Urban Thought Collective

I recently paid a visit to Cinnabar’s Wine Tasting room in Saratoga, California. Mercury Rising was the first pour that I would enjoy. Modest, yet confident. Whatever that means! They actually had this set of trading cards with clever wine sayings on them so that you can derive hours and hours of entertainment from them during wine parties/tastings at your house, and that was one of them. I think they’re more of a gag though. The 2005 Merlot wasn’t bad either. Very dry. I suddenly had a craving for an 8oz. filet from Morton’s. But the winner was the Petit Verdot. Until now, I had never heard of this variety. I was informed that usually, Petit Verdot’s were used to blend with other varieties that were then bottled and sold as, say, a Pinot Noir-Syrah-Zinfandel blend. But Cinnabar had a 100% Petit Verdot that grabbed me today.

What grabbed me as well was the fact that in lilly-white Downtown Saratoga (a very exclusive upscale suburb of San Jose, CA) the pourers for my tasting were a Nigerian man and a Mexican lady. The Mexican lady was my Aunt Veronica, otherwise I would’ve never heard of Cinnabar. But it got me to thinking. One thing I have noticed at previous wine tasting outings in the Napa Valley and Sonoma County areas, is that “we” aren’t usually present. We are neither terribly present as employees/producers of the wines nor as tasters. It made me wonder if “we” are truly into wine? Am I a snob with some non-traditional tastes based on what my ethnicity would dictate? Is the wine industry some virgin territory that a Tiger Woods of sorts will have to blaze a trail for us as both consumers and producers? When I got home I jumped on my laptop to find out.

What I found was kind of interesting. Not only were we underrepresented as producers, but apparently, the folks that produce wine and the folks that market wine have not yet keyed into the fact that some put the black community’s purchasing power at $550 billion annually. Rolex, Hennessy, Mercedes and Jaguar definitely recognize the potential and target blacks in their advertising, but the wine houses do not go out of their way to create an image for black consumers.

Similarly, Latino involvement in the wine industry has traditionally been confined to that of laborers doing the really tough, behind the scenes work. Rolando Herrera, owner of Mi Sueno Winery in Napa, started off with a job building a stone wall at a winery and worked up through the ranks over a period of 20 years until he finally endeavored to create his own wines. In the 1960s, Armando, Pedro, and Amelia Ceja came to St. Helena in the Napa Valley as children whose father moved the family

from Mexico under the “brasero” work program and finally realized the dream of producing their own wine when they pooled their resources and bought 15 acres to start Ceja Vineyards.

My research also turned up a half dozen African-American winemakers. Sharp Cellars and Vision Cellars are in my neck of the woods in Northern California and have made quite a name for themselves at various wine competitions. They have received numerous awards from publications like “The Dallas Morning News” and “San Francisco Chronicle.” Mac McDonald of Vision is said to be the son of a Texas Moonshine maker. I sent an email inquiring about his wines and he got right back to me. He told me that the limited availability of his wines causes them to sell direct to most of their customers and wine club members. I was hoping that he would be able to tell me which store might carry his wines, but I ended up ordering a bottle online. Being true to my other half, I also placed an order for one of Mi Sueno’s selections. Stay tuned for a future entry when I let you know how they were.

In the meantime, here are some other winemakers that you might be interested in patronizing: African American Winemakers: Esterlina Vineyards, Brown Family Estates, Bates Creek Winery, and Rideau Vineyards.

Latino Winemakers:
Renteria Vineyards, Robledo Family Winery, Alex Sotelo Cellars.

Enjoy!

Destah Owens is a single father of two from Northern California and proud UCLA Bruin who travels the world for his job as a computer engineer. His blog, “Soufflés in Saigon,” is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.