Illustration: Lauren Tamaki Though Robin and Andréa McBride didn’t meet until their young-adult years, the siblings found that they already shared not only a biological background, but a deep love of wine and entrepreneurship. In 2010, they boldly disrupted a largely white- and male-dominated industry by launching their own business, McBride Sisters Wine Company. Their collections, including Black Girl Magic and She Can wines, are available for purchase throughout the nation.
Robin: We love the excitement, and we love the chaos, if we’re being honest. Obviously our business is at a stage where we can’t do everything all the time. We’ve very much prioritized what lines up to our overall goals. The main priority being elevating “her” [the customer’s] wine experience. So wherever Andréa and I can be impactful with regard to the company’s efforts and strategic about making sure that our customer and the wine drinker really love the experience of drinking our wines.
Our personalities and values that we’re able to bring to the vision and mission of the company are very complementary. When it comes to our business, we really are two puzzle pieces. Andréa: We see our goals really clearly. Because it seemed so obvious to us — we were really confident. And most importantly, we have the competence to be able to back it up. So I think that we never experience self-doubt. If anything, I would say it was more frustration, because maybe things weren’t happening fast enough. And then learning from those situations, realizing, “Okay, we need to slow down and educate people here and bring them in and build allies so that they can see it too.