To view a complete list of all the books I have reviewed on The Academic Wino, visit my Wine Book Library page and browse!
Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book for free from the author, and links to the book are part of the Amazon Affiliate program where if you purchase the book or something else using these links, I may receive a few cents. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Happy Spring, readers! I hope the new season is treating you all well and that you are in good health. A couple of months ago I managed to get some mystery infection that finally resolved after a month of hardcore antibiotics and steroids, so I’ve been playing catch-up ever since! Fun times!
That being said, I finally had a chance to sit down and read another book, which despite my delay in reading it is actually quite timely for Women’s History month.
Enter the book for today: Women Winemakers: Personal Odysseys; by Lucia Albino Gilbert & John C. Gilbert.
First, about the authors from the back page:
“Lucia Albino Gilbert, professor emerita of psychology at Santa Clara University and the University of Texas at Austin, is a noted scholar of women’s career pathways in male-dominated fields. Her recent research focuses on the progress and prospects of women winemakers in California and internationally. She and John developed the extensive educational website, Women Winemakers of California and Beyond. Lucia came to love wine growing up in an Italian family.”
“John C. Gilbert is professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry at Santa Clara University and the University of Texas at Austin. Through studying women winemakers, he has applied his extensive knowledge of organic chemistry to understanding the intricate details of winemaking. His own love of wine came through a passion of Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon. Beekeeping is another love of his, which he has been doing for many years.”
Now, on to the book!
Women Winemakers: Personal Odysseys is broken down into three major sections. After the foreword by winemaker Zelma Long the book looks like this:
Part 1: The Trailblazing Women Winemakers
Part 2: 1980 to the Present: The Career Pathways Taken
Part 3: Where to from Here?
After the main section of the book is complete, there is a lengthy fourth section which includes various appendices and the glossary.
In Part 1, the Gilberts cover the pioneering women winemakers of California from 1965 to 1979, followed by trailblazing women winemakers in international regions. Each chapter introduces women winemakers during certain time periods and certain areas of the world, and tells short stories of how these women came to be winemakers and what sort of challenges and/or roadblocks they encountered along the way.
In Part 2, the Gilberts back up a little bit and go into even more details about the different paths these first several women winemakers took to get to where they were. Specifically, they cover four different pathways toward becoming a winemaker that many of the early women winemakers took to get to the top. The book categorizes the four pathways to winemaker for these women as:
- The Sensory Pathway
- The Family Pathway
- The Science/Agronomy Pathway
- The Enology Pathway
It was interesting to read about how each of these women came to be winemakers, and how the end result may be the same (more or less), the ways to get there were variable and unique to each individual.
My only issue with the stories of these women is that I wanted to learn even more about each of them! This book does a wonderful job pulling together these stories, and including personal conversations with some of the women winemakers themselves, but I found that they were so interesting to read that I wanted to read more! I suppose the book would then be entirely too long if they went into too much detail. A good problem to have, it seems!
Part 3: Where to from Here? Is where things get even more interesting with the description and results of the author’s original research. Sure, there are many more women winemakers now than ever before, but have women “broken the glass ceiling” in the wine business? The authors designed and executed three different studies:
Study 1: How many women?
Study 2: Quality of wines produced by women winemakers
Study 3: Assessing women winemakers’ progress in the field
Normally on this site, I’d go into great detail about the studies and results, but I’m not going to this time because you really should read the book for yourselves! I will just say that the results were fascinating and surprising (yet unsurprising….) to say the least.
As far as how many women winemakers, the Gilberts’ original research found that while there are many women winemakers out there today, women have NOT yet broken the glass ceiling and that progress, while present, has been slow.
“It has been widely touted that women winemakers in California are shattering the glass ceiling in an industry historically dominated by men. However, this study, which used a comprehensive database to assess the proportion of women and men who are lead winemakers in California’s wineries, found that only 9.8% of California wineries have a woman in this role”. (Women Winemakers: Personal Odysseys, page 130).
Hardly a ceiling shatter, it would seem.
Study 2 “provided support for the hypothesis of proportionally greater acclaim for wineries having women as their lead winemaker”. Specifically, “proportional to their representation in the comprehensive database of California wineries and their lead winemakers, a significantly higher proportion of wineries with women winemakers were listed in Opus Vino in comparison with wineries having male winemakers.” (Women Winemakers: Personal Odysseys, pages 131 & 133).
Why is this? One quote from the book stuck with me and I tend to agree:
“Women in male-dominated fields often need to be more talented and hard-working than their male peers in order to be recognized as successful. Many of the women we met with mentioned needing to work twice as hard as men for the same recognition of chances of advancement.” (Women Winemakers: Personal Odysseys, pages 131 & 132).
Rather than me spill too much more of the book, I’ll just wrap up by saying Women Winemakers: Personal Odysseys is a well-written book that captures the attention (I read the entire book in 2 hours!) and leaves the reader wanting to know more. Does this book capture every single pioneering woman winemaker? Well, no, the focus is on California and some international regions. However, I think the stories of these women likely mirror similar stories to women all over the US and the globe.
As a woman, reading this book makes one feel frustrated yet empowered by the stories and hopeful for continued progress in the traditionally male-dominated field of winemaking. To any woman trying to make her way up and facing roadblocks simply because of your gender, I say f*&k that noise and you go get it.
Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book for free from the author, and links to the book are part of the Amazon Affiliate program where if you purchase the book or something else using these links, I may receive a few cents. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
To purchase Women Winemakers: Personal Odysseys by Lucia Albino Gilbert & John C. Gilbert, click here to find it for sale on Amazon.com *affiliate link*. Cheers!