wine and dine

Winemakers break the glass (ceiling) – in Israel

Posted

When most of us think of a winemaker, we imagine a stooped old French man complete with walrus mustache and black beret. Winemaking seems like a mystic profession with secrets passed down from father to son from time immemorial … or is it from father to daughter?

The world of wine has moved on since Lucille Ball crushed grapes with her bare feet. 

Many things have changed in the field of winemaking, including male dominance of the field. Fifty years ago, MaryAnn Graf became the first women to graduate in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis, the world’s top school for winemakers. Fifty-percent of the 2015 graduating class were women. 

Still, only ten percent of winemakers are women. A serious disparity when 57 percent of wine globally is drunk by women.

Israel stands out in obliterating the glass ceiling for women winemakers, as Israeli wines continue to garner respect among wine lovers worldwide. Israel now boasts its own international wine festival, the TerroVino competition, which this year drew 448 entrants from 30 countries. 

The winner of best winemaker’s completion in the 2015 TerroVino was Golan Heights Winery, where three of the five winemakers are women.

Tali Sendovski from the Golan Heights Winery never intended to be a wine maker, yet became the first female winemaker in Israel.

“I knew more about drinking wine than making it when I first arrived at the winery, but I fell in love.” Twenty-nine years later she’s still at the Winery specializing in Cabernets, Chardonnays and sweet red wines. 

Once her passion for winemaking was ignited, the winery sent Sendovski to the prestigious University of California, Davis, to study viniculture. Sendovski was proud that as she studied the latest in winemaking technology, she recognized all the new innovations from the Golan Heights Winery’s facilities.

The winery has made a point of promotion training promising women. Shiri Rosenthal-Cobe’s summer job as a harvest intern became a fulltime career under the auspices of the Golan Heights Winery. To hone her skills, the winery encouraged her to spend two harvests abroad after completing her studies. Rosenthal-Cobe worked one harvest in Tasmania, Australia, and another in the Napa Valley, California. 

She found that being from Israel made quite a stir. “In Adelaide, everyone who heard I was from Israel was amazed. For many people Israel is unexpected. It’s an unknown which makes it exciting. People are thrilled to explore a new region.”

The winemaker’s job requires monitoring every stage of the process from choosing when to harvest the grapes, to the fermentation process to blending the product of various vineyards to create a balanced wine. “The winemaking process is a marriage of biochemistry and creativity,” Rosenthal-Cobe explains.

Dorit Segev completes the trio of women winemakers at the winery. She dismissed that idea that being a woman had any effect on the craft of winemaking.

“Like any art form, every winemaker creates a unique wine.” Every one brings a different set of experiences, tastes and memories to the process. To be successful, Segev explains, it must be a labor of love. She argues that to excel at the profession and endure the exerting schedule — “at harvest time, we work shifts covering a full 24 hours of day” — a winemaker must love the job.

When asked to name a favorite wine, Sendovski flushed with pride like the parent of a new born baby. She confessed that she was proud of all her wines.

“If I had to choose one, I’d say the Blanc de Blancs. There are few Israeli sparkling wines and it’s been very successful.” Sendovski is no stranger to success in her winemaking. Her sweet desert 2011 Yarden Heightswine won a gold medal in the 2014 Decanter World Wine awards, competing against samples from around the globe. 

As the first female winemaker in the country, Sendovski has seen the field grow with many other women working their way up the ranks. She says that she has enjoyed her professional life so much that she would recommend it to any women thinking of entering the profession. Her only caveat was that everyone had to make the profession work with their domestic arrangements.

“Because the harvest is in August and September, I don’t think I ever made it to the first day of school,” she explained with a smile. “My husband went instead.”

“Israeli wine making is always moving forward, it’s very innovative,” Sendovski said.

With more people discovering Israeli wines, the future is bright. And with more and more Israeli women being employed at the highest levels of winemaking, Israel is leading the way in gender equality, to the benefit of wine lovers everywhere.

Rachel Gross is based in Jerusalem and writes extensively about the Israeli food and wine scene.