![]() More than 15 years later, her collaboration with Planeta continues, and Toth reflects that she wasn’t very sensitive to her gender difference when she first arrived. She later went to Piedmont to try her hand at Nebbiolo before finally accepting what was meant to be a six-month position in Sicily to work for the winery Planeta. This was the experience, too, of Patricia Toth, a Hungarian woman who first spent time in the northeastern Italian wine region of Friuli in 2003 as part of a study abroad program for agricultural studies. Joy Kull Melissa di Giovanna | Illustration by Natalia Sanabria Kull laughs, “They think it’s weird that a New Yorker would want to come to live in this part of the Italian countryside,” but the unlikeliness of her presence there, and her appreciation for this unexpected place, generates good will.ĭecision-making. On the other hand, Kull notes that the fact that she is a foreigner has been less of a problem and more of a curiosity-even an appeal. “People often can’t believe I’m the final stop when it comes to decision-making,” Kull says, “and they’ll ask if I need to discuss something with my husband first.” The practical side of it doesn’t bother her much, as she can shut down that line of questioning pretty quickly, but the fact that other business owners and winemakers are putting her credibility in doubt can be tough, especially because it might well have real ramifications on investment. Joy Kull, owner and winemaker at La Villana in Lazio outside of Rome, has experienced friction on the business side of things as a result of her gender. ![]() ![]() Joy Kull | Illustration by Natalia Sanabria All in the Family The “extreme” otherness of these new entries- women, yes, but also foreigners bringing unique experiences and specialized professional expertise-has perhaps allowed them to get a foot in a once sealed door and begin to pry it open. The presence of this group of outsiders in a place known for its attachment to history and tradition provides peculiar insight into the ways in which otherwise closed communities slowly open to new presences and new perspectives. Morgan is, in fact, part of a robust group of non-ethnically Italian women who have come to Italy since the turn of the last century to make wine and have successfully integrated themselves into the Italian wine business despite having little to no preexisting relationship to the place or its culture. They were pretty welcoming.” By way of undeniable confirmation, she points out that she ended up getting married, having children and staying in Tuscany for the next two decades, where she still resides, now making wine at Podere Capaccia in Radda in Chianti. ![]() Morgan says, “When I arrived in Italy, I wasn’t just ‘not a man’ I was different in every way, and they actually seemed to like that, or at least to find it interesting. “To be honest,” she says, “I experienced more hazing in California,” where she had worked in wineries in Mendocino before deciding to cross the Atlantic. Yet what Morgan ended up encountering did not match that stereotype. Then, even more than now, the world of wine was known for being male-dominated and exclusionary, but the world of Italian wine-with the peninsula’s reputation for machismo-might well have been expected to be an utterly misogynist cult. She was young, she was American, and she had trained as a scientist at UC Davis. ![]() When Alyson Morgan first arrived in Italy more than 20 years ago to make wine, she was an unusual addition to the landscape in more than one way. Decorative Wine Racks & Modular Systems. ![]()
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