We’ve got wind turbines. We’ve got specifically designed bale burners, so we bale some of our prunings every year, and that helps us get our hot water, so we don’t need to use LPG. We’ve developed a lot of wetlands on site, so we’ve got a lot of native flora and fauna. We’ve just launched a 30-year biodiversity plan, which will see us plant over a million native trees on the property.

My personal winemaking philosophy is not too much tinkering. I think Seaview has beautifully expressive styles, especially of white varietals. I really like the wines to have a sense of place and a sense of season. I’ve pared back some of the processes to the bare minimum. I think sometimes as a winemaker you feel like, when you’re doing lots of things to a wine, you’re winemaking. But from my experience working at other places, and around the world, I’ve honed what’s crucial and what’s not.

I have a double bass. I don’t play it so much these days. I used to play a lot with orchestras, and chamber music groups. Winemaking is a creative process, like music. You’re creating something that’s shared; you’re helping people join in a collective experience. So that could be the synergy.

Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc is now a reference point in its own right, because

Single Vineyard Albariño

The fruit was soaked for 18 hours; that was a technique that I learnt in Galicia to help reduce some of the acidity and to get the flavour from the skins. Then 100% stainless steel ferment: just a very clean, crisp style. This year, I'm going to drop a small portion of the juice into old oak barrels for a textural note.

it is so vibrant and out there. But I think we still get the comparisons, obviously, with the likes of Bordeaux or Sancerre. In Marlborough now there are these more restrained and barrel-fermented styles, or some of the more different styles that we do. But what’s made us famous is that bright, vibrant, fruity style. I think that’s pretty much uniquely us.

Albariño is probably the variety I’m most excited about. Being able to work with Albariño is a dream. Before I started at Yealands in 2014 I was making Albariño in Galicia. It’s such a vibrant variety, and high acidity. That’s one of the most beautiful things about it. It’s about embracing and celebrating that. Having that subtle saltiness that you get from it … I think that’s the ticket to it. We’re not as wet as Galicia but our Seaview vineyard is influenced by the cool ocean currents and cold sea breezes, and it just seems like a natural fit for Albariño.

Throughout Covid, we had to rein things in and keep it all pretty straightforward. But we’ve just released our first Albariño, and we’ve got some Chenin in the ground. So there’s always something on the go and we can get smaller batch wines back into market. We’ve got a little bit of Tempranillo, which we had made in the past, and we’ve been bringing that back this year.

I always enjoy coming to the UK. There’s an understanding and knowledge of New Zealand wine. I can talk more deeply about the kind of styles that we’re making; about sub-regionality of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. People are open to hearing that. They’ve got an appetite to learn more.

Single Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc

This won the Sauvignon Blanc Trophy at the National Wine Awards of New Zealand. It’s our highest rated fruit from the Seaview vineyard. We do get a lot of fresh herb and through the palate there’s a salty snow pea, briny character. There's a crushed oyster shell note too.

Chief winemaker

Yealands Wine Group Awatere Valley

Yealands was established in Marlborough in 2008, creating one of the world’s most eco-friendly wineries beside its wild and windswept Seaview vineyard, with its myriad microclimates. Natalie, who has a Masters of Science degree, a Bachelor of Music from Canterbury University and a graduate diploma in oenology, as well as being a classically trained double bass player, joined the team in 2015.

Imported by Enotria&Coe

Single Vineyard PGR

Our aromatic white field blend: 50% Pinot Gris, 35% Gewürz, 15% Riesling. All the fruit is picked at the same time, and pressed and fermented together. So it’s just a snapshot of those three varieties on that one day. It started as a request from an Asian fusion restaurant in London: they wanted something to work with their menu.

From page 51 de Lalande). Today’s scene is replete with talented winemakers in leading estates, such as Sandrine Garbay, head winemaker at Château d’Yquem, and Géraldine Godot of Burgundy’s Domaine l’Arlot. But few winemakers in the country have a more inspiring story than Katie Jones of the eponymous Domaine in Tuchan in the Languedoc. Having started out in the UK trade, and then working for many years at the local co-operative, Jones bought her first few hectares of vineyard in 2008. Since then she’s been through most of the ups and downs that wine and life can throw at a small winemaker, from careerthreatening sabotage to the death of her husband and partner, Jean-Marc Astruc, late last year. But the wines, many made from old vines, have never been better.

Almudena Alberca MW joined the board and is also Spanish brand ambassador for the fine wine merchant Oeno House.

Emma Rice

Entrecanales Domecq e Hijos (North South Wines)

Rather like those punishing wake-upat-4am-with-a-wheatgrass-smoothie, day-in-the-life-of-a-CEO schedules that you occasionally see online, Almudena Alberca MW’s CV makes you wonder, a) when she sleeps, and b) what you’ve done with your life. Alberca’s rise through the Spanish winemaking ranks, since she started out as a winery assistant at Viñas del Cenit in her native Zamora in Castilla y León in 2003, has been dizzying, with numerous critical plaudits earned for her work at Ribera del Duero’s Dominio de Atauta, Atalayas de Golbán and Viña Mayor (and Cenit), all while studying for her MW and working for the American wine importer Aviva Vino NY. In 2019, she became the chief winemaker, looking after eight brands in five DOs, at Entrecanales Domecq e Hijos (formerly Grupo Bodegas Palacio). She’s since

Vinescapes

The rapidly expanding English wine scene may be largely driven by male investors, many of them with backgrounds in finance. But, as a relatively young industry, its record of promoting women to senior winemaking positions is none too shabby. Current stars include Cherie Spriggs at Nyetimber, Collette O’Leary at Henners and Corrinne Seely at Exton Park. Our pick for the UK representative in this list, however, is Emma Rice, who has led the way for British women winemakers since taking up the winemaking reins at Hattingley Valley after graduating from Plumpton in 2009. As well as helping to establish the Hampshire estate as one of England’s sparkling wine grandes marques, Rice’s influence can also be felt at the wine analysis lab and consultancy firm Custom

WOMEN

WHO MAKE

Samantha O’Keefe

Lismore Estate Vineyards (Hallgarten & Novum Wines)

Samantha O’Keefe is one of two exceptionally talented and influential Californian women winemakers who have made a home in South Africa in recent years. And it was to that fellow countrywoman, Andrea Mullineux, that O’Keefe turned for help after fire ripped through her estate, home and winery in 2019, destroying vines and tanks of wine. Mullineux, and fellow winemaker Chris Reyneke, were among those who donated fruit to O’Keefe so that she would be able to produce and sell at least some wine that year – an act that O’Keefe said kept her in business. It was testament to the respect with which the South African winemaking community holds a winemaker who, with her fine-boned Chardonnay, Pinot and Syrah, has single-handedly established remote Greyton’s potential for fine wine.

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Arlene Mains grew up in Cape Town and as a child became fascinated by the landscape of nearby Stellenbosch, where she spent time with her father on long walks with their dogs. The seed for a career in the wine trade, she reflects, was probably planted at that time.

Falling in love with the land is easy; understanding the underlying science is something much harder. So Arlene embarked on a BSc in Viticulture & Oenology at Stellenbosch University, and in 2014 completed a Masters in Wine Biotechnology with the focus on natural and wild yeast fermentation.

This might have been the natural moment to join a wine producer in the Cape, but Arlene had the chance to do a threemonth harvest internship at Opus One in California. The arrangement worked so well, for both parties, that she ended up staying a year under the tutelage of winemaker Michael Silacci before transferring to Château Mouton-Rothschild in Pauillac. After that, the Cape came calling, and Arlene was back in the environment that had so enchanted her as a child.

Today, she’s assistant winemaker for Vilafonté, responsible for Seriously Old Dirt – a Cabernet-based blend, sourced from across the Cape, described as “regionally agnostic but soil specific”.