International Women’s Day

On this International Women’s Day we wanted to take pause and think about the incredible woman behind the scenes at Le Vieux Pin. From office managers, to accounting, to social media we have inspiring women across many departments in this company.

We should mention Michelle, Cherrie, Dee, Nicole, Ceilidh, Dela and Marie-Pier, but this year we aim to honour our fearless leader, Severine Pinte.

Arriving with her family in August 2010 she has seen a lot of change in the industry. When asking her what comes to mind on International Women’s Day, she is always first to mention how privileged she feels to be living and working in Canada. In the larger picture of what International Women’s Day means, she is grateful to live in a safe and open society like Canada. There is a long way to go in terms of equality between the sexes in the workplace and the industry, yet she has seen a lot of positive changes. Winemaking over the centuries has been a male-dominated field and it is nice to see so many female winemakers supported in British Columbia.

Passing the torch along to the next generation is equally as important. Sev worked diligently (few years ago) with the Tuc-el-Nuit Elementary School when her own daughter was attending it, to give the children a sense of the importance of the wine industry to the local economy and the diversity of the industry from elements of biology, chemistry, mathematics, business, history, and geography. The goal being to inspire the next generation to take on these challenges. She will be the first one to joke that females have a competitive advantage being natural organizers and preaching that winemaking takes a LOT of organization! Lucky for us, she is very organized.

She will also comment that the female sense of taste is calibrated differently and because of that, she is able to detect the smallest increments of potential faults or very pleasing characteristics in a sample of wine. Some would say that is one of the perks of the job to taste all of the hard work, but tasting wine all day is exhausting.

On a day like today we opt to take rest and reflect on how lucky we are to be here in Canada supporting women in industry and the art of winemaking.