THE CONVERSATIONS I’ve had with women in the wine world in recent weeks have been unlike any I’ve had in the course of reporting this column. As the women, mostly Black women, I talked with spoke of their struggles to find a place in restaurants, retail or winery tasting rooms, they described environments rife with discrimination and abuse. While for me, wine connotes feelings of conviviality and warmth, it’s clear mine is a privileged viewpoint. When I observed as much to Atlanta-based sommelier Tahiirah Habibi, she explained that her experience as a Black woman in the wine world has been the opposite. “Wine wasn’t meant for us,” she said.
Ms. Habibi is among a number of wine professionals who have pointed out issues of inequity in a powerful industry organization, the Court of Master Sommeliers. Two months ago she posted an Instagram video describing a Court of Master Sommeliers two-day session in New York. “There are four instructors and one of them says, ‘In order to speak, you need to call her ‘master,’” Ms. Habibi said in her June 16 post. The word master is widely associated with the history of slavery in the U.S. “I kind of thought it was a joke…and it wasn’t,” she continued. “They stuck with this rule for two days and it literally crushed me.”
“ ‘I don’t want to be the person in charge of changing your company.’ ”
Members of the Court have criticized the organization’s failure to commit publicly to fostering equity and inclusiveness in its programs and in the hospitality industry in which it is so influential. Prominent members Brian McClintic, owner of Napa-based Viticole Wine Club (and star of the “SOMM” documentaries), and Nate Ready, winemaker and an owner of Hiyu Wine Farm in Oregon, resigned in letters published on social media, noting the Court’s longstanding silence on issues of racial injustice. (According to Devon Broglie, chairman of the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas, in June, the organization officially resolved to stop using “master” alone or in conjunction with a name.)
Like other women I interviewed, Ms. Habibi described racist and sexist encounters during her work in restaurants. “Black people drink wine?” a customer once actually asked her. At the Brooklyn shop Good Wine, owner Heather Johnston often found she was ignored altogether. When Ms. Johnston, who is Black, bought the business in 2015, she kept an existing salesperson, a white man, on staff. When sales reps visited they presumed her employee was in charge. “Fifty percent of the time they just talked to him. It was like I wasn’t there,” she recalled.
Five years on, Ms. Johnston has built a strong business with a loyal, diverse clientele, but she still experiences what she called microaggressions. “Sometimes you question what your ears are telling you,” she said. I heard about plenty of macroaggressions as well. Ms. Johnston once took part in a tasting trip to Germany for wine retailers, organized by the marketing organization Wines of Germany. She was the only person of color in the group. While they were all traveling in a van, one retailer remarked to another, “As soon as a Black person walks in, I just break out the Moscato.” (The wine has been stereotypically associated with Black culture after featuring in some hip-hop songs.)
As the lone Black tasting room associate at two Napa Valley wineries in 2018-19, J’nai Gaither got questions from customers none of her colleagues had to deal with. There was the guest who asked Ms. Gaither how she knew about Burgundy because, he noted, “Burgundy is expensive.” Another derailed a tour. “I was explaining what [the winery] looked like in the 19th century, and she poked me with her finger and asked me if there was slavery in Napa,” Ms. Gaither recalled. It was such a bizarre pivot, Ms. Gaither asked, “Why are you asking me about slavery?” The woman kept repeating the question.
Even when she built a rapport with customers, some quickly crossed a line. “They actually felt comfortable enough to use the ‘N’ word,” said Ms. Gaither. And these were far from isolated incidents. “This happens to people of color all the time,” she added.
Lia Jones gave herself the middle name Sommelier on social media after applying for 76 wine jobs in New York in 2015-16. She never got the job, despite her extensive wine education, including a year’s study with the Sommelier Society of America, a sommelier-level certification from the Court of Master Sommeliers and completed level-three course work with the Wine & Spirit Education Trust. She also had substantial hospitality experience, including a position as captain at a prominent New York restaurant. When she did score an in-person interview, she was always the lone Black woman in the restaurant, interviewed by a white man. “It’s a club, it’s a community,” she said.
Eventually Ms. Jones moved to Los Angeles and took a job as a server at the restaurant in the NoMad Hotel. She was transferred back to New York, to sister restaurant Eleven Madison Park, in 2018. That year she founded Diversity in Wine and Spirits, a nonprofit advocacy group; she serves as executive director, currently working from her home in Belize. Her goal is to create a more equitable environment than she found in the restaurant world. The organization works with institutions including Diageo, one of the world’s largest spirits and beer producers; educational organization the International Wine Center; and SommCon, which offers seminars, internships and scholarships for wine professionals and those aspiring to careers in wine.
Victoria James, beverage director and a partner of Cote Korean Steakhouse in New York, is a white woman who shared tales of misogyny and abuse in her searing memoir, “Wine Girl,” published a few months ago. For all the harrowing experiences she details, Ms. James told me she was sure if she were Black the story would be worse. “I can’t begin to fathom what Black women go through,” she said.
For Jahdé Marley, a Black, Brooklyn-based sales representative for importer and distributor Indie Wineries, the solution has been to create a world in which she chooses to work. “My account run is filled with women and women of color and LGBTQ people,” she said, referring to the restaurant and retail clients to whom she sells wine.
She took this route after a job at a more corporate company where her (white, male) boss regularly berated her about the hair products she used. Ms. Marley wants to work in a place where enlightenment already exists, with women and people of color in positions of power. “I don’t want to be the first. I don’t want to be the person in charge of changing your company,” she said.
I don’t pretend to have answers on how best to bring about change in the wine world. But I can share these stories with readers. We often idealize the business of hospitality. For too long that business has been an often-inhospitable place.
Write to Lettie at wine@wsj.com
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