Bronx to Bordeaux 

There is a groundswell of long overdue racial change in the wine industry.  

“For many years, the lack of diversity in wine just wasn’t being called out,” says Jermaine Stone, a former rapper who went on to set up US-based wine importer and consultant, Cru Luv Wine.  

“After George Floyd, everyone had the black squares up [on social media], there was a big push, and I’m proud that the wine industry maintained that commitment and there are more and more opportunities for black people in wine,” the Bronx native continues. 

Stone is part of a groundswell of long overdue racial change in the wine industry. For centuries, the wine world has been dominated by middle-class white men. But times are changing. Black sommeliers, winemakers, educators, auctioneers and brokers are coming to the fore and inspiring a new wave of talent.  

Social media has allowed more accessibility, and wine brands are waking up to a large community with massive wine-buying power that was not being tapped. Black Lives Matter brought the issue of discrimination into the spotlight, with many businesses embracing brand activism, taking the opportunity to show support for black communities.  

One such company is US-based Constellation Brands, a Fortune 500 producer of beer, wines and spirits. It committed US$100 million to invest in African-American/Black, Latinx and minority-owned businesses by 2030, and in 2021 acquired a stake in Sapere Aude sparkling wines. 

Napa Valley-based Sapere Aude was founded in 2012 by wife and husband Pampata and David Airaudi. It started as a side project, said former record label executive David in an interview with Hypebeast. “All the artists I work with were getting into Champagne, but all they knew was Cristal and Ace of Spades because of Jay-Z, and those are like US$300 bottles. So, they ended up with cheap, terrible stuff that looked like it was supposed to be served at their dad’s holiday office party,” he said.  

David Airaudi spotted a niche in the market. “As I looked into it, I realised that all the brands were either gaudy French or... just stale, or both. There were literally zero brands that spoke to my artists or me.”  

Jermaine Stone, who was also previously in the music industry, got into wine on the bottom rung, packing boxes for Zachys wine auctioneers. Nine years later he was one of only a handful of black wine auctioneers.  

He founded a podcast in 2016 called Wine and Hip-Hop, ‘pairing’ wines with hip-hop to access communities that were historically ignored by the wine industry. He runs a show called Tasting Notes from the Streets, uploaded on his website and YouTube, where wines from around the world are paired with food “from the hood”, such as cheeseburgers and Chateau Lafite, fried fish sandwiches with Etna Bianco or Jamaican beef patties with Spätburgunder.  

“Although it is changing, at the end of the day it still fells unique to be a black man in the wine world. There are still pre-conceived, subconscious notions,” he adds. 

After almost no movement for centuries, the last decade has seen the wine industry begin to look much more diverse. Of last year’s Future 40 Tastemakers and Innovators compiled by Wine Enthusiast, around a third of those listed were black.  

Some of the top wine influencers include MJ Towler, ‘The Black Wine Guy’, who got his start working at retailer Acker Wines in New York, before working his way up to become an auctioneer in 2000. Marquis Williams is the founder of Highly Recommended, a buzzy New York wine club that also does delivery via text message. 

Then there is famous winemaker and award-winning sommelier André Mack, who owns Maison Noir winery in Oregan, with some 13 vineyards. His philosophy is emphatically on accessibility: “Wine is not a beverage reserved for the elite, but can and should be enjoyed by everyone,” he says.  

This month, Strauss & Co, an African fine art auction house, is holding the highest value wine auction ever staged in Africa, from the Coats Family cellar. These include wines from Penfolds Grange, Domaine de La Romanée Conti, Château Mouton Rothchild, Château d’Yquem, Screaming Eagle and Harlan Estate. All have been minted as NFTs, and a portion of the NFT sale will go to SASA, the South African Sommelier Association, to create access for sommeliers to fine wines that otherwise may have been out of reach due to price point, so they can develop their knowledge.

Some believe in further accelerating the rate of change. Lewis Chester, a former lawyer-turned hedge-fund manager, decided to turn his passion for wine — and his impressive collection — into something more meaningful.  

In 2021 he co-founded a foundation with the widow and son of his friend and fellow wine lover, Gerard Basset, who was crowned World’s Best Sommelier. “We wanted to raise money for charity and do something good for Basset’s legacy. After 20 years in the wine world, I couldn’t help but notice it was all white, middle-aged, middle-class people, I thought, there is a whole group of people missing out. So, let’s change this. 

“Wine’s lack of diversity is a social engineering issue. Wine has historically been a family business in white countries, which needs access to a lot of land and is expensive to get into. For these reasons, change has been slow,” he adds. 

It bothered Chester, who set up the wine company Liquid Icons, that there had not been a single black Master of Wine in the 70 years since the qualification was launched. Granted, the Master of Wine exam is excruciatingly difficult to pass, and there have only been 500 Masters of Wine since the top accolade was created in 1953.  

The Gerard Basset Foundation fundraises to promote accessibility in wine, predominantly through a star-studded annual three-day event called The Golden Vines Awards, for which tickets sell at £10,000 a pop. It pays for several scholarships for people of colour to take the Master of Wine exam or the Master Sommelier exam, including a 12-month internship at one of 35 wine estates. Chester is proud that one of the Liquid Icons scholarship recipients looks likely to become the first black Master of Wine: Angela Scott, a human rights lawyer, as well as a passionate oenophile, was the 2021 scholarship winner — the course takes a minimum three years and she has been studying ever since.  

Chester says that the need for greater diversity is just as much for the benefit of wine makers as racial equality. “For the survival of the industry you need to make it more accessible to other communities. And they won’t come into it unless they see people like themselves.” 

And the changes in the wine world can be replicated in any traditional industry that lives too much in the past. As Airaudi at Sapere Aude puts it: “It’s not just about learning about wine, but about taking on any of these old-world entrenched regimes that say something has to be a certain way. Don’t be intimidated by it, learn about it and use that to your advantage.” 

This article originally appeared in Billionaire's Next Gen Issue. To subscribe click here.