Without a doubt, statistically and traditionally, the wine industry is considered a men’s niche. But today, women in this field are not so rare.
Let’s start with the fact that the desire to more than understand this field, i.e. to get an education, has noticeably increased since the mid-20th century. In 1956, only 6% of students were graduates of wine faculties, by 2015 – already about a third. Then this trend accelerated significantly – by 2020, half of the graduates of the faculties of oenology, winemaking, sommelier schools were women. Moreover, women are increasingly taking on the responsibility of managing a winery – in France, for example, about a third of winemakers and owners of vineyards are women, at the global level – this is a quarter.
Even if this trend is more obvious nowadays, we can also recall several historical examples of ambitious and determined women winemakers who left their mark on the wine world and even influenced production technologies and wine styles:
- Barbe Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin, better known as Veuve Clicquot, who invented riddling – a method of filtering sparkling wine from yeast sediment, when bottles are placed at an angle of 45 degrees in special wooden planks – pupitres – and gradually moved to a vertical position so that all the sediment accumulates at the neck, and can be easily removed from the bottle. It is worth reminding that this method is still used in the production of not only champagne, but also other sparkling wines made by the traditional method.
- Elisabeth Bollinger – who took over the famous Champagne House of the same name during the difficult times of World War II. For 30 years, she devoted herself enthusiastically to the family business, which she inherited after the death of her husband, and not only preserved the tradition of aging reserve wines in barrels (which gives Bollinger champagne its recognizable bouquet), but also, one might say, invented a new category of champagne – “récemment dégorgé” (“recent disgorgement”), when the champagne remains in contact with the yeast sediment much longer than required by the appellation regulations, and the sediment itself is removed just before commercialization. The result is an absolutely unique sparkling wine with bright notes of autolysis and amazing freshness. This principle is used today by Champagne winemakers, for example, for their premium cuvées, but they cannot use the term “récemment dégorgé”, or “R.D.”, since it is patented by the House of Bollanger.
- Madame Pommery, Alexandrine Louse Pommery – also a determined widow, who took over the management of the Champagne House, for which she converted former limestone quarries into cellars for aging. And it was Madame Pommery who first began to produce brut champagne, which was a success despite the opposite tastes of its time for a sweet champagne, and which today is (practically) the only category of champagne on the market (since brut includes brut nature and extra brut, semi-sweet champagne is losing ground, and sweet no longer exists).
With the development of winemaking technologies, women are now also becoming oenologists, researchers, taking on such responsible tasks as vinification and blending, becoming famous wine journalists, experts and sommeliers…
But what led me to such thoughts? The answer is simple: the world of wine is an amazing and fascinating, but not always compatible with the most important female role – the role of mother. How to combine the opportunity to make a miracle – to give life, to take responsibility for it from the day of conception and at the same time not to give up the need for self-improvement, professional development and advancement? Recently I faced such a task – to find a reasonable compromise, adapt and prepare to accept a new person into the family, while maintaining an optimal work rhythm.
Attention: the purpose of this article, especially the following section, is in no way to justify even a very limited presence of alcohol in the life of a pregnant woman, but to reflect on a way to protect yourself and your future child when your work is connected with alcoholic beverages.
The most important question: alcohol and pregnancy
I think this is the first thing a pregnant woman asks herself. Of course, excluding the use of alcoholic beverages during this important period is the only right decision. But what if your work includes numerous tastings? And first of all, these are not only wine experts and journalists who can somehow adapt, redistribute or reduce the number of tastings. These are oenologists and owners of wineries who completely control the wine production process (especially in the case of small family wineries). If you need to determine the blend of a wine, monitor its development during aging in barrels at the end of this process, then this means tasting dozens of samples, sometimes daily, and making a quick decision (for example, when the wine has matured enough in the barrel, what the blend will be, etc.). In other words, it is more difficult to postpone or cancel something here. Wine industry professionals will agree with me – several dozen wines during an intensive and long tasting will inevitably affect not only the perception of flavors (of course, the taste buds will get tired), but also the amount of alcohol in the blood, even if all the samples without exception were spat out into a spittoon. This happens because the small amount of wine remaining in the mouth after spitting mixes with saliva, which is secreted to restore the balance in the mouth (especially in the case of wine with high acidity or astringency), and which, on the contrary, is swallowed. And by the end of such a working day, one or two glasses of wine can be drunk in this way.
How to avoid this when the maximum level of alcohol in blood is zero? Knowing the peculiarities of large tastings, I have developed several simple principles for myself:
- Never taste with an empty stomach – food in the stomach helps prevent direct and rapid absorption of alcohol and its entry into the blood.
- Carefully spit out not only the wine, but also the saliva that is then secreted.
- Rinse your mouth after each sample tasted.
- Determine the maximum number of wines for the day.
- Do not rush to taste one wine after another as quickly as possible, but distribute the tasting throughout the day.
- Exclude strong alcoholic drinks (cognac, whiskey, armagnac, liqueurs, etc.)
Of course, this approach will slow down the pace of work somewhat, but responsibility for the future life is undoubtedly more important.
From my own experience, I can say that by using the above tricks, not only did I not have the sensation of drinking a glass of wine, but my taste buds also became less tired.
Change in taste perception
Another feature that I encountered is a change in the acuity of smell and perception of wine during tastings. If the former became more acute (which is, of course, useful for work), then the latter was distinguished by a higher sensitivity to the acidity of wine. Moreover, the wines did not seem tangy, which is not a negative characteristic, but acidic and sour.
What to do in this case? Write long descriptions of aromas and apply the theory of grape varieties, features of the appellation and vintage to “correct” the assessment of acidity in the right direction. By the way, the perception of the alcohol level can also change from “warming” to, for example, “burning”, even if it is not.
Conclusion: how compatible are work in the wine industry and pregnancy?
It must be said that the recommendations of doctors, even in countries where wine has been an integral part of the culture for centuries and millennia, have changed considerably over the past decades. I was unable to find official documents from the middle of the last century with recommendations for pregnant women for comparison, so only user comments on forums and personal communications can testify to the change from “it is not recommended to drink more than one glass of wine a week” to “not a drop of alcohol for 9 months”. The negative impact of significant amounts of alcohol on the intrauterine development of the child was proven in the 1970s, however, what happens with very small and episodic consumption, for example, a glass of champagne on New Year’s or a birthday, and whether there is a certain “safety threshold” at which alcohol will not have a destructive effect on the growing organism, is still unknown. Therefore, the most reasonable solution is, indeed, to exclude consumption and minimize the residual effects of tastings, if the work is related to alcoholic beverages. I hope that my thoughts and techniques, which I shared with my readers as a professional in the wine industry, will help them in a wonderful and difficult period of life.
P.S. If you want to know about alternative drinks, permitted during pregnancy, take a look at my article about non-alcoholic and desalcoholized wines.