Pitts believes Black wine professionals working today can chart their own paths. “I don’t want someone to have to go through what I went through, which was that feeling of isolation, even within being in a room full of people”. Today, she aims to lend that same support to others. “It was made easier because I had mentors, I had people that were there to guide me and believe in me and cheer me on,” explains Pitts. She recounts the mentorship of a Black sommelier who helped to expose her to wine and hone her skills. At the start of Pitts’s career three decades ago, there was significantly lower Black representation in the wine industry compared to today. Modern Black sommeliers and winemakers have made great strides to change the narrative and move the story of Black wine forward. Justine Belle Lambright and Kathline Chery pressing Petite Pearl at Kalchē Wine Cooperative. But there remains much work to be done: As of 2020, less than 1% of winemakers are Black, with approximately just 70 Black-owned wineries across America. Today the organization counts over 50 Black-owned vineyards, cellars and wineries in their membership. Between 20, AAAV had a 500% increase in membership. The Association of African American Vintners (AAAV) was founded in 2002 by Ernie Bates, Vance Sharp and Mac McDonald. While progress moved quite slowly for decades, it seems to have picked up speed since the turn of the last century. Later, Iris Rideau founded Rideau Vineyards in 1997, the first Black-woman-owned winery in America. In 1995, David, Deneen and Coral Brown established their wine-making business at Brown Estate, which became the first Black-owned winery in Napa. founded Woburn Winery, the first Black-owned winery recorded in history. Indeed, the contributions of Black people to wine remained largely unrecorded for decades until 1940, when John June Lewis, Sr. Statistics from 2002 show that white people owned 98% of private U.S. Even though the act was repealed in 1976, it continued to cast a long shadow. Most notably, the American Homestead Act of 1862 gave cheap land to white recipients only. Unsurprisingly, systemic barriers effectively limited many Black Americans’ ability to join the wine world. In A History of Wine in America, author Thomas Pinney shares the telling 1850s account of a Southern wine enthusiast, who states, “with all the facilities we possess in the South, with our soil, climate and more particularly, our slaves, nothing can prevent ours from becoming the greatest wine country that ever was.” Enslaved Africans toiled in early vineyards, providing a bulk of free labor. No truer was this than in colonial America. Though written records show that Black communities had a close connection to winemaking in the Western tradition, early circumstances left them without the opportunity to freely pursue these passions. The Black community, in particular, has a complex history when it comes to winemaking. To appreciate the role Black individuals play in the modern wine landscape, one must first understand their role in the past. High Bush Cranberries and Sumac and Wine with Bee. She faced unique challenges by virtue of being a person of color, and she’s not alone. Now, Pitts and others are crafting a new narrative around what it means to be a Black wine professional-and creating a new future in the process. All of it.”īut Pitts’s successful 30-year career in the wine industry, fueled in part by her love of history, was not without hurdles. “And it’s all its history, and it’s a story. “There’s history behind food, there’s history behind a bottle of wine there’s history with how you serve things,” she says. Tonya Pitts, the sommelier and wine director at One Market in San Francisco, fell in love with wine because of history.
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