Lydia Richards, Co-Founder Of Hispanics In Wine, On How You Can Support Latinx Winemakers

In September 2020, Lydia Richards and Maria Calvert founded Hispanics in Wine, a nonprofit that helps Hispanic people receive education, finance and tools necessary to work as vintners, sommeliers and in other areas in the wine industry. For the past two years, they’ve hosted the LatinX Wine Summit. Richards, a sommelier, grew up in Panama and lived in New York City for 12 years before moving to Santa Barbara, California. In 2021, Wine Enthusiast featured her in its 40 under 40 issue. In this edition of Voices In Food, Richards spoke to Garin Pirnia about the growth of representation in the wine industry, the importance of sampling Latinx-made wines and how we need to keep certain conversations going.

It was tricky to get into the wine industry. Becoming a sommelier is a lot of work and a lot of studying, and it’s a lot of things to remember — that in itself is hard. Another hard thing about becoming one is the financial part of it. Specifically with wine, you need to have a little bit of money to pay for certifications. As you’re learning about wine, you need to be able to buy all these bottles to taste them and be able to understand what you’re studying. It’s an extremely white-dominated field, at least here in the U.S.

With that said, I do believe things are changing for the better. There are so many organizations, like The Roots Fund, which is creating scholarships for people of color. And Bâtonnage Forum is for women in the wine industry. These people are building communities and are making sure the wine industry becomes a more inclusive space overall.

I speak to so many people saying, “Oh, I didn’t even know there were Latin people who made wine.” Or “I didn’t know that there were so many women in Santa Barbara who are winemakers.” I’ve spoken to so many Latinx vintners and winemakers, and they’ve been working for a little while. I think it was a matter of having the platform to be visible, because having marketing and PR spending power is not that common in the wine industry. It’s heavy on overheads. Allocating budgets for that is a little hard. It’s such a competitive field as well, so it’s not that easy to break through and get the visibility that you need to get more consumers and people learning a little bit more about your brand.

There’s so much work that’s being done, and instead of us trying to reinvent the wheel, it’s just making sure we’re helping all these people get seen, because it’s not many of us. I think that also will inspire the next generation of people who want to get into wine. One thing I thought about was: Is this a career for me? It doesn’t seem to be for people like me; it seems to be more for people who grew up in that more Eurocentric mentality of, “Oh, that’s where wine comes from.” Coming from Panama, we don’t make wine. I do get a lot of resistance from people saying, “Ah, wine is not for me.” But I honestly do believe wine is for everyone. It’s for everyone who’s interested in it.

I’ve heard everybody kind of puts their own spin and style to it. But I have also heard from a lot of Latinx winemakers that they wanted to create something their peers or their communities could enjoy, and they really kind of honed into their heritage and being like, “Oh, this is what I pair with pozole,” or “I pair this with empanadas.” I do see those commonalities. We fell in love with this product however we came here, and we want to make sure we’re sharing that passion, the love, to our community.

We consume so many wines here that are from Chile, from Argentina. South America is a big, big wine-producing region. We are as involved as any other country, even in terms of volume. But there’s this weird cultural disconnect that we’re sort of trying to break through with our foods, with our customs. We can definitely incorporate wine in a healthy way, in a balanced way, to our lifestyle.

You have to go to all these spaces and talk to these winemakers and not just look for Latin wines for the sake of looking, just because they’re produced by a Latin person. Maybe go and hear them out. Have a conversation with them. Ask why they started that label, because we’re all so different. It’s not going to be a blanket, like a piñata-in-a-tasting-room-type of thing. Everybody is passionate about it, and we all come from different spaces, different places. I think wine is such a conversation starter.

These conversations have always kind of been there on a much smaller scale, but I do think the pandemic was the triggering point for all of us, the world collectively, to speak about injustices and how things work. In my opinion, we’re already here and I want to see what’s next. It is really hard to be a Hispanic person in the wine industry or a Black person in these communities. But we have a good amount of visibility now. So what’s next? How do we not stop this conversation? How do we really improve the lives of others and get them access to this industry?

We’re still answering those questions, but I think [the answers are] continuing the conversation in terms of getting more people involved in the industry, looking out for those scholarships and those financial assistance programs, and building networks collectively as a community. If there’s somebody up and coming, we’re making sure that we’re making them feel seen and heard.

Hispanic Heritage Month is wonderful, but don’t stop at Hispanic Heritage Month. Continue supporting beyond that. If you see a wine made by a Latinx winemaker, be sure to buy a bottle and see what you think about it. If you’re planning wine travel, why not go to California? Make sure you do your research. Include a smaller producer in there or somebody who’s a Latinx winemaker, and check their wines out. I think those things are important as a consumer. If you do that throughout the entire year, that would leave a mark on so many of us.