Video: Where are We Now with Women and Wine?

 

Our guest this evening is Cathy Huyghe, Wine Columnist, Forbes Magazine, discusses marketing wine to women, mistaken stereotypes about women’s purchase and drinking behaviour, and women in the industry.

… and she joins me now live from New York City: Welcome to the Sunday Sipper Club Cathy Huyghe!

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How are wines marketed differently to women?

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Cathy Huyghe

 

 

 

 

 

Cathy Huyghe is a dynamic media professional with a special interest in wine and the spirit of hospitality. She is also an effective, engaging public speaker on subjects ranging from wine and gastronomy to digital media and entrepreneurship.

Cathy is the co-founder and CEO of Enolytics, a big data startup providing business intelligence for the wine industry. She also currently writes for Forbes.com about the business and politics of the wine industry, and for Inc.com about entrepreneurs with a special focus on women. She is the author of the award-winning book Hungry for Wine: Seeing the World through the Lens of a Wine Glass; she was a finalist for the 2016 IWSC Wine Communicator of the Year award; and she won the 2016 Innovator of the Year award from Diaz Communications.

Cathy’s writing has appeared in print and online for both general-interest and wine industry publications including the Harvard Business Review network, The Atlantic, Decanter, Food52.com (where she was the “Wine, Unfussed” columnist), DailyBeast, The Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Wine Enthusiast, GlobalPost, Grist.org, and Daily Candy. She has also been featured on the BBC, WNYC, WGBH, and Nevada Public Radio.

Cathy is the founder of 365daysofwine.com and Red White Boston, a digital media company for the wine industry. Red White Boston produced daily content, monthly tasting events, and a location-based iPhone app of video wine recommendations from their network of 30+ local partner stores. While in Boston, she also managed the wine cellar at WGBH public broadcasting station and managed wine events for donors and the public.

Cathy’s restaurant experience started when she knocked on the kitchen door at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. She also has worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris (at Natachef bistro and at his two-star restaurant, Apicius) and for Thomas Keller at Bouchon in Las Vegas. She studied at La Varenne École de Cuisine in Burgundy, France; she completed the Wine Studies program at Boston University; and she received Advanced Certification from WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust).

Cathy received a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard in 2004 and a second master’s degree in Journalism in 2010, also from Harvard. Before that, she received a master’s degree in comparative literature from the City University of New York in 1998 and a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1995. She is also a trained mediator, and worked for two years at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School on a project in the Middle East.

In April 2008 she founded the Harvard Alumni in Wine and Food special interest group, which provides educational and networking services to the Harvard alumni and current students. She has also served as the President of the Harvard Club of Georgia, and she has begun a term of service on the Board of Directors for the Harvard Alumni Association.

Her other non-profit involvement includes the Women’s Solidarity Society at the new National Center for Civil & Human Rights (Atlanta), grant reviewer for the Food Well Alliance (an Atlanta-based organization that supports the local network of 350 urban farms and community gardens), Coach at GOTR (Girls on the Run) in Atlanta, Board Member at the Greening Youth Foundation (Atlanta), Board Member at The Food Project (Boston), and Mediator at the Neighborhood Justice Center (Las Vegas).

She lives in Atlanta with her husband, their twin boys, and their Bernese Mountain dog, Coco.

Full Transcript:

Natalie: Alright. Well, we’re coming up to International Women’s Day, which is March 8th, and in honor of that,
tonight’s Sunday Sipper Club Show
is all about women and wine.
So how is wine marketed to women?
Is it any different from how it’s marketed to men?
How have women’s buying and purchasing,
that’d be the same thing,
and consumption habits
changed over the last few years?
And what are women doing in the industry now?
From winemakers to wine writers,
of course, wine marketers, what’s happening?
That’s exactly what we’re going to learn
from our guest who joins me live
from New York City tonight.

Natalie: All right, so our guest tonight
is the wine columnist for Forbes magazine.
She is also the author of the award-winning book
Hungry for Wine: Seeing the World through the Lens
of a Wine Glass.
She’s co-founder and CEO of Enolytics,
which is a big data startup
providing business intelligence for the wine industry.
And she holds two graduate degrees from Harvard University,
one in design and the other in journalism.
and now she joins me live from New York City
where she’s at Vinexpo New York,
welcome to the Sunday Sipper Club Show Cathy Huyghe.

Cathy: I am so glad to be here.
I’ve really been looking forward to this,
and ever since you reached out
and suggested the topic,
I’m like let’s do this absolutely!

Natalie- I know this is a passion for you, Cathy,
and you’ve written about these issues many times
in your Forbes column, so I can’t wait to dig in.
Now you are in New York.
You’re based in Atlanta Georgia
but you’re in New York City for Vinexpo.
what are you doing there?

Cathy That’s right.
So it’s really exciting that Vinexpo,
this is their first foray,
their first sort of venture into the U.S.
having a fair here, a trade show here.
So it starts tomorrow.
Well, it started today for the trade,
but tomorrow and Tuesday.
So March 5th and 6th it would be,
are the two big days of Vinexpo, New York.
where they have, they keep selling out.
They keep selling out of tickets.
They keep selling out of space,
so they’ve had to expand and expand,
and it’s clearly struck a nerve.
So, I’m here to moderate a panel on Tuesday
about on the topic of e-commerce and Millennials,
and I’m really excited about the panelists
who are involved in talking about that category
and data and how we can use them insights
from data to help address that sort of
really burning question in the industry.
Natalie: Absolutely, wow.
You’re tapped into the pulse,
and we’ll try to rope around that into our
topic of women and wine as well when we
talk about Millennials, e-commerce, and so on.

Natalie: All right, so Cathy maybe we can get your take
first of all, when it comes to marketing wine
to women do you think there are
distinct differences either in specific categories
or across the board,
what trends do you see it in that?

Cathy: Yeah well it’s such a hot topic at the moment
because of everything that we’re seeing
in the news and in social media about Jane Walker
and the Johnnie Walker label.
Now you know the Jane Walker part and it has been

Natalie: Oh, please tell us about Jane Walker
for those of us who don’t know.
So have they come out with a new whiskey brand?

Cathy: Yeah, so it’s labeled Jane Walker.
And the idea is to …
It’s an act and there’s of course, it’s controversial.
people have different opinions about it.
But the idea is to not pander to women.
The idea is to say look you know women have
different flavors, different tastes,
different desires when it comes to spirits,
you know certainly to wine and beer,
and so it’s it’s an interesting effort
I think by the brand to say we see
women as consumers as well.
We’re not sort of lumping everybody together.

Natalie: Now is she in a kilt?
I have to ask.
I was a Highland dancer as a kid.
So this isn’t gratuitous.
I always thought you know highland dancers
don’t get the tennis sponsorships,
but maybe I could be with Johnnie Walke, but anyway.
Like how is it positioned?
How is it marketed the label?
I’m just curious.

Cathy: You know I’m trying to picture it.
I believe that there is definitely
like a kilt skirt component.
I had absolutely, absolutely nothing to do with it.
And it’s spirits, and I focus a lot more on wine.
but it’s definitely something of a development,
but it’s gotten a lot of attention just this past week.
You know lots of lots of criticism first of all
but there have also been some very thoughtful
counter sort of counterpoints as well.

Natalie: So and the counterpoints would be just
acknowledging the different …
Does it have, do you know
does it have a different taste profile
from the Johnnie Walker brand?

Cathy: You know the counterpoints were in a way
acknowledging that this is a brand who was
saying, “Look you know we don’t we don’t want
to treat everybody differently.”
and it’s not meant to be
not meant to be demeaning in any way,
It’s just, and especially that company or that brand
certainly would not want to do that
given the enthusiasm that women consumers
and the demographics have shown for spirits,
and especially in recent years.
So it could be, I mean the counterpoints
are like actually, this is a pretty savvy move.
This is a pretty savvy move on the part of the brand.
So it’d be interesting to see how it plays out.

Natalie: Yeah an interesting example.

Cathy: Yeah initial sort of like no,
but then it’s sort of a little more
careful consideration a little bit further into it.
Which is usually the way of new trends.
There’s the immediate reaction and then there’s
the backlash thoughtfulness and then there’s
the recalibration to somewhere in the middle often.
But okay, so what do you think then
of wine brands like I mean,
I don’t mean to clump them all together
because they do have different strategies
but you know when we think about,
I don’t know if it’s Mad housewife,
or whatever and Girls Night Out,
and Little Black Dress and Strut,
and there’s a whole cadre of them.

Natalie: Right, right.

Cathy: There are and it’s not just the packaging
and the label themselves but it’s also,
it’s also the strategy behind it.
It’s the digital strategy behind it.
It’s you know, the complete business plan around.
I’ve never seen one of these business plans,
and I would be completely fascinated
to to have a look at it,
but the business plan around how we’re going to,
or how that brand is going to approach
and get in front of women, their target audience,
who we assume to be women but I don’t know.
I certainly know plenty of plenty of guys,
plenty of dudes who are all into these kinds
of wines and someone just the other day
said that sort of his guilty pleasure
is cheap Chardonnay and he doesn’t want
anybody to know it but it’s just what he
looks for on the shelves and it’s just,
it’s just what he does. Which is just really funny you know
in just an anecdotal example.
But having an opportunity to really dive
into from the consumer side of things,
from the data side of things the actual
the behavior of women at the quantitative level
as consumers regarding these different wines,
regarding the different strategies,
regarding the different producers and brands
who are putting this in front of consumers
but then also comparing that to a similar brand
or a similar price point,
or a similar competitive set.
I think that there’s really quite a lot that
can be said and sort of teased out about that
that can challenge the assumptions that these
brands are based upon and the research
that these brands are based upon.

Natalie: is there any data that you can share?
I know you’re in the big middle of a big study
that’s not concluded yet,
but you deal with big data which I love the concept
because I’m a former techie as well.
So what are you seeing either through your
own work or through other studies that you’ve read
and reviewed when it comes to data and women,
they’re drinking, they’re buying habits?

Cathy:Right right so the study that you know
this is doing is a year-long study,
and we were literally just starting off.
So by no by no stretch of the imagination
any kind of conclusions.
What we’re really excited to get into
is our network of data partners
who have data that is that is segmented.
it’s segmented in a lot of ways.
Segmented geographically, segmented by time,
segmented by market, segmented by brand,
and we’re really really excited to dig into
the data that’s segmented by gender,
and also by by ethnicity.
so that I think the intersection
of those two things is really
a very compelling area to explore and to tease out.
and it gets tricky because we don’t
necessarily consumers don’t necessarily
identify as one gender or another,
or in between the idea is that we’re looking
for as much data as we can get our hands on
in order to be as comprehensive
and as careful about the study as we can be.

Natalie So when will that study when will
you be publishing the results of that study?

Cathy:Yeah, the target date is early December of this year.

Natalie:Okay, excellent, awesome.
Okay and folks if you’re just joining us here.
we’re here with Cathy Huyghe,
who is the wine columnist for Forbes magazine.
We’re talking about women and wine in honor
of International Women’s Day which is coming up.
Are there stats on the percentage of buyers?
women versus men?
I’ve seen studies that say women purchase
80% of wine, is that current?
Is that been validated?

Cathy:You know it’s interesting because
one of the things that we’re trying to do
at Enolytics is to tap into Big Data.
And what that means is that it’s not it’s not
about focus groups it’s actually about more
quantitative research as opposed to qualitative research.
So our focus is on hundreds of thousands,
or if not millions of data records
to work with those as opposed to several
hundred or several thousand qualitative
research methods or data records.
So that is, that’s what we’re working through now.
The data already exist.
It’s just a question of going and going
and getting it.
It exists on these platforms that we are
that we have partnerships with, that we’re,
this is how we mined
our studies and mined our information.
So what the idea here is to actually kind of
kick the tires a little bit on these assumptions
that the people who are listening are putting
out there, such as maybe women buy more Rose
than men and do they actually?
And what are they actually saying about Rose?
Are they saying the same things about Rose
as they say about Provence Rose
as they say about Rose from California?
And what what exactly is the difference?
So these are the kinds of things that we can know,
and I love the question about age as well.
So women who are part of a certain
age bracket in a certain market.
How do they behave around, say Rose
compared to women of a different age
in the same market or women in the same market
but at different ages?
So it’s those are all things because those
are all data points so that so many teams would see it.
Those are all data points and the idea that
you can we can help and capability
to sort of go in there at a very big scale,
the very quantitative scale and research and kind of
kick the tires and all this sort of thing.

Natalie: Awesome.
So other stereotypes about women.
Women like white wine more than red.
Are these kind of questions you’re also
exploring in this study?
To me they’ve been outdated stereotypes
and myths at least from other studies
that I’ve read that sometimes the absolute reverse is true.

Cathy: Right, white more than red or sweet more than dry,
or sparkling more than still.

Natalie: Or they’re timid they’re not adventurous,
whereas we actually are adventurous.
Where the people ask for directions for goodness sakes.
Anyway but still there’s so many stereotypes.

Cathy: There are and with one of the things
that I was really excited about on this topic
was to sort of put in front of your group
in front of your your followers.
Natalie, some of the examples that I’m seeing
that are sort of on the other end of
the pendulum swing of this.
And these are very they’re very narrative
focused narrative focus brands,
narrative focused wines that are really have hit a nerve.
Have hit a serious nerve when it comes
to the when it comes to consumers
who want to support women in wine,
women wine makers, women who are owners of wineries,
and so there’s there’s really a tremendous
amount of activity happening in that space right now.

Natalie: That’s fascinating.
So women, sorry wines that have hit
a narrative nerve if you will that are made by women,
could you give us a few examples?

Cathy: Yeah, so they actually come
from all over the world.
The most recent one that’s gotten quite a lot of attention,
my colleague and friend Laura Murray,
in Force per Force has written about this just last week.
A new initiative called Wow Sonoma,
women-owned winery Sonoma, where Amy Bess Cook
is the initiator of it and she basically
has pulled together a list of wineries
that are not just and wines that are not
just made by women but also owned by the wineries
themselves are owned by women.
and the initial idea was really simple
which was to share with people,
share with anybody who was interested in supporting
or looking for we have so many choices
in the wine market.
How do I support something I believe in?
So if you want to support women in business
you know women directed and owned businesses,
here’s here’s the starting point.
Here’s here’s where you start.

Natalie: Absolutely.
that’s a refreshing take from
wow she’s a woman and a winemaker.
It’s like let’s get down to business if you will.
If you really want to support women
who are running these businesses,
that’s a great initiative, I love it.

Cathy:And also the question of capital.
the question of capital is really closely
included with sort of the glass ceiling
within the wine industry.

Natalie: You mean the investment needed?
The capital, the infrastructure, the presses,
the heavy equipment?

Cathy: All of that and the lands and ownership
of the lands as well.
So much of that does come down to capital,
and to possibly being you know
part of a wine family being born into a wine family,
but if you weren’t then how do you how do you progress
past the point of, say assistant winemaker?
which plenty of women are.
UC Davis is graduating just as much if not more
women than men and has been for several years.

Natalie: Right the famous enology program in California
just for those might not know, yes.

Cathy: That’s right but still the discrepancy
is really strong between wine plate
head winemaker positions held by men,
and and those held by women,
and the discrepancies are even greater
when it comes to actual businesses owned by women and men.

Natalie: This sounds like the restaurant industry.
The sous-chef and the Executive Chef.
It’s, yeah there’s a lot of parallels.
It’s interesting yeah.
what are your thoughts on women in the wine
industry who are in marketing and sales?
what’s happening there Cathy?

Natalie: Right, right, totally.
Well just to sort of close the loop
on on the WoW Sonoma example.
There are several others around the world.
I mean Wow Sonoma I mean clearly it’s replicable.
There could be Wow Napa.
There could be Wow Paso.
There could be Wow Washington states.
There is a group in Australia led by Jane Thompson
that has been doing this actually for quite a bit of time.
A group in Italy called La Dona del Vino
that is focused on that as well.
There’s a group in France and they just are …
They’re out there and it’s happening.
And if you actually have a desire
to seek that out you can,
and you can sort of succeeding in touch with that.
And there’s more and more of that happening.

Natalie: We should have a Wow Ontario, Wow Canada, Wow BC.

Cathy: Absolutely, absolutely.
But to get to the point of the other side
of sales and the marketing there is a very strong
organization within the industry called
Women of the Vine and Spirits.
And our, and I say our because I’m speaking at this
conference and I’m a member of the group
and a couple weeks out in Napa and that is
exactly geared toward that.
It’s a networking organization not just for sales
people are marketers, or winer or winemakers,
but for everybody but for the industry to come together,
and support each other, but also to have a knowledge base
that we can draw from and actually
have learnings on this on this topic.
Winebow one of the largest most important
imported distributors in the US
they have a conference every year called
Women in Wine Leadership Symposium in New York
that happens every October.
And they’ve been doing that maybe six years now.
Dr. Laura Katina, who you mentioned,
one of the the greatest interviews I’ve seen
happened this past year at that symposium.
Shiobara interviewed Jancis Robinson
who had really hilarious because it’s Jancis
and the way that she speaks,
but also really poignant examples.
She, for example was named, this is Jancis Robinson
being named decanters man of the year,
and she has she has a trophy.
It’s actually a physical thing that says
Jancis Robinson Man of the Year.

Natalie: That’s great.

Cathy: And she said maybe maybe we might think
about you know changing that.
And it’s true, it made me laugh,
but it’s completely ridiculous
but yet it’s actually happened.

Natalie: It’s still there.

Cathy: And it’s still there so yeah.

Natalie: Okay.
Yeah, Lauren Katina was on this show a few months ago.
She’s terrific interview but I would have
loved to see that interview between the two of them,
Jancis and Laura.
About the you know number of taste buds,
the sense of smell that theory?

Cathy: Well actually I would love your thoughts
on this Natalie.
Certainly there are super tasters and I’m not
exactly sure that about the accuracy of a
gender breakdown on that.

Natalie: Sure, absolutely.
Well I got tested actually by Tim Hanna in California
who put blue dye all over my tongue,
and it turns out I am a super taster.
which is a misnomer according to him
and some other researchers.
It just means you’re more sensitive taster
not that you’re better tasters.
so it’s they liken it to living in a hyper
sensory world with like 500 fingers not just
you know ten or whatever.
So it’s just a perception.
Just very very sensitive but he said that women,
it’s 25% of the population
super tasters and more than half,
I’m not sure what percentage, but more than half are women.
Jancis Robinson is one.
So, but yeah, I mean I’ve heard various theories
from more taste buds generally to just
it’s evolutionary, picking berries, cooking,
all the rest of it.
didn’t I don’t know but what
the hard science is beyond the super taster
taste bud test that they do so.

Cathy: Right.
Well, what’s interesting is that
idea and and as writers, as journalists,
as tasters, as judges but also of course
in a winery and more and more in the vineyard
Esther Mobley who is the wine writer for
the San Francisco Chronicle a couple weeks
ago wrote this completely fascinating piece
about the number of women who are now vineyard
workers in California and in Napa certainly.
And Oscar Renteria who has a vineyard management company
in Napa has commented on the influx,
and really the the sharp very sharp increase
of women on his vineyard cruise.
So it’s actually coming coming all the way
through the whole lifecycle of a glass of wine
going from making it and aging it,
and putting in a bottle, and designing it
and selling it as our president in the
sales marketing team Stu,
way, way, way sort of back
to actually growing it and finding it,
and creating it and harvesting it itself.

Natalie: Well, and they say that wine is made in the vineyard.
that’s the old cliche, but it’s true.
Like and so I would think that a pivotal role
is to be as you say the vineyard worker,
the viticulturist, the people who are tending
the vines, pruning the canopy the leaves,
tasting those grapes are they ready,
are they right for the wine.

Cathy: Right, right.
and it’s, what’s fascinating is that
so much is how vineyard workers
why that appeals why that appeals to women.
And sort of what is responsible kind of this sharp
increase of women in the vines.
One of the most fascinating vineyard visits
I’ve ever done was actually to Tasmania.
I mentor to JNSZ, J-N-S- Z vineyards,
and the wine maker, the grower there was
talking to me about their vineyard cruise.
and I was like who are they?
and she said that in some in some cases
they are actually a crew of women.
Asian women from Japan, from China,
from Bhutan, from Vietnam
who are part of agricultural crews
who come to Tasmania,
and New Zealand does this as well,
come to Tasmania for the agricultural work.
And it’s completely fascinating thing is that
they’re newly trained in viticulture
and improving and harvesting techniques most of them.
So they look at they’ve got a vineyard
and they say I understand that most of the vines
are pruned when the harvesters
or the pruners go up and down the vines.
as we normally think of but actually
for them they look at the vineyard you know
sort of shears in hand and said it actually
makes sense for me to go through the vines,
almost like this spider crawl through the vines
and do the work that way because their
their stature their physical stature is different,
and they move differently and just the whole interaction
with the agricultural product is completely different
for them than it is for sort of it
who has been for however many hundreds of years
the ones pruning the vines,
which have been which have been men
physically different stature and so now
things are in evolution and
I love how wine captures that.
I love how one you can see that in wine.
and it’s an opportunity to sort of query that
and to kind of question this sort of thing that’s happening.

Natalie: That’s fascinating particularly given that
the Japanese culture isn’t a traditional
wine culture other than of course
if you consider sake but I think that’s something
different and then they’re bringing all these
women who are getting up to speed quite quickly
on vineyard management techniques and that’s
that’s got to say something.
So speaking of wine yes I’ve left
that too long there Cathy.
What are you sipping on tonight?
Power of suggestion.

Cathy: You know I love this wine actually,
and it is by South Africa’s.
Her name is Ensekai Byalia,
and she is South Africa’s first black woman wine maker
who has just taken off in a sort of stellar,
really stellar kind of way.
So back in the late 90s, I believe it was 1998
she went to fellowship with the viticultural fellowship.
Even though that she had never left her hometown
basically her home region and she this was identified
as I don’t know the date that they did,
that she did a supertaster test
but she was identified a somewhat exceptional
promise for the industry and she has definitely
come through and that has been happening
for the past twenty years.

Natalie: Can you hold up the bottle by the way?
Just to the screen.
Yeah even closer if you don’t mind to your camera.
There we go.

Cathy: How’s that?

Natalie: Yes that’s perfect thank you, yeah.

Cathy: So that is that is her line that she just
launched in the spring of 2017,
and what I’m drinking is her is her Bordeaux blend
which is called um sassani and it’s from 2015
and she considers it her flagship wine,
and it’s named after her grandmother
who I believe that the translation is
“protecting tree” and that is sort of the role
that her grandmother has played in her life
all this time and it’s a testament,
it’s a tribute to her.

Natalie: That’s fantastic.

Cathy: What are you drinking?

Natalie: Oh well, here we go.
a good segue way there Cathy.
I am drinking Connect by Ann Sperling at South Brook.
and Ann Sperling is an inspiration to us all here in Canada.
the woman is a dynamo.
I mean just on all aspects from the quality
of the wine she produces but her innovation.
So she is making wine biodynamic, organic,
orange wine, all types of wine.
She’s just pushing all of the boundaries
not only here in Ontario but she also has
vineyards in BC and she and her husband consult
on what I would I consider Nova Scotia’s
best winery, Benjamin Bridge.
So I’ve got this and it’s organic and it’s $15,
and it’s a beautiful aromatic blend of like
Vidal Riesling Sauvignon Blanc.
And she just does this.
she packs the flavor, but not the alcohol.
It’s 11%.
it’s just a beautiful wine.

Cathy: Well I’m actually a convert
absolutely a convert to Canadian wine,
especially from the Okanagan.

Natalie: Oh yes.

Cathy: I visited there this past year twice actually
and it is been it’s been amazing.
and the the winemakers who are coming out of there
one of their most one of the loveliest
prettiest Shiraz I’ve ever tasted in my life
has come from the Okanagan by wine maker
maybe you know her called submarine Severine Pont
pumped the winery is called Lapon
and it’s just it’s gorgeous, it’s gorgeous.

Natalie Wow.

Cathy: Yeah.

Natalie: This is tying into the conversation
that’s happening online as well.
Laurie says, “Women are natural nurturers.”
And we’re talking about the tree,
and even here Connect it’s all about the vines
and the connection underground.
Allen Cameron says, It’s got its got to do
with mothering the vines and the grapes.
it comes from the DNA.
Greg says, “Oh yeah Greg is not
“On theme in his glass tonight”.
He’s cleaning house and drinking Ordage Armagnac,
which his partner calls the Work Eraser.
Anyway, Marta asks, “I missed where the winery is located.”
That would be your winery Cathy.
I think South Africa.
would that be stellenbosch did you say?

Cathy: I didn’t say actually and I am,
I’m trying, it doesn’t actually say here.
So to the Cape Wine Lands.

Natalie: Okay yeah yeah yeah.
Great region and if you’re asking just in case
Marta the South Brook is from Niagara
but fortunately Ann Sperling makes wine in BC
and as I said consults on a lovely Nova Scotia
winery Benjamin Bridge.

Cathy: I don’t know if you’ve had this experience Natalie,
but when I sort of put out there
that we were coming together
to talk about this topic tonight.
I sort of started it started with a list,
that was almost I knew that there was no way
that I was going to be able to talk about everything
I wanted to talk about during this during this hour
but who else should be on our radar?
who else should we should know about?
and just the responses have been just coming in
and coming in.
I don’t know if that’s been true for you as well.

Natalie: Yeah absolutely and just all the people
you don’t even know about.
I mean we know about Laura Katainen,
like kudos to all of them but there’s just so many
up-and-coming women and it’s it’s terrific
when we can support them.
So who else is on your list Cathy?

Cathy:Yeah, well I think there’s also
there’s a little bit of a pause here to recognize
that the truth is that we we will never know
who they all are right.
They’re sort of like the unsung heroes,
unsung heroines of wine.
Their name’s not on the label.
Probably will never know one never will be.
But that isN’T to say that they never hand
in the making of the wine.
And I just I just wanted to sort of pause
for a moment and just recognize
that hadn’t that’s happening that’s absolutely happening.
and we may not we may not know it but it’s
definitely part I think of sort of the
evolving wine culture and the evolving dynamic
of the business of wine and the growing of wine
that we’re seeing.
And this moment that we’re kind of going
through right now.
But yeah, so many, so many people.
Erica Crawford from New Zealand
who helped to bring Kim Crawford
with her husband wines together,
and she was absolutely someone
that’s come up for me.
And she actually was one of the pivotal people
in my career because she made a comment
that as a writer, as a journalist I’m basically
an issues writer it’s just that I happen to be
writing about the wine industry.
So it’s, I don’t know if she meant it that way,
but I took it as a compliment which was (laughs)
I do want it,
I want to dive in on questions
like labor and immigration.
I want to dive in on like health care
and who is actually doing work of harvesting
the grapes and I wanted to dive in
on questions of gender especially discrimination,
and pay differentiation and access to capital
and that sort of thing.
This is absolutely something that is within
my path so to speak for sure.

Natalie: Well you for sure are the ideal guest for tonight
and in the lead-up to International Women’s Day.
So let me just take a moment to say we are here
live with Cathy Huyghe
She is the wine columnist for Forbes magazine,
also Inc where she writes about business issues.
We’ve been kind of talking about people
in the industry maybe you can tell us a little
bit about your journey in the world of wine.
Kind of one of the maybe the,
if I may ask the worst moment of your career so far
in the wine industry and then we’ll get to the best.
We’ll have a happy ending.
But tell us about your favorite failure
if you will or or something that’s happened.

Cathy: Yeah, yeah.
I feel as though the …
It feels like a like a failure at the moment,
but it’s it’s a failure that can be repaired.
So to speak it can be sort of
you know reconciled which is the book
that I wrote is called,
“Hungry for Wine: Seeing the World
“Through the Lens of a Wine Glass”
And it was about 12 wines, a case of wine
and this story and the narrative of what
it took to bring that bottle of wine to your table.
It had examples from around the world.
The example that I mentioned from Tasmania is in there.
There was a chapter about wine
from areas of conflicts,
Syria and Lebanon in particular.
How to make wine when your country’s at war.
from Turkey how to market wine when it’s
when it’s forbidden legally forbidden to market wine.
That was such an emotive book for me to write,
and I guess that the learning
I know, I mean it’s a failure,
but the learning is that there’s so much more to say
and there’s so much more of a way to put that
out there and I wish that I had done a better
job of opening the doors for other stories
to have been told like that.
So there could be, this is where it could be
We mentioned the Wow Sonoma,
the women wineries of Sonoma.
There could be Wow Napa, Wow Paso, Wow Ontario.
There could also be hungry for wine Ontario,
hungry for wine Sonoma, hungry for wine Paso.
So I would really like to find a way to go back
and do a better job of opening the doors
for that to happen.

Natalie: You are so humble Cathy,
because I know your book Hungry for Wine
won awards and was really, generally highly praised
in the industry.
So that’s kudos to you that you can step back
from that experience and have a desire
to continue the story.
I mean, we just wait for the sequels
then to come out so.

Natalie: There’s so much more to say is the thing
and you want the space for that,
you want to invite other people to participate
and to have their say as well.
You know, these are my 12 choices of bottles,
but how can we figure out
how to sort of extrapolate that into
a bigger audience and to have that be a little bit more
of a almost a crowdsourced sort of thing
where people voice their own opinions
about the wine that they’re hungry to drink.
You know we did these …
When we launched the book
these tastings where it is a reading,
it was a gathering and everyone who came
was invited to bring a bottle but they were
hungry to drink.

Natalie: I love that phrase.

Cathy: yeah when people showed up it was amazing.
They brought their that we just had both
the air and she from tree journal over the whole night.
so just seven last week but it was a little bit like that.
It sort of had that spirit they were they wanted
to just encourage people to just open it,
Just what are you waiting for sort of thing.
Are you waiting for an official sort of moment?
Here you go.
Like I designate this is a special moment.
So the meetings for Hungry for Wine
where you were invited to bring
a bottle you’re hungry to drink
it felt like that as well.
So I went I went to really to tape it again
and kind of run with it.

Natalie: Yeah absolutely.
I can just see that like little pods
and gatherings on your second book launch
or whatever I should say Dorothy Gator
longtime columnist for The Wall Street Journal,
with her husband John

Cathy : And they had opened that bottle night to encourage people
not to save up for a special occasion when they
had a special bought bottle.
make it a special evening by opening the special bottle.
so that’s brilliant Cathy you should do that
on your next book tour.

Cathy: And actually Dorothy is one of the people
who came to mind when we were thinking about
this earlier because she was one of the speakers
at the women that women in wine leadership symposium
that Vinexpo puts on every fall in October,
and I was there and this is when the Jackson Robertson,
but another panel that day Dorothy was on it,
and to me she stole the show.
She just stole the show.
I had total girl crush.
I just loved her loved everything about her,
and she also opened the door for a conversation
about about race not only about gender but also
about race in wine and that has also been
another another colleague, Julia Kony she has been
bringing up that point as well.
Recently,women of color who are
have been traditionally underrepresented,
not only underrepresented but unrepresented,
and how are they contributing,
and you know what is sort of the the information
that we need to know about that and as you know
this wine tonight also indicates
there’s a lot happening and a lot of contributions
to recognize them to know about
from that perspective as well.
Natalie: Awesome.
.All right so we oh my goodness
This flying by this conversation.
I don’t want to miss some key points here,
but I want to get back to maybe
some personal stories from you Cathy.
We’ve talked about, and we could talk about
lots and lots of women
but maybe tell me if you could share a bottle of wine
with anyone in the world, living or dead
who would that be and why?

Cathy: Yeah, I you know we all have people that we
that we admire and that we respect,
and that we aspired in some in some ways to be.
There’s a couple people come to mind
as an answer for me to that question.
One is one another incredibly,
amazing journalist named Christiane Amanpour,
Who I have long respected for her willingness
to just go to the heart of the matter.
Natalie: Absolutely she’s on CNN right?

Cathy: Yeah and she asked the hard questions
and she asked the uncomfortable questions,
and and I love that, and I respect that very much.
and so I would love to,
love to share a bottle with her.
There were actually several,
meditation and yoga is a big part of my life,
and there are some spiritual teachers
including my own teacher,
who I would love to sort of sit down with
and get her perspective on some things,
and sort of try to figure out her taste,
If I were to to write a tasting profile of her
and her personality and her teachings,
but what would that be.
So those are the kind of things that I kind of
gravitate toward I think.

Natalie: That’s awesome.

Cathy: Bringing those things together yeah.

Natalie: Great answer.
And maybe as we start to wrap up
could you give us one suggestion, piece of advice,
something people can try this week
who are watching here to up their wine game
or increase their wine savvy?
What would you suggest we do?

Cathy: Yeah, so I’ve actually for one reason
or another been called into a meeting,
some tastings recently in the past say three or four months
and it’s not something that I have done
in the past but for some reason
it’s happening quite a lot now and the thing
that seems to resonate the most
is an old Kevin’s Raley trick from windows on the world.
where he says take a take a sip of wine,
hold it in your mouth for five seconds
so that it comes to room temperature
and then swallow the wine and just observe,
just be quiet for 30 seconds.
That’s it.
That’s all I’m asking of you is thirty seconds
and just see what happens.
Observe what happens.
That resonates with the groups and sort of
embodies what I’ve been talking to you
because number one the person says,
“Wow I don’t give anything 30 seconds
of my undivided attention anymore.”
And the second thing that they say is you know
they’re always looking for how can we learn a lot
about wine in the shortest amount of time,
but I think that is actually a pretty good way
because it gives you your own kind of
mental dictionary of that wine.
You’re sort of having that 30 seconds
kind of registers it in your in your body
in sort of the the the chemistry biology of your body
and so it registers in a certain kind of way
that I think is very valuable.

Natalie: I love that registers it in your body your own chemistry.
I love the way you put that Cathy.

Cathy: Yeah, yeah.

Natalie: I just want to resonate with that statement.

Cathy: I know there’s a lot of feedback to that right.
There’s a lot of ownership of it, I guess.
Which I think especially for new tasters there
who don’t have experience or confidence
enough yet to just sort of remind them that actually
it’s you here who’s tasting this right,
and you you you get an opinion.
You have an opinion so just give yourself 30 seconds
to figure out what that is and then it translates
into a fair amount of not arrogance certainly
but confidence to say actually you know I did
notice something or I did see how that changed
from the time that I swallowed it to 30 to 25 seconds in.

Natalie: We’ll all just let that sink in for a moment.
that’s fantastic Cathy.
Now I’m going to ask how we can connect with you
online but as we wrap up folks I have some
important announcements to make after we say farewell
to Cathy including the winner from last week’s contest
and next week’s guest if you want to know.
But Cathy as we wrap this up, fantastic conversation.
Thank you so much for taking the time
to be here with us tonight.
Some great points, some great stories.
How can we connect with you online?
Where can we find you?

Cathy: Yeah.
Well, I appreciate so much just this conversation
and it has actually brought up some,
just processing it has been really emotive for me,
and I appreciate that opportunity.
I’m actually easy to find on all social media.
My name is difficult to spell but if you
Google Cathy H Forbes Wine you will get to it.
But so a couple different ways actually.
Cathy Huyghe, H-U-Y-G-H-E,.com
that’s my twitter handle, my Instagram handle as well.
And my company’s that we started out this conversation
talking about that’s easier to spell.
It’s just enolytics.com.

Natalie: Okay, awesome.
We will be looking for you on the social channels,
on your website, on Forbes.
Again thank you so much Cathy.
I’ll say good night for now but I look forward
to continuing this conversation with you in the future.

Cathy: Thank you Natalie.
It’s been a pleasure