Why Wine Needs More Women in Production — And Why ECR Vintners Exists
It is estimated that women make up about 58% of wine drinkers, but women lead about 18% of wineries and winemaking teams.
If you're a woman who has ever walked into a wine tasting room and felt like the wines weren't really made for you — that gap is probably why.
The Wine Industry Has a Disconnect
A lot of industries say they need more women in leadership. Wine does too. But more specifically, wine needs more women in production — in the cellar, at the blending table, making the decisions about what gets made and how.
Because here's what happens when the people making the wine don't reflect the people drinking it: entire preference profiles get ignored. Whole styles go unexplored. And a huge swath of wine drinkers spend years defaulting to the same bottle because nothing else feels built for them.
I've spent years in wine spaces — tastings, classes, industry events — and I can tell you: you notice it. I cannot tell you how many rooms I've sat in where people are discussing wine trends, styles, aging, and production decisions without much thought given to how women actually drink wine. It's not malicious. It's just how an industry functions when it's been built the same way for hundreds of years.
That disconnect is a big part of why I started ECR Vintners.
What My Friends Were Actually Telling Me
I joke that I started ECR Vintners because I wanted to produce the kind of wines my friends preferred — using California grapes. Sancerre and Chablis? Great. But you can make wines in those styles from California, and California is one of the most exciting places in the world to make wine.
The problem was that my friends — millennial women who love hosting, going out, trying new restaurants, and leaning into good taste — weren't connecting with a lot of California wine. Not because they didn't like wine. Because the styles most widely available on the East Coast weren't built for them:
Too much oak
Bold reds engineered for a steak dinner
Cheap, headache-inducing options from large conglomerates
Their experiences were valid. Their preferences were real. And they were being largely ignored by the industry.
So I kept asking: what would happen if we approached California wine differently? What if we stopped assuming women only wanted a token Sauvignon Blanc or Rosé added to a portfolio clearly built for someone else? What if we built an entire portfolio around the way women actually like to drink?
That's ECR Vintners. And it's been a wild ride.
The Aged Sauvignon Blanc Moment That Said Everything
A few weeks ago, I was in Napa doing a blind tasting with a room full of wine professionals — mostly, as it goes in these settings, older men. In one of the flights, there was a 2025 Sauvignon Blanc next to a 2017 Sauvignon Blanc.
The 2017 was quietly complex. Layered. Beautiful.
Almost no one guessed it correctly. I guessed a 2018, which I'll take as a win. But what stayed with me wasn't the guessing game — it was the reaction when I suggested we might be tasting an aged Sauvignon Blanc. The men around me acted like that was a strange call.
And I thought: of course. Aged Cabernet Sauvignon? That's a known and respected reference. Aged white wines made in styles that women overwhelmingly prefer? Far less discussed. Far less explored.
It felt symbolic of something much bigger. People who prefer white wines in certain styles — lighter, more mineral, more acidic, more nuanced — deserve to be taken seriously as drinkers and as a market. I'm listening, even if the room wasn't.
What I Hear at Every Tasting, Every Event, Every Class
It's always some version of the same thing:
"I don't really drink California wine." "I never know what to order." "I just default to the same thing."
And I get it. Wine can feel like a performance when it should feel like pleasure. Part of why I started ECR Vintners was to talk about wine the way it actually fits into life: dinner parties, vacations, girls' nights, celebrations, random Tuesdays.
Wine is supposed to feel lived in. A joyful part of the everyday. Not a test you're failing.
The Real Takeaway (For Drinkers and the Industry)
You do not need to like the most expensive wine in the room. You do not need to order the boldest Cabernet to have "good taste." Your preference for something lighter, crisper, more mineral, or more delicate is not a lesser preference — it's just a preference that the industry hasn't historically built toward.
That's changing. Slowly, but it's changing. More women are entering winemaking, sourcing, and production. More small-production, female-led brands are making wines that reflect how a huge segment of drinkers actually wants to drink.
ECR Vintners is one of them. A small operation — but a deliberate one.
And aging, in wine as in life, isn't always about becoming louder or bigger. Sometimes it's about becoming more nuanced, more layered, more confident in what you actually like.
Honestly? Goals.