In an era in which buying anything from a fried chicken sandwich to a pair of sneakers is inherently political, contemporary consumers are voting with their wallets. And on the cusp of the #MeToo movement in 2017, wine writer and communications consultant Amy Bess Cook tried to vote with hers.
“I knew that the only way to affect change was to see more women in power in the workplace and to give more money to women in the industry,” Cook says. “But when I went online and started to do my homework, and tried to identify woman-owned wineries to support with my own dollars, I’d find lists of maybe five or 10 wineries, max.”
Immediately frustrated, Cook took matters into her own hands. In October 2017, she launched Woman-Owned Wineries (WOW), an online directory of female-identifying wine entrepreneurs. What began as a personal passion project morphed into a movement: Initially including 50 female-owned, Sonoma-based wineries, WOW now boasts a list of 550 businesses nationwide, plus a wine club and an advocacy and storytelling platform uniting like-minded winemakers and drinkers.
