A Note from Our Founders:
With everything happening in the past week and a half, Nic and I have been shocked, saddened, angered, inspired, and called to action to support and advocate for people of color.
One challenge for us is knowing what to say during this difficult time. What we’ve realized is that it’s more important to say something, have a voice, and take a stand, then to try to create a perfectly crafted message and ultimately say nothing.
As we’ve said with other issues we care about, what is the point of having our own company if you can’t use it to support and fight for causes we believe in. We’ve done this with environmental issues and women’s issues, and now we want to more actively support POC and fight for the injustice we see, not just with our words, but with our money, our time, and our platform (this company).
The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others has shown us that we have to do more. Not just this week and while this issue is “mainstream”, but every week. We are looking forward to continuing to do the work and not let this momentum wane.
This week we worked to support causes in all the ways we could and I wanted to share these avenues below, not to make us feel good about our actions, but to hopefully inspire you in the same way we’ve been inspired by so many this past week in finding new ways to support our friends:
- We’ve highlighted POC in our social feed that inspire us so that y’all can also drink their incredible wines, learn from their experience, and broaden their reach. This has been a wonderful exercise and we plan to keep it weekly from now on to highlight minority voices in the wine industry.
- We donated all of our profits from last weekend to Colors of Change. Some people expressed that they would have liked to make a purchase if they had known it was going on. However, we didn’t believe in making this a “marketing tactic” to get more sales.
- We had hard conversations with people in our lives. While we’re talking about things that are happening at our company level, it’s still important to note that the most real work happens when you are uncomfortable and have these difficult conversations with your families and close friends that need to understand why Black Lives Matter and the issues in countering that with the “All Lives Matter” argument.
- We protested (with our masks and socially distanced) at my college campus while back in Oklahoma and felt the amazing sense of community with thousands of people in a very conservative state coming together.
- We read, reflected, journaled, and spent time personally questioning ourselves. As a big believer in journaling and meditation (at least Holly), it has been important to us to not only think about how we can outwardly create change, but reflect inwardly on how we feel, the experiences we’ve gone through and all the places we could have been better in our past so that we will be better now.
All of this is still just the minimum we can do and this is why we are excited to be implementing new causes into our organization, adding new content to consistently integrate with what we already produce, and continue to be open to feedback for other ways we can help.
As we start back with our wine content this week, we want everyone to know, and particularly our POC friends, that we will not let this momentum die down, we are making forever changes to the way we think, act, and run our organization and are excited to continue doing the work.
Supporting POC in Food & Beverage Industry
There are many organizations doing great work in this space and we will continue to update it as we learn of more resources! Our list so far is skewed by the people we know within the natural wine community but there is much more out there and we will continue to share and highlight on social media!
Activists
Ashtin Berry or The Collectress and her organization Radical Exchange
Lex Luga and her organization Causing a Stir
Winemakers, Beer Makers, Spirit Makers
Krista Scruggs and Zafa Wines (Natural Winemaker)
Brenae Royal (Winemaker)
Beny Asburn and Teo Hunter at Crowns and Hops (Beer Makers)
McBride Sisters (Winemakers)
Theopolis Vineyards (Winemakers)
Flo Wine (Winemakers)
Somms & Consultants
Organizations in Food and Beverage
The Urban Grape Wine Studies Award for Students of Color
Stores
Urban Grape - Boston
Urban Grape - Boston
General Organizations
The Bail Project (State by State)
There are so many more, along with great books, movies, podcasts and other resources that we feel other people will cover much better than we can here. If you know of others in our industry please comment below and we will add them.
Black Lives Matter and it is up to us to ensure that real change is happening not just this week, but every week and we hope you will do the work alongside us!
All our best,
Holly & Nic
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