The Santa Maria Valley is home to approximately a dozen wineries with local tasting rooms, three of which have a female winemaker: Lane Tanner at Sierra Madre Vineyards, Denise Shurtleff at Cambria Winery, and Clarissa Nagy of Riverbench Vineyard and her own Nagy Wines.
A couple of smaller wineries based in Santa Maria are owned and operated by women, too: Jenne Lee Bonaccorsi of Bonaccorsi Wine Company and Robin Bogue of William James Cellars.
The American wine industry has always been male dominated. But now women are well represented everywhere from the cellar to the tasting room to the winery head office.
Over the next three weeks, The Sun will shine its spotlight on a talented trio of ladies who’ve worked their way to the top of their profession.
We kick off the series, “The Santa Maria Valley’s Women of Wine,” with the first woman in Santa Barbara County to start her own winery nearly three decades ago.
With a degree in chemistry from San Jose State, Lane Tanner set out to do “hardcore chemistry.”
Her first job in the late ’70s was remote site field operations putting up weather towers “in the middle of nowhere. That was the most manly job you could imagine,” Tanner recalled.
Then, almost by accident, she landed a job in the lab at Konocti Winery near her hometown of Kelseyville in Northern California, where she met an icon who would become her mentor: the legendary André Tchelistcheff, known as “California’s most influential winemaker since the repeal of Prohibition.”
Tchelistcheff was instrumental in moving Tanner to Santa Barbara County, recommending her for the enologist job at Firestone Vineyard in 1981.
“I just could not say no to the man,” Tanner admitted. “He was such a god in the industry.”
A couple of years later, Zaca Mesa Winery hired Tanner as its enologist. In 1984, she got her first winemaking gig, making Hitching Post Wines.
“She’s a leader,” said Jim Fiolek, executive director of the Santa Barbara County Vintners’ Association, who’s known Tanner for nearly 30 years.
“She was the first to get out and start her own winery here in Santa Barbara County,” Fiolek said. “She’s the first.”
(Santa Barbara County’s first female winemaker is believed to have been Alison Green-Doran, who was Firestone’s winemaker from 1981 to 2000. She’s currently a winemaker in Napa County.)
In 1989, Tanner started her own wine label, Lane Tanner Wines. Her focus was Pinot Noir. Her winemaking style was and still is feminine.
“It’s totally true,” Tanner told me. “I was making feminine Pinot Noirs a long time ago, back in the ’80s and early ’90s. … I totally think my wines are very feminine and elegant. And that’s how I like them. I mean, there’s enough manly wines out there.”
“[Tanner’s Pinot Noirs] were always delicate. They were always the essence of Pinot, not the essence of man or woman,” Fiolek said.
Still, the “Queen of Pinot” always embraced her own womanliness: “I refused to be like ‘butch.’ I wanted to continuously be feminine,” she said.
But being ladylike hasn’t been easy in a mostly male profession.
“There still is a Good Ol’ Boy Network out there. Don’t let me fool you on that. There definitely is,” she said. “But it’s a little more allowing of women in there.”
Even while wearing lipstick, Tanner was always willing to get her hands dirty and do the heavy lifting in the winery, but during interviews and wine dinners, “I always dressed up like a girl. I wore makeup. I wore jewelry. I acted like a girl. I flirted. Laughed.”
“I think in a lot of ways it made my journey harder,” Tanner said. “People did not actually believe in me in a lot of ways.”
She shared with me a story from the mid ’80s when a wine writer refused to believe Tanner made an award-winning wine because “she was way too cute to be a winemaker.”
There’s no question that Tanner helped pave the way for today’s new crop of young women vintners out there. She believes this is a wonderful time for women, thanks to improvements in wine production.
“Over the years, all the equipment has gotten to be where no one has to break their backs anymore. You don’t have to be able to lift 70 pounds dead weight over your head anymore like you used to to work in this industry,” Tanner said. “I was always lucky because I’m kind of short and stout and muscular, but now you can be any size woman and be in this industry.”
Tanner surprised almost everyone a few years ago when she retired her successful Lane Tanner label, seeking a break from wine biz bureaucracy.
“I couldn’t take the politics anymore. I really couldn’t,” Tanner said. “But working for other people is just a joy!”
In early 2012, she returned to the industry. The owners of Sierra Madre Vineyard hired her as their winemaker. She has experience making wine from Sierra Madre fruit since 1984.
“Sierra Madre was always my favorite vineyard,” Tanner said. “It’s kind of in the perfect spot in the Santa Maria Valley. It’s one of the coolest spots. It gets fog just at the right time.”
Tanner lives in Nipomo with her husband, New Zealand native Ariki Hill, winemaker for Tantara Winery; he has his own label, Labyrinth.
Tanner also shares admiration for the other ladies currently making great wine down the road at neighboring wineries.
“We have some of the best female winemakers possible in this valley, between the three of us,” she said. “I think the three of us rock! We just seem to be an enclave of really rocking women right now!”
Sun food and wine writer Wendy Thies Sell invites story ideas that rock! Contact her at wthies@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 17-24, 2013.