The winemaking profession is attracting more and more women in Germany. And there are more wine producers who do not come from a family business and are learning the craft from scratch. What drives them?
The internship in hotel management that was planned after graduating from high school had to be canceled due to the corona pandemic. Hanna Nunkesser reoriented herself and began training as a winemaker. “It was pure interest in something I didn’t know at all,” says the 22-year-old from Oberursel near Frankfurt.
To be sure that it was the right thing, she completed internships in the Italian Piedmont, Franconia, Rheinhessen and Styria before starting her training. “I always met people who recommended me.” More and more women in Germany are deciding, like Nunkesser, to become winemakers.
“The industry is incredibly open to women,” says the President of the Association of German Prädikat Wineries (VDP), Steffen Christmann. His daughter Sophie, the eldest of his four children, takes over his winery in the Palatinate.
“The wine industry is fundamentally extremely traditional”
For the younger generation, gender no longer plays a role at all, says winemaker Andrea Wirsching from Franconia. It wasn’t always like this: “The wine industry is fundamentally extremely traditional,” says the 60-year-old and explains that she was able to take over the family winery because her three brothers didn’t want to. Wirsching currently employs four trainees, all female and between 17 and 40 years old.
According to an evaluation by the German Wine Institute (DWI), the proportion of women among trainees has increased significantly over the past ten years. Between 2014 and 2018, a good one in five trainees (22.5 percent) was female. In the period from 2019 to 2023, almost every third training position was held by women (30 percent). This means that an average of 86 women have started winemaking training every year since 2019.
Fewer trainees
At the same time, according to the DWI, there are fewer trainees overall in this and many other industries. While an average of 347 contracts were concluded per year between 2014 and 2018, the annual average was only 288 between 2019 and 2023.
“I thought you were something special, but now there are a lot of women,” says Nunkesser. In her vocational school class it is about half. She doesn’t feel disadvantaged in the job, just sometimes a little patronized when men don’t even let her try physical work. And: “If you’re a woman driving around in a tractor, one or two guys will turn around for a while.”
The German Wine Institute has identified another trend: the proportion of trainees who do not come from a winemaking family has increased to around half. The DWI sees the “good image of the job” as the reason. Hardly any apprenticeship is as versatile as that of a winemaker. “Ultimately, the winemaker determines every single step that a wine goes through from the vine to the glass,” says DWI spokesman Ernst Büscher.
Nature, wine production and marketing
Wirsching explains it like this: “In viticulture you have the opportunity to make decisions and influence a product. It is an extremely attractive profession with a very good image.” And the spectrum of the job is broad: dealing with nature, wine production and marketing. But it’s also about contact with people, about food and drink and about wine tourism.
Nunkesser, whose parents work in the medical industry, particularly appreciates the community of harvest and wine production as well as working in the changing nature. “It is never the same vineyard, the same vine, the same weather and the same season.” And: “It’s a craft, but also a kind of creativity that you can live out there.” She also highlights the diversity of professional opportunities in the industry: she cites research, marketing and sensor technology as examples.
In the mid-1990s, more than 90 percent of trainees came from winemaking families, says VDP President Christmann. “Today it’s still around 50 percent.” He sees one reason in the academicization of training. The Geisenheim University in Rheingau and the wine campus in Neustadt an der Weinstraße, for example, report more students and a growing proportion of women.
But Christmann points out: “Ultimately, it’s a practical job with a lot of non-academic activities.” And Wirsching says, looking at the current difficult situation in viticulture: “If you don’t do the job with passion today, you have no chance. But if you can do it, you don’t even need your own vineyards.”
After two years of training, most recently at the Gies-Düppel winery near Landau in the Palatinate, Hanna Nunkesser wants to continue her training as a wine technician. “As a journeyman you don’t earn enough.” Before the aspiring winemaker takes this step, she wants to gain more experience in the world and the industry “to see what’s available.” After completing her apprenticeship in the summer, she wants to help with the harvest in England because she is interested in sparkling wine production there. And from February we’ll probably go to Australia. “Then the harvest begins in the southern hemisphere.”
Source: Stern
