Case studies and interviews
In our Resources section we ask the world’s leading wine critics and commentators the secrets of their success, and we profile internationally-known chefs and wine, hospitality and culinary professionals.
Interviews with nine of the world’s leading wine critics and writers
In the careers of these wine professionals there are some 200 years of experience. With a few key questions we’ve tried to get to the core of what it takes to succeed as a wine writer and communicator.
Their answers are detailed but could be summarised as:
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Longevity Wines, Livermore Valley California
Phil Long is the president of the Association of African American Vintners (AAAV) and the founder of Longevity Wines, based in Livermore, California. He was born in Washington, DC, grew up in Southern California and graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in architecture. “I did my degree not even knowning that wine was made in California,” he says – now noting that “they are archiving my brand in the university as the only winery brand owner who graduated from Cal Poly – so I’m going to speak to their hospitality majors. The wheel has come full circle.”
In 2002 Long and his wife Debra – who lost her battle with pancreatic cancer in 2019 – made their first Syrah in their garage and they founded Longevity Wines in 2008. Long and his son Phil Long Jr produce approximately 3,500 cases of Longevity Vintner Select wines in Livermore Valley using local grapes. Through a partnership with Bronco Wine Company that began in 2019, Longevity Classic California wines are made on a much larger scale and distributed nationally; Longevity Wines are also available in the UK through MJ Wine Cellars.
Long became president of the AAAV in 2020. “When I joined the association in 2017 there were fewer than 20 members; now there are over 200, the majority of those joining in the last two years. We have a lot of new voices and new opinions.”
AAAV founded in 2002 by Mac MacDonald [owner of Vision Cellars in Sonoma County]. He was recognised not because he was a black winemaker but because he was making mid-90 point Pinot Noir in Sonoma. He was right up there with everybody else but he realised there weren’t a whole lot of people who looked like him in the industry so whenever he met people like him they started to band together and to share resource and knowledge and improve skills. That’s how AAAV was born. I met Mac around 2012 and didn’t realise at first that he was grooming me as his replacement. But here we are now.
It’s morphed over the years, from trying to get resources to African American winemakers, now we’ve grown into an entity that is really trying to make a difference in the industry, and to create diversity by uplifting, assisting, creating paths for young (and every age) African Americans in many different sectors
Raising awareness is a key part. When I was in college I thought all wine was made over there where you are somewhere [ie in Europe] [laughs]. I had no idea. Also, there has to be awareness that there are minorities in the industry: black people need to be able to see themselves within this industry. At the moment when you look around, you don’t see much of that. And there also has to be awareness of the opportunities for those minorities.
I don’t believe the awareness has changed much. There has been a growth of black-owned wineries, and more black people coming into the industry; but awareness is slow to change. We see growth, but the world doesn’t necessarily see it. It’s a slow follow.
There is no industry that’s easy to get into, no matter what colour you are. In wine there are the traditional barriers of not owning land, and getting financing, but the biggest barrier today is awareness. Most people don’t know what’s available, and what path you can take. So our job is to create awareness, that there is help, and that there are paths we take to make those opportunities available. It’s up to us to create that awareness: if you don’t know something exists, then how can you pursue it?
It’s to do with cultural experience, and economic base. Where I grew up, wine was just not something that was around. There were no African Americans with knowledge of fine wine. All I knew was, it wasn’t made here. It wasn’t until I was well out of college that I understood more of the wine industry.
Racism is always going to be a big thing. It exists in the world and I know it exists in the wine industry to some extent. I look at it as a hurdle. We have to prepare for it, and keep moving forward.
Things changed massively. I became came president of AAAV in January 2020; then we had BLM in June and we saw an influx of support from people who would never even have wanted to have the conversatioin before. The conversation didn’t become comfortable, but it became necessary. The McBride sisters [proprietors of the largest black-owned winery in California] posted a list that went viral of 60 black-owned wine brands to support. At the winery, just after George Floyd, we saw more online orders in the first two weeks of June than we did in the entire year 2019.
There’s good wine and there’s bad wine no matter who makes it. It’s a wide spectrum: you can count the larger ones with national disribution on one hand: McBride Sisters, Longevity, Mouton Noir, Brown Estate. The other end of the spectrum is most of them: there’s a handful that can distribute in a few states, then ther are those that are no more than a few thousand cases. They are not making enough to make a mark on a broader scale, and we’re trying to help them achieve a wider audience.
I’m on several calls a week doing exactly that – I was on a call today with two young people wanting to pick my brain in helping get themselves established. Then a lot of members call me asking for advice. A lot of our scholarships are for diversity and for schools and younger students trying to fnd a way into the industry.
All of them. From owners to management to tasting room staff f to cellar to vineyard to sommeliers to restaurant managers: name one of those areas that isn’t lacking diveristy. They all need to change. We don’t focus on any one area.
Yes, but the higher you go in the company, the less diverse it is. We have 50-55 owners in the AAAV – that’s out of over 11,000 wineries in the US. If we get to 1% we are lucky.
We started to have conversations with organisations in South Africa to see how we could help them during the alcohol ban [during the pandemic South Africa banned the sale of alcohol and tobacco]. We’re not exclusively US – we’re always looking at opportunities.
There are many that have stepped up: Wine Enthusiast [magazine] for example; Jean-Charles Boisset [of Boisset Collection, owners of Raymond Vineyard and Buena Vista among others] is a huge supporter of AAAV; [Napa winery] Artesa and Riedel, distributors like Total Wine and RNDC – I can pick up the phone and call them. There are dozens of major organisations that are very serious about long-term change.
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Tahiirah Habibi is a sommelier and founder of The Hue Society, which is committed to changing the narrative of Black & Brown wine consumers and brands. The Atlanta-based non-profit aims to curate a community that facilitates education and economic access to wine through culturally relevant experiences. Habibi, who grew up in North Philadelphia, had her first experiences of wine when she was at Penn State University. On graduating, she worked at a restaurant during the day and took wine classes at night to begin her journey of becoming a sommelier and pioneer. She would go on to work as a sommelier at the St Regis hotel in Bal Harbour, Miami and later moved on to leadership positions at other prestigious Miami restaurants, including Michael’s Genuine. In 2017, she launched The Hue Society as a safe space for the Black community to learn, commune and find resources in one place. Tahiirah is the first Black woman to be on the cover of Wine Enthusiast magazine; she has featured in Vogue, Upscale Magazine, Wine & Spirits, Wine Spectator and Imbibe among others, and was named one of South Florida’s Top Five Female Sommeliers. At the start of her career, while working to become the first Black female Master Sommelier, she dropped out of the course when she was told she should address other sommeliers as “Master”, something that as a Black woman she found traumatising.
The Hue Society is committed to changing the narrative of Black & Brown wine consumers and brands. We are focused on advancing commerce, building community, and curating wine-relevant experiences that honour and celebrate African American heritage and history and bridge the intersection of wine and culture. We are leaders, pioneering wine education and opening doors to African Americans who want to learn more.
Hue focuses not only on the black voice but on historically misrepresented groups, so indigenous groups and other people of colour: those historically disenfranchised in the wine industry
We currently have six current chapters with about 12 more opening this year. South Africa will be our first international chapter and then London in the fall. Every chapter – both national and local – is different. Some people have parties and study groups; everyone does at least one tasting a month. There are seminars, for example on distribution or winemaking; talks one-on-one intimate conversations with people who have an intriguing wine presence – Jancis Robinson for example.
We consider group mentoring to be more effective than one-on-one mentoring, particularly with minority groups. With peer-to-peer group mentoring there is a support system; you have a like-minded group all seeking the same thing – and they all have ideas. One-on-one mentoring can create power dynamics and an uneven situation.
Yes, it was very lonely. At St Regis I was mentored by a Frenchman, who taught me a lot but he also didn’t understand the racism and microaggression that I was going through. This is why The Hue Society is so important. You might not be working with someone who looks like you but at least you can come home and unpack those things
Every day racism, blatant racism, being sent away from the table by people saying “We don’t want you, we want him.” It’s mentally very taxing. You might be at a high level but you’re suffering because no one understands why saying that kind of thing was not ok. You have no one to protect you.
Yes. I spoke to a mentee of mine not long ago and she was still having similar experiences. It’s more prevalent where money is important, at the luxury end, five-star hotels. In more casual places the microaggressions are more through ignorance. But overt disrespect comes from fine dining restaurants. They know they have power because they have money.
I understood very early that I had privilege, and that not a lot of people that look like me are able to come in with that kind of experience and be able to branch out and do their own thing. So I’m always trying to make sure I’m redistributing my privilege and power, and those resources and networks that I’ve been able to build over the years.
There are more support groups like The Hue Society – there’s more of a community here now. The Hue Society has brought in another 20 black women and there is now much more acceptance of the idea that not only black people, but black women, can be into wine and food, and can be professional and have a stake in the industry. So the power dynamic is changing (2020 and the pandemic changed a lot of things), and now everyone is revamping their protocols: they are thinking, Maybe we should branch out and get diversity.
Tokenism can be as harmful as overt racism. My question to anyone who wants to work with me is, “Who is in leadership – what does your company look like?” A lot of people don’t understand what diversity means – they are cherry-picking to get diversity clout, but they’re not changing the people who are in positions of power. The front positions are changing, but the decision-makers and the systems aren’t changing, so they are bringing more black and brown people into a system that is still feeding the negativity.
It’s a little different in London but anti-blackness is a global struggle, so picking out somewhere and saying, it’s a bit better there, is not really important. Here’s an example of how it works in the UK. I was staying at the [five-star Mayfair, London hotel] the Connaught, and one afternoon I pulled up in an Uber. From the time I got out of my car to the moment I got to my room, I lost count of the number of people who asked me, “Can I help you? Are you staying here?” I’m confident, I know what I’ve accomplished, so I knew how to handle it, but if you don’t, it can strip your confidence: do you want to go forward in a space where you’re made to feel like that just literally for existing?
It’s important. Not everyone wants to be a Master of Wine or a Master Sommelier, they just want to be able to do what they love without the colour of their skin or their socio-economic situation being a barrier. They just want to love their job and to be themselves – that is basic humanity and it’s lacking in this industry.
All of them are in need of help. Front of house has a bit more diversity, but then back of house: where are the women? Where are the disabled people? No one part is doing better than another. Little steps are being made, but every time you make a little step everybody gets so excited about it that they dismount the rest of the way. This is a band aid on a wound that needs to be sewn up to be healed.
We have along way to go: we’re still working out what that even looks like. You can’t focus so much on the little wins when the bigger picture is still in place – all that racism is still rampant. It’s funny because when Trump was in power, it was in your face, and now he’s not around it’s gone quiet, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone away. There was the joke that when Trump went, “Now we can go back to good old-fashioned racism.”
Please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss your eligibility for support, or to become one of our partners.