Wine made by women

Why do we focus on wine made by women?

TLDR: because they make outstanding wine.

📷 The photo shows the producers we are partnering with for our initial portfolio. Six producers, all family owned, five run by women. We made one exception for Stefano Cagliero in Barolo because he’s standing on the shoulders of 3 generations of women who previously ran his family estate, and his daughter is currently learning the ropes. He doesn’t get a photo though. Sorry Stefano. That’s his great grandmother, Nonna Marcellina, in the bottom middle, who founded the estate and who their Dolcetto is named after.

🍷 So how did we get here? It started as a coincidence, but became a deliberate strategy. Mid-way through our tastings across Southern Europe in 2023 (let’s call it an extended Vino Cammino planning session), we noticed that many of our favourite wines were made by women. When it kept happening, we started to seek them out. When the quality and value of the wine stayed unusually high, across all of the 20 or so wine regions we visited, we were convinced. Vino Cammino would focus on wine made by women.

🙋‍♀️ Winemaking is still a male dominated field globally. Though that has improved in the past few decades (it’s easy enough to find great wine made by women), it’s still hard going for most women, particularly in very traditional regions. For our producers, that has variously looked like only being given their opportunity because there were no sons in their generation, having to work for years to win over sceptical male employees and industry leaders, or even having to outlive the old guard before they were “allowed” to make a pinnacle wine from the family estate.

🥂 Our theory is that those extra hurdles are what makes wine made by women of above average quality, and so undervalued. It’s a dynamic that you see repeated in many other industries. We’d love to see that dynamic end soon, and we hope raising the profile of our producers in the Australian market will make a dent in it. But while this gender bias arbitrage opportunity exists, we’ll happily share it with our clients.