More on Women in the Sherry Business

(Another interesting article from the Diario de Jerez - I've added a few details)

Women have managed to conquer the Sherry trade, in a small but growing group of managers, executives, enologists, public relations people, venenciadores, growers...

From starting out working at the bottling lines, women have built an important niche in the Sherry business. Nowadays women are to be found in all the specialist areas; a group of women would establish a big bodega run exclusively by women; their names run into the hundreds, too many to mention, but there follow a few examples. In an earlier article we looked at the women who took over bodegas after their husbands' deaths, such as the memorable Pilar Aranda and Pilar Pla. Both of them and many others broke the masculine hegemony to give women a step up the ladder to the feminisation of the trade. And by the 1980s things really began to take off for women in Spain.

Firstly there is Fatima Ruiz-Lassaletta, a Jerezana who worked for many years with Rumasa as the first director of public relations from the 1960s, then there is Millie Swithinbank, secretary to the legendary Guido Williams at Williams&Humbert, who, upon his death became the British Vice Consul in Spain and ran the W&H public relations department. Esperanza Paez Morilla, daughter of the "Vinegar King" Antonio Paez Lobato ended up running the entire Paez Morilla wine business herself. Another young woman, Maria del Carmen Padilla, is the "face" of the financial analysis centre of Beam in Spain, and Marta Ferguson, still works as manager and administrator of Domecq (now Beam).

There are many female enologists in the Sherry area. Beltran Domecq was once asked how his famous uncle Jose Ignacio Domecq felt about the better aptitude women have for enology and tasting. He simply replied diplomatically that both sexes were born with sufficient sensorial attributes to allow them to work as enologists as long as they worked hard, studied hard, tasted hard and remembered hard. The secret is work - for either sex.

Maribel Estevez Puerto, daughter of the unforgettable Jose Estevez is a familiar face. As an enologist she is director of research and development at bodegas Real Tesoro and introduced the first low histamine fino, Tio Mateo, and the genome "Music3 (Vid-Vino-Vina)", a musical translation of the genetic sequence of flor yeast, CDs of which are played to the yeasts working in the wine.

Many are not from Jerez. Montse Molina is another enologist, a Catalan, working for Bodegas Barbadillo, firstly as a technician in research and development, and for the last ten years or so as chief of the technical department. Then there's Jane Ward, an Englishwoman, export manager at Lustau, and Claire Marie Henderson from Glasgow working at Gonzalez Byass. Ana Cabestrero Ortega comes from the Ribera del Duero near Valladolid and is commercial director and award winning enologist at Bodegas El Maestro Sierra, owned and run by a woman, Pilar Pla and her daughter Maria del Carmen Borrego.

The marketing and commercial world of Sherry has not missed out either on the feminine touch. Here there are many more women. Victoria (Vicki) Gonzalez Gordon, a member of the GB family, is international marketing manager not only for Sherry but also for the firm's other wines and spirits. She says that the international consumer is slowly rediscovering Sherry, helped by the Sherry Bars, tapas and the fame of Spanish chefs.

At Beam Global, we find Maria Eugenia Herrera, who runs the PR department and has as colleagues Maria del Carmen Padilla and Marta Ferguson. They are proud to work for Beam which as an international company has a good gender  equality policy.

Veneciadores of such fame as Julian Delgado or Pepe Ortega are being challenged, as are vine growers. Carmen Romero not only holds a technical degree in agriculture but is also a qualified enologist. She is the fourth generation of a vine growing family and is also the figurehead of Aecovi, a grouping of four cooperatives with some 1,200 vine growing members. This is a young dynamic company which uses the latest technology to augment artesan methods in the vineyard and bodega. These days it has a full range of wines as well as vinegars and sauces, exporting these to about fifteen countries. Carmen forms a part of the 60% of the workforce which is female.

Not only are women now heavily involved in the Sherry trade on the production side, but we are also major consumers. Gone are the days of little English grannies and their Cream Sherry. Women now enjoy - and appreciate - the finest of all styles of Sherry. Viva la mujer!

The Women in the Sherry Trade

From an interesting article in the Diario de Jerez

In what has always been a masculine world there have always been women, though never as many as there are now. In the past they were generally inheritors of bodegas when their husbands died, and continued to run them successfully despite the men.

Widows like Teresa Reizo, widow of Francisco Ramon Mendoza of Jerez who inherited in 1817. At about the same time there was the widow of the owner of Victoria e Hijos in El Puerto de Santa Maria. The widow of Richard Sheild; in Sanlucar there was  Josefa Colom, widow of Eduardo Hidalgo; and Aurora Ambrosy Lacave who ran bodegas Pedro Romero between 1911 and 1921.

But there were two outstanding women - Pilar Aranda Latorre and Pilar Pla Pechovierto, both with similar problems and needs. Pilar Aranda was a widow with great strength of character and resourcefulness who decided to take on the traditional formality of the trade to give her sons a future in the family almacenista business starting with the 500 butts of some of the finest and oldest wines in Jerez, which she had inherited from her father Fermin Aranda. The bodega managers cooperated fully, and along with good accounting from her cousin Guillermo Ferguson’s stepson, things went very well and she earned universal respect running the bodega for 50 years till her death in 1997. The wines were bottled and marketed by Emilio Lustau, until the bodega was sold to Alvaro Domecq in 1999.

Pilar Pla Pechovierto “the Sherry Lady” runs the bodega El Maestro Sierra, an all-woman firm along with her daughter Maria del Carmen Borrego Pla and the brilliant enologist Ana Cabestrero Ortega. The bodega began in 1830 when the cooper Jose Antonio Sierra of the Calle Merced filled a bodega with butts which he had made. He died with no heirs and the bodega was inherited by his niece Carmen Casal Soto who, when widowed, set up a company with her children Rosario, Josefa and Antonio to whom she entrusted the production of high quality wines by artisanal means. On Antonio’s death she and her daughters took over the running of the business, and it has prospered ever since. It is now one of the most highly regarded bodegas in Jerez.