Check out more in depth show notes, pictures and links on this episode's webpage.

Nikki sits down with Amy Bess Cook of Woman Owned Wineries and winemaker Kira Ballotta for an honest, emotional conversation about women in wine, hustle, and knowing when to let go.

Links and How to Support:

Everything mentioned in this episode is linked below. If you've been moved to put your money where your values are — and I hope you have — here's where to start:

• Woman Owned Wineries — Amy Bess has created a resources page for consumers who want to continue supporting women in wine now that the club is closing.
• Visit Amy Bess Cook's website to see her writing portfolio and work in the press
• Olivia Brion Wines — Kira's Pinot Noir-centric brand celebrating trailblazing women from history
• Cantadora Wines — Kira's Rhône-focused brand featuring real women doing profound community work
• Sollevato Wines — Nikki's wines, including the 2023 pink-label Grenache benefiting the V Foundation for Cancer Research
• Glup Glup— Amy Bess's Sip Spotlight $20 Spanish Grenache find, made for Barcelona Wine Bar and widely available

Other Links and Resources:

Sollevato Wines: Nikki and Michael's first ever rosé — a single-barrel Grenache with a touch of Sangiovese is now available, as is their new exclusive wine club, Il Circolo.

Their 2023 Petite Sirah (bold, inky, and great for BBQ season) is also coming this fall. Sign up for the mailing list at sollevatowines.com to be the first to know. use code PODLISTENER for 10% off all of Nikki's wines on sollevatowines.com

Other resources and links:

If you'd like to Support the Podcast, you can buy us a glass of wine! Please and Thank you!

Follow Nikki on Instagram for more behind the scenes look at life in Wine Country

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I was going out of my mind. I couldn't do anything to help my neighbors. I couldn't go back to my neighborhood. I couldn't do anything.

I just was sitting online and I made the list. That's when I started the list. But I also, for some reason, it was like I moved ahead and I didn't go back to my wine.

And I think it was like woman owned wineries took off.

Yeah.

And my wine was in the past.

Well, hello, it's Nikki Lamberti coming to you from Sonoma County, California. And if you're a regular listener, I'm so sorry that it's been a little bit longer than normal in between episodes.

But man, things have been busy, busy over here. We just launched our wine club for Solovato, which is Michael and my wine label, based here in Santa Rosa.

And we've been having our first club shipments going out, our first ever, which. Has been a big hit.

So we've been packing and shipping and trying to get these wines out across the country before all of the temperatures heat up. Well, during this busy time, I received an email from a newsletter that I've been a subscriber to called Woman Owned Wineries.

Our winery is considered woman owned.

And we are listed in that directory that she provides with the goal of elevating female vintners or winemakers and leveling the playing field in a heavily male dominated industry of wine.

And I was actually getting ready to reach out to Amy Bess about being featured in their wine club because now we have multiple wines, we have a portfolio where we could actually participate in something like that. And before I could do that, I received her email on April 23 that their wine club was closing.

And in the email, which we'll get to in the interview, she talks a. Little bit about the why. But it was really heartbreaking. And if you're not aware, it's a.

Really challenging time in the wine industry right now. Wine is a luxury good.

And when there is uncertainty in the world, and I don't have to tell you anything more about that, unfortunately, wine is one of the things that tends to suffer. And there are a combination of factors between that and the economy, people just drinking differently or not at all. The younger generations looking at alcohol differently.

And being, quote, sober, curious, which is a newer term that I'm hearing all of these things. And plus the Wine industry was just coming off of a high and a glut, as we call it, with an excess of grapes and wine in the market.

So kind of like the tech bubble, at some point, things need to pop and reset and we're finding ourselves in that time.

So while I was not surprised to see that the Woman Owned Wineries Wine Club was closing, I was saddened and also just struck with sort of oxymoron of the timing of my business, where here I am in the middle of this, launching a wine club.

Now, the caveat to that is Michael and I have not quit our day jobs, and we don't have a brick and mortar winery and tasting room that we need to fill with visitors. We do this on the side and we're growing it slowly but surely. So we're a little bit of an anomaly.

So at any rate, when I read Amy Bess's email, I thought, I think we could have a really interesting and timely conversation about what's going on in the wine industry and specifically women in wine.

And when I invited her to be on the podcast, she said, absolutely, and asked if we could also include a winemaker, Kira Bilata, who is local here in Napa and who has been featured multiple times in the Woman Owned Wine Club. So, of course I said, absolutely.

Kira has worked in some of the powerhouse wineries that most people have heard of, from Quintessa to the Prisoner and Alpha Omega. But she also owns two different wine brands.

One that she took over and expanded called Olivia Brion, which has labels that highlight the stories of fictitious women and amplifying their powerful stories. And then she started Cantadora Wines, which is telling the stories of true women in society who are doing remarkable work in the community.

And in addition to starting the Women Owned Winery Directory and Wine Club, Amy Bess is a writer and a social entrepreneur. She's been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, a recent piece called why Women in Wine Are Hustling to Stay Afloat.

She lived in wine country for some time, studied and made wine, and now she lives in North Carolina. So Amy Bess and Kira are both new friends to me.

And little did we know that we were going to discover some really surprising parallels between all three of us, that we would hit on some social issues that need to be talked about. And I was just in awe of the two of them and haven't been able to stop thinking about the conversation since it happened.

So I'm really excited for you to get to know both of them and to come on the ride of this conversation that really oscillates between light and fun and wine. And we do a Sip spotlight and then we find ourselves in some deeper and more emotional parts of the conversation. It was quite a roller coaster.

So here we go with my new and inspiring badass friends, Amy Best Cook and Kira Balata. Hello to both of you, Kira and Amy Best, welcome to Sip with Nikki.

Thanks so much for having us.

Thank you. Good to see you.

Yes.

I love making new friends, especially strong women in the world, but especially in the wine world. And you are both new friends to me. So this is very cool and I'm very appreciative.

I know that we are all super busy, but I feel like this is a conversation that needs to happen and it needs to happen now.

And the catalyst of us getting together, Amy Best, was your email that you sent out a couple weeks ago of your woman owned wineries wine club closing, which broke my heart. I'm just going to be totally honest. I've known about you. I'm in your directory.

I was actually getting ready to reach out to you about being featured in the club as a woman winemaker and then this email came out. We'll get to that in a minute. But that is the catalyst of how we've come together today.

But Amy Bess, I'd love to start with you and then Kira will hear a little bit about your story. But I know that you are a writer and a social entrepreneur and then you've really focused on the wine industry for some time now.

How did you get to where you are?

Yeah, thanks for asking. And, and glad you found the directory and the club.

Yeah, it was pretty heartbreaking to send that email last week in a decision that was hard to come by. It was a long time kind of percolating.

But definitely I'm not alone, I think, in having to make those hard decisions right now in the wine industry and in the world at large. Right. A lot of people that like the world is changing and a lot of people are having to change with it.

Right.

We're all having to change with it. So the way I got into the wine world and the way I got to launch women owned wineries was a convoluted path.

I'll make it as succinct as possible, but basically I started in the publishing world and first Actually here on the east coast and then wound up out in San Francisco working in independent publishers there. And eventually, you know, worked a little bit in travel as well. I was doing editorial and marketing work.

So always communications, always storytelling. And when I moved outside of San Francisco, I was really just looking for a quieter place. I wasn't really following wine.

Yeah.

And I was working as a freelance writer and looking for clients in this new place where I was living. And it pretty much felt like the only clients around were grapes or cows. Right. I could work with grapes or I could work with cows.

Dairy and wine, those were the things. And I, after a little bit of hustling, I found work at a independent winery in Sonoma.

Wound up being their first full time employee and learned everything, grapes to glass there at the winery.

Harvey Weinstein was going to court. The MeToo era was burgeoning.

And I was quite honestly disillusioned and frustrated with a lot of what I had seen in the way that women had been treated in some of these small winery settings. And it felt to me like the answer was to give money to women. It sounds oversimplified, but it basically, it's a way of empowering women.

And so I wanted to invite people to support women owned wineries. But when I looked to find who those women were, quite like, who money goes right when you pay for a bottle of wine.

I couldn't find any information on that Women owned wineries. I started a list. At first it was like 50 women owned wineries in Sonoma and put it online for free and started passing it around.

And incidentally, I crossed paths with a woman who was creating a nationwide directory of woman owned businesses. And she provided a ton of information that really helped me ramp up and begin building a national directory.

And have been doing that ever since.

It's been Absolutely a privilege to work with all these winemakers and help get their wines to market and also to work with the consumers, the people who really actively seek out these wines. And so many of the members have been members since the beginning, which is just so touching to me. Right.

I think the average length of a wine club membership is like two and a half years or something. And this is. We're talking about eight years. So I'm really touched by the people who've stayed with it and, and thank you all.

I'm just really grateful and I'd like to think that this will carry on in some form, but I'm not sure what that form is right now.

So it's a transition time and hopefully those club members are listening and can hear not only your gratitude, but my gratitude as a woman winemaker and a woman owned winery. Just Kira, who we're going to talk about next. The more that I dig into the work that you've done, it's so inspiring,. It's exciting, it's impressive, it's all of.

The things, but mostly I thank you for that work.

A couple things that you said before we hear from Kira when you were talking about the percentages and the numbers, and my listeners have heard me interview winemakers and talk about less than 15% on the planet are women.

But when we talk about the distinction of who's making the wine and then in an ownership capacity, about 400 out of 4,000 California wineries have women as the lead winemaker. But 4% of those women actually have their own wine brands. Right.

That was an interesting breakdown to me.

And then I also thought it was interesting that the numbers show that as far as who's studying wine, who's going to UC Davis and some of these other wonderful institutions, that's where I got my certificate in winemaking is Davis. It's almost equal gender as far as who's studying. Right. But then as far as who has ownership coming out of that, there's a breakdown.

Right.

Happening.

Right.

I'm going to give those statistics all a caveat, and I hate to do it because I feel like in the early part of this project, through years of this project, I worked very hard to keep those numbers very fresh. And one of the problems I feel I've hit in the last couple of years has been the numbers have run dry.

I was having a conversation with a journalist about this a few months ago.

Lyft Collective put out a study, and there was a global study that I remember looking at the economics behind women in trade, blue collar kind of professions. So basically, after MeToo, there was kind of a flood of women in the workplace studies, and they were all very well funded.

And I feel like right now we're in the backlash of MeToo.

There is a terrible dearth of these studies, and that is one of the biggest problems that we have, because we can't actually quantify the problem, so we can't solve the problem. The problem's, you know, plural. I get really frustrated with that.

But I do have that data on my site, and I should quantify it or I should give it that caveat somewhere and will actually after this conversation. Does that make sense?

When I put it that way, it makes total sense.

I just wanted to add. One of the women I feature on my bottles is an economist, Marion Page.

And a married couple with a child, regardless of ethnicity, was about 8% likely to be in poverty. And I asked her if she was going to redo those numbers. I featured her on the bottle in 19 and released it in 21.

She said she was having her graduate students look into it to get updated numbers on that. But she's. It's probably gotten worse after the pandemic and then again with this administration.

I'm sure the funding for studies like that has been largely stripped away, unless it was private funding.

So we're living in an administration that removed funding for any grant or project that had the word women or girls in it. We're not going to see any surveys or research by any organizations that have any government funding about women.

And that is actually a really big deal. And how does that relate to wine? Because some of those women who need that research are women in wine.

We're in a time also where something like 3 million women left the workforce. So I'd love to talk about women in wine. Where did they go? Right. The ones left standing are the lucky ones. Right.

Like supposedly right.

But it's very difficult time in these, these years after Covid, supposedly after Covid, where women have exited the workforce in such droves. How can we say that we are representing women in a time like this? It's a very difficult time to have this conversation.

I think we still need to have the conversation. Of course. It, it just deserves to be acknowledged that it is a conversation. Missing pieces and people that's. Yeah, yeah.

It's such a good way to put it about missing pieces because it's not the full picture.

Kira, I want to go back to you because you just shared that eye opening information, but when I reached out to Amy Bess after her email and I said, hey, do you want to be in the podcast? She said yes, but I would like to include someone who I find I'm paraphrasing very inspiring. And she shared your name. She wanted you here for sure.

Just catch us up a little bit. You've got your two different brands, but how did you get to where you are? For my listeners, I started out in.

Finance and I got the opportunity at work to value a couple wineries and found it very interesting and wanted to impress my boss that I knew something that I didn't. So I went out to Napa and met a winemaker and just refer to myself as the guest that never left.

I ended up taking over his brand after many years of mentorship under him and I eventually moved from working in division of investment banking to working at Constellation to try to hybridize my burgeoning love of wine and my degree and.

And worked in the national pricing team at Constellation and did that for about a year and a half and then decided that's not what I liked about wine. What I liked was being in the cellar and getting dirty and washing stuff.

So I was making the wine for my wedding in the garage with some grapes that Weren't picked in contract with the prisoner, and I was working for the prisoner. And then I was taking classes at Napa Valley College.

I worked at Quintessa and the vineyard and then in the cellar, and then ran the lab at Molly Duker, and at the same time was getting up to speed in biology, chemistry, microbiology, organic chemistry, Annapolis College, Berkeley. I worked on the winemaking team at Alpha Omega for about four years in Rutherford.

And my last job there was, for the last couple years, was running enology trials. So that was really a masterclass in winemaking, getting to blend with the now late, unfortunately, Michelle Rouland and John Hofliger. And it was.

It was just such a incredible education. And then on the side, I was still working with my mentor and taking classes at night sometimes.

And after my son was about 1 and I had worked a full harvest after I had him, it was just too excruciating to keep going with all of that. So I had to make some choices. And I left Alpha Omega so that I could be around more for my kids and then also continue to run my business.

And I took the money that I had saved so diligently and worked so hard for my master's and put it into my business. So I invested a great deal of money into myself, and now I'm here.

And it is honestly an honor to still be in business in here, especially in this environment 10 years later. It is really hard. I'm sure everyone is experiencing. But fortunately, I do have a degree in finance. I do all my own books.

I do SKU level P and L. I do eliminate wines when they don't make enough money. So I have a prudent approach that hopefully in the future I can share with other people.

I feel like there were just five offshoot topics and conversations where this could go.

From your story, you talked about being a mom and then having to step back and the whole balance of working moms and having it all and then the whole just finance with wine and making money in wine.

My first garage wine and it was a rose of Grenache from one of my friends who had a vineyard in Napa in his backyard that was unused and then added the school and the education and formalized it. So I love that parallel that you and I both have. You also use the word multiple times that I love.

It is a word that defines me and I feel like probably a common thread of all three of us here, which was hustle and that word. I look at that word very positively. That has been at my core, the grit and the hustle.

I know some people can look at hustle having a negative connotation too, but I really look at it as just putting the head down, doing the work, getting creative, pivoting all the things that I have just heard from both of you that all of us have done to this point, but now also are going to have to look at differently as we are in these changing times and these changing winds and what's next? The administration. Gosh, when you start talking about that, I'm like, can we please put this wine in the glass? Not that we drink wine to feel it.

We drink it because we love it and it's delicious and we appreciate wine. But yeah, that's a whole nother topic.

As a very recent breast cancer warrior who just finished treatment back in the fall, the whole thing about cancer research, right? And all of that, that has gone. I had my first migraine yesterday, which.

Is why yay, hopefully all clear. And that tells me that you're young girl, you're a youngin good. Get them checked. Medicine is good.

My diagnosis, not a tangent, but came just from a normal mammogram. So no family history, no history at all and caught it early. And medicine is good.

But yeah, funding for cancer research has also been slashed, as we know in this administration. So that's why I chose with my salivato grenache, which is a 23. I changed my label to pink, which it normally isn't.

And then I partner with the V Foundation for Cancer Research. And so there is an impact piece to that wine.

Kira, I know that you have a give back that you do with your wines as well as you feature and I'm going to read this from your site dedicated to Telling the enduring stories of remarkable community oriented women.

Catch us up there with both of your brands that really highlight some badass women and tell us a little bit about how you are making a difference with these two brands.

It had just one label when I started with it, and in 16, I started to take the main character, Olivia Brion, on new adventures with new labels.

And I wanted those adventures inspired by trailblazing historical women because there's really so much incredible discoveries to find just in history. I don't have to make it up. It's true, it's real.

And that's really why I started Cantadora is because the consumers that I poured Olivia Brion for, I loved these stories of women from history. And it didn't matter what background or political affiliation or industry they worked in, they like these stories of historical women.

There was either moms at that point in my life that had worked in wine that were transitioning out of it because it was too difficult of an industry to stay in and be a mother and be happy. I think that you can continue to work in wine, but you make a lot of trade offs.

Can be very difficult emotionally to be away from your kids for those hours during harvest. Yeah, especially harvest.

And so and then the women that also owned wineries that were in the wine community, a lot of them, not all of them today, unfortunately, but a lot of them at that point did not have kids. And so I just felt alone and I wanted community still.

And when I was working in San Francisco I volunteered at a domestic violence shelter called La Casa de los Madras, and I would give wine to them for their gala event.

And so I reached out to them when I came up with the idea for Cantadora and said, is there someone in your community you would like to feature out of bottle? I'd love to tell the story.

And so they introduced me to one of their founders, Sonia Melera, who's this incredible professor of social work and founder of La Casa when she was 22 and an immigrant from Central America. And just, she is this just tremendous life story, really a superhero. And she was willing.

So it's all like a trickle down effect. And so the first group of women I featured an artist, Sonia, and an economist.

Because with my finance background, like Amy said, I really feel like power comes from money in this day and age. And so whoever we give money to, money can also look like the support of social services. Then those people are more enabled.

So, so I wanted to feature a woman like an economist and in this case a labor economist that could really share that story in more detail.

And she started the UC Davis center for Poverty and Inequality Research, which is only one of three think tanks in the US that focuses on a multidisciplinary approach to solutions for poverty and inequality.

So she talks to not only economists, but neurobiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, nutritionists even, who all come up with evidence based approaches. And she sat on the board for California for Economics during the pandemic. So that was the first cohort.

And then since then I've been able to feature doctors, other artists, other just women that are giving back in these really important and profound ways.

And then this fall, I'll release my third release for Cantadora, which will feature the legal director for the ACLU for Northern California and Roma Guy, who's an activist and gay rights women rights activist for many decades. She was featured in the documentary by PBS called When We Rise.

She worked alongside Harvey Milk and she founded the Women's Building in San Francisco. So the release will be at the Women's Building in San Francisco. And then the third woman is an artist.

And a lot of her art that's traveled around the US features the stories of incarcerated children going back to the Japanese internment camps that impacted her family, but also Native American boarding schools. And modern day detention centers, bringing the fun to wine.

We laugh, but wine can be power, too. Money is power, but wine can be power.

And the fact that you're using these people that you're highlighting to allow wine to be a tool, to spotlight, to celebrate, to bring attention is amazing. Amy Bess, I see why you said, oh, yeah, I'll do the podcast, but I think we should invite Kira. I mean, why?

Of all your wonderful women you've worked with, why? I know why, but why her?

So the way the wine club has worked over the years is that each month I feature a different winemaker, different winery owner in the club. And there have only been a few who I've chosen to work with again and again. And Kira is one of those.

And there's a few reasons I really love working with Kira. But I think the first thing that really drew me to her wines before I even knew her, to her brand was I could tell.

I knew from when it was just Olivia Brion before Cantadora. What really drew me to her wines and her brand was she clearly had the same or similar passion for sharing women's stories that I do.

She is someone who wants to raise up her sisters. You know what I mean? And I love that about Kira.

So it's not just that she did that with Olivia Brion, through these fictionalized versions of real people and puts them on wine labels. Right? And Cantadora takes real people who are doing amazing work, incredible, crucial work, tells their stories.

So she did it again with Cantadora, and I just thought, that's incredible. So she has this clear passion for uplifting other women. But also, and I learned this the second time I worked with her when she launched Cantadora.

I was sitting on the front porch in my farmhouse, wound up having this long conversation and really realized that she also shares a passion for the topic of socioeconomic class. And quite honestly, that is a topic that for me has been missing in the wine world for a long time.

And it's something I've tried to talk about before and tried to write about before. And I feel like it gets mixed receptions sometimes because I think so people just want to have a good time. It's a luxury product.

It's something people use to escape a difficult world. And so how can we talk about difficult Matters like class while we're drinking a glass of wine.

I think it's absolutely possible and important to do it. It's not for every time we drink wine, but it has a place, and I think it's very important. And I'm so happy that Kira is doing it with her wine.

So I really wanted to hammer it home on this last shipment and make sure people know about her brand.

Thank you so much, Amy. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. I'm so, you know, I think that's a difficult thing. I always point that out when I'm talking to people in wine.

I'm like, it's a luxury good.

So I hold it to the standard that I want any luxury good to have, which is I want it to be ethically sourced and made in a respectful way to the environment because we shouldn't be damaging natural resources in pursuit of luxury goods.

So that's a big part of my ethos in terms of my selection of shipping materials, down to grapes, of course, and then also even where I produce my wine. It's a really inclusive environment.

So all of us here, you know, in this conversation, have worked in the cellar and worked in the vineyard and worked behind the tasting bar, and we know it is damn near impossible to do an ethically spotless job of producing a bottle of wine. Like, how do you do it? I don't think anyone here would sit and say, oh, no one was harmed in the making of this bottle.

No woman, no immigrant, no one.

But I do think, like you suggest, Kara, we can say we care and we ask the right questions and we're not afraid to talk about it and ask for higher standards. I think that's the important issue. I think to ignore it is actually. It's wildly irresponsible.

Yeah.

When I do tastings, we talk about these really difficult topics, and I approach those as the company, you know, wants to. You know, I'm not going to force a topic on glassware.

The whole read the room, you know, I still like to point out the women in my bottles love wine and what is in the bottle as a reflection of what they love about wine. And. And it's. It should be very uplifting to support their efforts and what they're doing and share their stories.

I just try to gently say, look, you can ask the sommelier at the restaurant, you can ask the wine shop owner where you're buying your wine, which wines are produced without glyphosate, or which wines are produced organically. And usually they know consumers are just Inundated with options. That just helps you out because it limits what you're going to choose.

And so I think there's ways that we can frame it that make it easier on people rather than harder for them. And I think that we can all do a good job as wine salespeople to guide people in the right direction, too.

I want to come back to that about the importance of customers asking in the restaurant, in the shop, the story and the. The care and the intention behind the wines. But. So we're going to come back to. That in a minute. But first, we need to officially do our Sip Spotlight. Sip Spotlight,.

Which is talking about the wines that we have. There's been some sipping. Spoiler alert, Homer. I've got my own Solevato Grenache.

By the way, another word that you said that hits my heart always is uplifting and uplifted. Sola vato is Italian for joyful and uplifted. And then the.

The secondary meaning is relieved and no longer worried, which is something that I am on the other side of my breast cancer journey from last year. So I'm experiencing that. But it's something that I hope of getting emotional for all of us to one day be able to say that. We are relieved and no longer worried.

Whether it's about equity of women, the state of the world that we're in, current events, inclusion, you know, all of those things. So anyway, that's the translation of it. So when you said uplifted, that hits me.

We all love Grenache, and apparently this is something that we have in common. And if I'm not mistaken, Kira, Cantadora is Rhone varietals, correct?

Well, Cantadora definitely started because I love Rhone varietals and wanted to highlight them because Olivia Brion, we didn't mention this before, is a very Pinot Noir centric brand. So it's single vineyard Pinots and then light bright white rose. So I consider it my kind of carefree brand in terms of flavor profiles.

And then Cantador is like my richer. Sit around the fire, talk about the problems of the world recently, drink the wine. Yeah. Very Roman symposium style.

And then I did the grapes separately and then co fermented the Grenache Syrah to see what would happen? And then layered that into a wine for the GSB blend for Cantadora.

And so I did a bunch of different experiments with Rhone varietals that I really liked.

So they ended up that started Cantadora, so that was a Rhone and Aurved with a little Syrah, a GSV and then Tempranillo, which I had started with Olivia Brion in 16 and that stayed. I did transition to more of like a GSM style for Cantadora along with the Tempranillo.

And then this fall I'll release a long barrel aged Viognier alongside of it too.

Highlighted Viognier multiple times. And for a lot of my listeners who are just everyday wine drinkers, it's not something that was on their radar, just like Grenache.

So I love to highlight both of those grapes. So I love that you're doing a GSV that's also very cool. Yeah, you can. We'll meet up. I'll send you some bottles so you can try that. It was a really fun trial. It has really pretty aspects to it.

I love it.

And I'm going to be putting the links to all of the things that we are talking about in the show notes and on the website for this episode so that our listeners can find all of the things that we are referencing and support all of the things for sure. So, Kira, what are you drinking?

It's 100% Grenache as requested by the pod. So it's from Shakeridge Ranch. My favorite roan grower, Ann Kramer, does a phenomenal.

Is an understatement for the way that she farms in the Sierra foothills. And if you haven't heard of shakeridge Ranch, seek it out, even if it's not through me.

It's a wonderful vineyard for Rhone varietals along with Italian varietals and even some, you know, more California centric ones like Zinfandel. So that was the. The first red I made commercially was a Tempranillo from Shake Ridge. So have been consistent.

May I say briefly here that I mean, Ann Creamer, I think she has a great reputation for working with indie ventners. Right.

Throughout the course of the wine club, there must have been five or six different wines that have come from Shake Ridge from different producers.

And that's in the Sierra foothills, right? It's just above the town of Sutter's Creek. And Amy Beth, is that what you're drinking today too?

Well, alas, I can't offer my own Sierra foothills Grenache because there's only one bottle left that I know of on the planet.

I had been working off and on in the cellar and learning, and a friend offered to split some fruit with me. And I got Grenache from what was then TC Vineyard in the Sierra foothills in Amador County. And so this was my label. And I did a very small batch.

It was just like 25 cases. But for me, it was hatching this idea of what I wanted a wine project to be. And I really wanted to integrate wine and social issues.

And I was trying to figure out how to do it. I never wound up getting full licensing and selling the wine.

But what I was having people do was like, I shared it with friends and family and had them make a donation to one of several organizations and then I would send them the wine. It was Docufund, which was helping immigrants in the wake of wildfires.

And so I created a co branded Harvest Journal to go along with it with 40 contributors from around the world. So worked really hard to get this going and thought this is going to be something, right?

That's where solavato.

There you go, There you go. All of that is to say that time, it was actually during the wildfires when I was evacuated, that I started making the list for the directory.

So that was actually the beginning of Woman owned wineries. I was sitting and I couldn't do anything about the fires. I was going out of my mind. I couldn't do anything to help my neighbors.

I couldn't go back to my neighborhood. I couldn't do anything. And I was. I just was sitting online and I made the list. That's when I started the list.

But I also, for some reason, it was like I moved ahead and I didn't go back to my wine. And I think it was like woman owned wineries took off.

Yeah.

And my wine was in the past. And I don't know how to explain that. And I. You guys, I never talk about this. Partly I never talk about this because there are so many people.

It's like, I come from the publishing world and it's. If you want to write a book, don't talk about writing a book. Just write it. Right. Like you. That's. It's bad luck. And also it sounds lame. Right.

So if you want to be a winemaker, don't talk about being a winemaker. Just make the wine. Right.

So I know it sounds lame, but I spent eight years learning to make wine, and I did make wine, and I got it out there, started something, and then it's like it went up in smoke, too. I don't know even how to talk about it. Accept that instead of putting my energy into my project, I had to put it into other people.

I can't explain it, but. But some.

You did explain. You just explained it beautifully. It's it. And yet I'm like a little bit.

Speechless as I'm digesting it. There was a purpose for me, for all of us that lived through that time here.

And for you, it was to force you to shift from focusing on what you thought you wanted to be doing, which was your own thing to be promoting.

Well, at one time, that felt.

People ask me all the time, how do you find the stories about women? How do you find these women? And I'm like, there's. It's so easy. What do you mean, it's so easy to find incredible women.

Every woman I know, you start to peel back her story and you're just like, oh, my God,.

There's a quote about that, right? What would happen if a woman told her truth? The world would crack open. It's just like, yeah, it's. I mean, it's. But so I think.

And it feels to me like there is Something in me that never got finished right. Like I have a. I have. There's a creative energy in me that needs tending. I was a painting major in college. I have written a ton.

I don't even know what form it's going to take, but I'm like, I need to tend that energy. And so I think part of me letting this project go, there's many logistical reasons.

Kira could do the math for you because she's got the finance background. She could be like, okay, yeah, kind of let it go. But there, there are many logistical and practical reasons for me to let it go.

But I think also energetically I am in a place where I need to maybe pause promoting the creativity of others and heed my own creativity again. And I know that sounds selfish.

It's not selfish. And it's. It's interesting because had printed out your email that you sent out. That is the whole reason that we're together today.

And I wanted to read from it. And I think knowing now what's behind these words, it makes total sense.

You said when the winds of change blow, and lately they've been roaring through our world at gale force, we all do well to bend like the willow, Adapt the ancient wisdom goes, or you'll break like a heavy oak. So as founder and 17 year veteran of the wine business, this is you speaking. I find it's time to surrender to those wins. I think that was so beautifully said when I read it.

Even without the context or thinking about just the wine business as context. Cause I'm in the wine business.

But now knowing more about where your heart is too, and the work that you're feeling drawn to do, tending your own creativity, those words resonate and make even more sense now that I know you.

Good. Yeah. Thank you for that interpretation.

To answer your question about what I'm actually drinking, the very long answer, this, as you said, Grenache can be an obscure grape for some people. Sometimes they don't always know about it because it's not always widely available in distribution.

You know, one thing about moving to North Carolina is I'm really learning what's out here in, in the rest of the country in terms of actually how many women winemakers and women, you know, women in wineries you can find on the store shelves and what grapes and wines are really out there in California. I was so spoiled, right. You'd go to Sonoma Market or wherever and there's so much representation in the.

Bubble, in the wine country bubble.

You go to grocery outlet. But so this I just Dropped by this wine shop in Greenville, South Carolina, and asked, what you got? What's Grenache?

And they said, this is one that is widely available. It is produced by Barcelona Wine Bar. It's made in Spain, and it's a chilled version. It's very easygoing, and I love that.

I love just finding what's accessible for folk. It's $20. That's very important. Right. For many, that is still quite a splurge. Right.

So I think it's important for people to know what can I actually get my hands on? And this is that wine. It's called.

Wait, one more time. What's it called?

It's called Glup.

Glup. G L U P. G L U P. With a very fun, colorful label.

That's right.

Put the link in the show notes so people can try to get it. 100% Grenache from Spain. I am drinking 100% Grenache from a single vineyard in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma County.

So what a fun meeting of the Grenaches that's happening here. Yeah.

Amen.

Three of us come at it from these different places of finance and history, love and journalism, artistry, painting. And then here we are. We all land in the middle with the same passion and the same challenges that we deal with as business owners.

And yet we persist and we choose to lift each other up and, oh, gosh, I just. I love it so much.

I wrote a poem that is really on topic to what you're going through, Amy, because I wrote it when I was going through that period of transition and change. And I actually read it at the only open mic I've attended.

It's not long, so I just wanted to read it to you really quickly as a tribute to what you're going through. So it is that time, that aching time when you feel that beating, that persistent feeling, flickering of needed change.

It courses through you, so uncomfortable stomach and tiny, small knots. Mind constantly racing, adding, subtracting, sorting, filtering. It starts with a manifestation, a kernel of acknowledgment that it is on the way.

It ushers itself in with a whisper, then a tremor, then it is beyond you and you are a part of it. You have welcomed it in your quiet, apprehensive way. It's not taking you to somewhere you have not been.

You are afraid, but you felt this home before. This tumultuous body was once yours. When you moved from then to now. You know the aching, it doesn't last.

It stops when you are flowing, when you are Surfing on that wave. Bring gratitude to the moment, bring grace to the moment. Breathe it in deep. This shift, is there a reason? No. It is too hard to determine. Always.

It just is. So be with it. Be it, feel it. In case you. Until there is nothing but to say goodbye to the fear and the force that brought you here, that aching time.

There are so many people going through such transition right now in the world, but in this industry, right? And I want to say a year ago, I wrote an article for Wine Business Monthly about wine business owners who were having to close their businesses.

I had these in depth conversations with these people about what had brought them to this point.

Right?

And it was like therapy. I didn't know at that time what this outcome would be, but I kind of did. That kernel that you talked about that was there.

I just want anyone who's listening to this, who's struggling with uncertainty, embrace that uncertainty and know that that wave's gonna take you to a fine place. And as long as you trust it, right, it'll take you to a fine place.

I think it's like fighting the current that gets you like you're in the ocean, right? If you swim against the current, you're gonna drown. But if you let yourself let go and embrace that uncertainty, you will go.

To a good place, change direction and go parallel to the shore. Right? You'll get out of it. Sometimes you just have to change direction and stop the fight.

So to anyone else who's just struggling with all that, embrace the current. Right? So, yeah, anyway, thank you so much for that.

And, Nikki, I know you've been through worlds of uncertainty with the fires and with health and just with being in the wine world yourself. Like, all you would have needed to do would have been to have started a winery. That would have been enough. But there's other layers, right?

And I think the communion that happens in the wine world is one of the most beautiful parts of it. And so I really thank you for having us on here so that we could have this conversation.

Beautifully said. And we don't need to talk about anything else. That was the perfect ending. Kira. That was beautiful. I'm just grateful.

And I wear my little words on my wrist every day. Says grateful.

I'm grateful that I got to witness that moment of what I now know between the two of you and his amazing relationship of women supporting each other high, leading each other, lifting each other up, and then that gift, Kira, that you just gave her. And I just got to sit here and watch it. So thank you. Your words resonate with me as well. And I think most importantly, your words of your poem.

But hopefully the words of all three of us for this recording really will resonate with people. Yes. On the surface, highlighting my wine, your wine. Our business is the directory.

All of the things that we came here to, of course, promote and highlight.

But I think deeper than that, just to highlight the state of the world that we're in and how important it is to have this community as women lifting each other.

Well, Nikki, I really appreciate you having us and including me, and I would love to taste your wine and talk more offline. And it's been a pleasure. So thank you.

Yeah, both of you. This is not a one and done. Sorry. We are friends now and there will be more to come. So thank you both for your time.

Cheers with these beautiful, across the globe Grenaches that we're toasting with today. And thank you both so much. Cheers.

So that is now the second time we've had a poetry reading in a Sip with Nikki episode. The first time was with Dr. Hobie Wedler and his spontaneous haiku. This was a little bit more emotional and heartfelt.

And like I said in the conversation, I just felt grateful to be able to witness this moment between two friends and two women who have really supported each other in business and life for some time. And I want to thank both Amy Bess and Kira for taking time to talk with me and to share their. Thoughts with all of you.

So my hope was to pull back the curtain a little bit. You know, we all think, oh, wouldn't it be so romantic to be a winemaker and to make wine and to own a winery? And yes, there is certainly joy and.

Romance to those things or no one would do it. But today hopefully brought to the surface some very real challenges, not only in the wine world, but in the bigger world.

And I hope it got you thinking. I'm gonna put multiple links in the show notes for this episode as well as the episode will have its own webpage@sipwithnikki.com under Podcasts.

Amy Bess has created a wonderful list of resources since her wine club is closing.

But if you're looking to be able to support women in wine in other ways, and you can also support the two other women in wine on this episode who are making wines. I'll put the links for Ciara's Olivia Brion and Cantadora wines as well as my links for Solevato.

So you can grab the Sangiovese Grenache and our brand new of Grenache if there's any left at the time that this is airing.

I'd love to know what you think of this episode and what actions you're thinking about taking after being hopefully as inspired from the two of them as I was. Send me a note.

Nikkiipwithnikki.com and again, check out the links for the show notes for all of the ways that you can find and support all of the women, including me, that you heard in today's episode. I sure am grateful for you listening today.

And if you are a new listener that found us through Amy, Bess or Kira, be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast so you can be the first to know when new episodes are available. Whatever you do between now and our next time together, I hope that you sip well. Don't. Don't.