Vine equity: Bringing diversity to the Canadian wine industry

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With Vinequity, Black, Indigenous and people of colour (including LGBTQ+ and persons with disabilities) navigate the challenges of working in Canada’s overwhelmingly white wine industry

For Nupur Gogia and Nabilah Rawji, their first meeting felt like something of a revelation.

The two formed a quick friendship based on their shared experience of working in a world that looked little like them. Their stories were eerily similar: of customers or colleagues questioning their expertise; of being passed over for jobs or promotions; of being mistaken as subordinates to their white, male employees.

Vinequity isn’t alone. The past two years has seen the creation of several industry-led programs in Canada recognizing the lack of diversity as an issue, and making efforts to address it. The French wine capital of Bordeaux, for instance, built a large part of its fortune up until the 19th century off of the slave trade. And the history of wine across Europe is inextricably linked with the history of colonization. Even today, many of the lowest-paid employees in the industry – the men and women who grow and care for grapes – are racialized migrant workers from developing countries.

And then there are the less-obvious barriers. For those who didn’t grow up on a typical “western” diet, said Ms. Shing, adopting the heavily European-influenced vocabulary of wine can be additionally challenging – where tasting notes of “butterscotch” or “barnyard” are common, but rarely acai berry or turmeric.

She’s had customers refuse to speak with her, she said. And met wine agents who, upon realizing that she’s the one in charge – and not her older, French-speaking male colleagues – end the conversation and simply walk away. When training her younger, white colleagues, she has often been confused as the one being trained.

 

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Inagine how this story would play in a country with real, unimagined injustice? But here we have Canada's grievance-industry in full stride ... with lobotomized imbeciles characterizing our nascent wine-industry as a platform for micro-aggression and symbol of colonization.

Oh ffs!

Vine Whine?

Not sure why this is news. Every Canadian industry is rife with diversity and is more than inclusive. It’s our culture, and has been for a very long time now. Always at the top of the list is competencies though. Your skin colour and trouser contents comes second. Or it should….

This means government funded ideological enforcers

I am strong believer that diversity needs to be more diverse

Ability MUST come before ANYTHING else G&M! I don't care about the gender, race, colour, ... you name it ... of my Dr., my pilot, my house renovator, my car mechanic, y kids teacher, .... Wake up to reality and not 'woke' ideology G&M!

Bring diversity to the NBA!

Now do the NBA

Equity is not Equality. Equity is socialism.

What a joke 🤣🤣🤣

Mental derangement

The only skin colour that matters is the skin of the grape.

This is really a bottomless well for G&M. 'Report: Whittling community gets some much-needed colour'

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