Making a difference, from Marlborough to Monterey

SOPHIE PREECE

ANDRÉA MCBRIDE John was 16 years old when she first met her big half-sister Robin, changing both of their lives in a moment. Andréa had grown up in Marlborough, with no knowledge of Robin, who lived 10,000 kilometres away on a vineyard in Monterey, California.

Twenty two years on from that extraordinary meeting, the McBride Sisters – based in California but inextricably linked to New Zealand wine – is the biggest Black-owned wine company in the United States, and is creating change for countless other women. “Our mission from day one was really to transform the industry and lead by example, and to cultivate community through delicious wine,” says Andréa. “As we have got bigger it has allowed us to amplify our efforts.”

Andréa was born in Los Angeles, but moved to Blenheim with her mother in 1989, when she was six and a half years old. Three months later her mother died, and Andréa began to share her time between her foster family in Auckland and her base in Blenheim, where she worked on her uncle’s vineyard, while attracting attention as an athlete and volleyball player.

Then when she was 12, Andréa received a phone call from her father – who she’d not seen since she’d left America. He told her he had terminal cancer and that she had a half-sister, who his family were trying to track down.

In 1999 Robin travelled to New Zealand, and the sisters discovered they had far more in common than a father and childhoods surrounded by vines. As soon as Andréa had finished high school, she went to university in California on a sports scholarship, and in 2005 the sisters launched a business that would marry their passion for wine and their “fundamental” beliefs around community, social equity and environmental sustainability, with a triple bottom line entwined in the company’s DNA.

As well as ensuring all their wines are sustainably farmed, including organic and biodynamic vineyards, they are focussed on social initiatives that shake traditional gender and race inequity, says Andréa. In the US there’s an obvious gender gap in every facet of wine, from winemaking and distribution to company ownership and executive leaders, she says. “It is so bland… You get to upper management and you don’t see women for the most part and you don’t see women of colour.”

The sisters are working to be an inspiration for women in business and particularly Black women in business. Last year they launched the McBride Sisters SHE CAN Professional Development Fund, to promote the professional advancement of women in the wine industry. In its first year, the fund awarded nearly $40,000 in scholarships to empower women in business.

This year they have adapted the fund in reaction to Covid-19, which has been especially destructive to Blackowned small businesses in the United States, says Andréa. In response, the McBride Sisters Collections is helping grantees obtain access to capital and business advisement. Andréa says SHE CAN pays homage to both their mothers, while working to “raise up other women and have them raise up other women around them”.

Andréa typically comes home to New Zealand for Christmas, then for harvest, and again for blending in the middle of the year, splitting her life between New Zealand and California, and still feeling “very much like a Kiwi”. There’ve been no trips home since Christmas 2019 however, with her plans to return for the 2020 harvest curtailed by Covid-19. With contract growers in Central Otago, Marlborough and Hawke’s Bay, the risks of the industry being shut down was “pretty nerve-wracking”, she says. And she was dubious about their ability to blend everything virtually, with 17 components sent to her, Robin, and the winemakers in New Zealand and California. “If you had told me pre-Covid, I would have said ‘no way – there’s no way we can do this’,” she says. “It was crazy and the wine was brilliant, but luckily it was an amazing growing season.”

And there’s no slowing down the McBride sisters, pandemic or not, with “really big dreams and aspirations”, Andréa says, calling their business success and social initiatives a testament to what is possible with purpose and ingenuity. Getting this far has required “a North Star” and a mission, she adds, “because these are definitely super crazy challenging times”.