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Mentor each other Maddalena Sommo, head bartender at Clar- idge’s in London’s Mayfair, says there are so few female bartenders in the UK that if she comes across their CV “they are like gold”. In fact, when she joined the hotel four years ago as a barback, she was the only woman on her team. “I’m always excited to see them and do interviews. Unfortunately, we don’t receive many CVs from women; when you find a female bartender, you had better keep her forever,” she says. In the same vein, Emma Denney, head som-
Sandia Chang
“There are working mothers out there, espe- cially in our industry, who still want to learn and connect with colleagues.”
Seek jobs where you feel represented Miara has always looked to work with “incredible women” or at least in hospital- ity establishments with a 50-50 gender split in management. When she first moved to London from Argentina, she joined Okan in Brixton, founded by Moto Priestman. Hicce, of course, was owned by Pip Lacey, while Tok- las is just “three men and the rest are female”. Price from Crispin Group adds: “I’ve been
very lucky to have worked for a company like Crispin, which has a very young founding team. I’ve been given an amazing amount of creativity and trust in my role that has allowed me to explore. I don’t know whether that experience would be the same if I had been in a corporate, traditional company, but I would like to think that things have improved a lot.” Eloise Pontefract, head of drinks and sus- tainability at Silo in London’s Hackney, says her experience enabled her to build contacts with some amazing women. “I suppose wine- making is still relatively up and coming, so peo- ple are able to find their own path, whether that’s in vineyard management, winemaking or the distribution side of things,” she says. Her winemaking career also unlocked her passion for fermentation across both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, which has cemented her position at Silo. “I’m keeping it broad by saying I’m interested in fermentation, which brings in everything: wine, cider, beer, soft drinks and also food. It’s been a really nice lens through which to discover flavours and find other people in the industry,” she says.
Is the wine world getting better for women?
Alexandra Price from Crispin Group believes the industry “definitely feels more even” now compared to just 10 years ago. “It’s probably easy to look back and think it was all nice and rosy, but I think the first four years were very tough. I remember asking for pay rises and not receiving them, or never being given the wine list at wine industry dinners,” she admits. Chang remembers moving from more open-minded hospitality
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establishments in New York and Copenhagen into a very traditional restaurant in London, which she now sees as “probably the worst example ever for me to walk into” so early on in her career in the UK. Although the wine industry
has since become more welcoming to women, she says the hospitality industry as a whole needs to tackle its perception problem if it hopes to attract a more diverse talent pool. “Because it’s mostly men, it
makes it a little bit harder for women to be like: ‘Oh, that’s a cool career, actually’. It’s similar to the construction industry.” Denney adds that she has
personally experienced the increased visibility of women in the wine trade over the past few years. For a time, there were only a handful of women at tastings, but she is now able to take her team with her, which comprises three sommeliers, two of whom are women. “It wasn’t on purpose,
but it just kind of ended up that way,” she says. Pontefract points out it is often the customers who fail to take female sommeliers seriously, rather than the industry itself: “There’s still a bit of a perception, particularly from the public. Some people can’t get it out of their heads – they are looking at the man going ‘Is he the sommelier?’, which is kind of frustrating. But there’s lots of support from people within the industry.”
8 March 2024 | The Caterer | 29
melier at Claridge’s, reveals she felt supported by female colleagues during sommelier com- petitions: “One of my friends, Melania Bat- tiston, who was at Medlar at the time, forced me to enter. Even if you don’t get through to the finals, it’s just a good experience because it costs nothing and you get to meet other peo- ple,” she says. “There’s a few of us in the indus- try in London and we definitely try to push each other. Agnieszka [Swiecka, head of wine at Audley and Mount Street restaurant] helped me out with a lot of tastings.”
Don’t rush to settle Denney says that there is nothing wrong with taking some time to figure out where to work. Having been a part of the wine world for the past 11 years across both New Zealand and the UK, she has come across places that have provided opportunities for growth, even if they weren’t quite right overall. “You never want to be the smartest person
in the room – you always want to be learning,” she says. In fact, Price confesses she may not have found her current role had she turned down a job from Beaverbrook country house hotel in Surrey. She had accepted the role in 2019, not realising it was more of a restaurant manager position, which proved to be a com- plete contrast to her previous experiences in the cellars of Annabel’s in London’s Mayfair or at Burgundy specialist Domaine Direct. “I thought it was going to be more back of
house, but then it actually worked in my favour and I enjoyed it a hell of a lot. That was my first fully customer-facing role. I don’t think I’ll be where I am today if I hadn’t done it.”
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