Argentinian female winemaker makes her mark in a male-dominated field

World Today

Argentinian winemaker 2 FINAL

The world of wine making has been dominated by men since the days grapes were first fermented thousands of years ago.

But ever so slowly, women are rising to take leading roles in the modern wine industry.

CCTV’s Michelle Begue caught up with one Argentinian woman making her mark in this field at a wine expo in Colombia.

The wine industry traditionally has been dominated by men. There are few world statistics on the gender gap, but one University of California study found that less than 10 percent of Chief Winemakers in the U.S. are women.

So it’s no surprise that at the Bogota Wine Expo’s wine competition, the judges panel is primarily made up of men.

But this didn’t intimidate Septima Chief Winemaker Paula Borgo. She knew she wanted to work with wine from the time she was young, watching her father, an agricultural engineer working in Argentina’s wine country known as Mendoza.

“I loved my father’s legacy, the art of making wine, and the emotions that come from wine, because you share it with people,” said Borgo. “You see their faces and the moment they are living while drinking the wine.”

But wine goes through a long and complex process before it reaches the tables at restaurants and social gatherings.

The cultivation of grapes requires knowledge in horticulture, the fermenting process involves chemistry.

The heavy time demand of wine making, around 16-hour workdays at the height of the season, has been blamed for discouraging women from this career.

But Borgos says she manages with the support of her husband and children and that constant challenge is what she loves most about her job.

Harvesting the knowledge for wine making takes years of study and experience, and women like Paula Borgo are showing the world that they can pop the cork off this male dominated industry.