Rooted and Rising: Lessons from the 2026 Women+ in Wine Symposium
On April 26, 2026, the Sensory Theater at the Robert Mondavi Institute filled with students, alumni, researchers, and industry leaders for the 3rd Annual Women+ in Wine Symposium, titled Rooted and Rising: Lessons in Resilience for a Changing Wine Industry.
Organized by the student-led Women+ in Wine organization, the symposium asked what it means to build a future in wine through economic uncertainty, climate pressure, and rapid social change. Speakers focused on resilience not as optimism or branding language, but as something that is built together through honesty, community, and the willingness to adapt.
Building Community
Department Chair Ben Montpetit opened the symposium by reflecting on what makes the UC Davis Viticulture and Enology program distinctive. Though relatively small, with roughly 100 undergraduates and around 20 master's students, the department has built a community that extends far beyond graduation.
Montpetit emphasized the university's role not only as one of the country's leading agricultural institutions but also as a place where outreach, mentorship, and collaboration are central to the culture of its programs.
He joked that most parents don't exactly tell their kids to study viticulture and enology, but the students who find their way here build a tight-knit community, with student organizations like Women+ in Wine and DEVO, the Davis Enology and Viticulture Organization, ("not the band," he clarified), playing a major role in creating a sense of belonging and continuity.
Women+ in Wine President Victoria Lasch shared her own path into the field. Though her parents encouraged her, she didn't feel fully comfortable pursuing viticulture and enology until after finishing a first degree in Seattle. She said last year's symposium helped inspire her own growth, and hoped this year's conversations would “create that same space for others to confront wine's challenges and imagine what the industry could become.”
Resilience Begins with Honesty
The symposium’s opening keynote came from Elaine Chukan Brown, writer for Wine Enthusiast, author of The Wines of California, and Executive Director of the Bâtonnage Forum, a nonprofit that brings together women in wine through community events and a mentorship program.
Asked to speak on resilience, Brown began with a simple admission. “I’m really tired, and I have been for a long time.”
Rather than framing resilience as positivity or perseverance alone, Brown argued that empowerment begins with honesty, particularly honesty about how difficult the current moment feels for many people in wine and beyond. Drawing on Stoic philosophy, they noted that honesty is the only way to know what you actually want, down to something as simple as breakfast.
“We can’t get to the empowerment part without being very honest,” Brown said. “If we only talk about what is good, we won’t get anywhere.”
Drawing from both personal experience and science fiction, Brown reflected on growing up between worlds as an Indigenous person moving between an Indigenous community and a "mainstream" school in Anchorage. That duality shaped how they think about systems, belonging, and change. They returned to that idea through Star Trek's Ro Laren, a Bajoran officer shaped by occupation who learns to operate within imperfect systems while still trying to transform them.
For Brown, empowerment is ultimately a form of self-determination. “It’s understanding what you need to do even when it looks unreasonable to others, and especially when there is no existing blueprint to follow.” Brown defined confidence as simply “recognizing that if something goes wrong, you can probably handle it.”
Brown reframed fear as a sign of growth rather than a reason to retreat. Fear, they argued, is not necessarily a warning sign. Sometimes, it is evidence that someone is stepping into leadership or attempting something genuinely new.
On mentorship, Brown pushed back on the idea that it's mainly about technical skills. "You can learn to pump tanks in school," they said. "Soft skills come from personal interaction."
They closed with a pause, asking the room what they needed, and noting that the instinct to keep going is fine, as long as you know at some point, you have to say, "today is the day I don't."
Adapting to a New Wine Marketplace
Moderated by Megan Hill, Treasurer of Women+ in Wine and Amanda Zabriskie, a second-year Master’s student and DEVO officer, the first panel explored how wineries are adapting to a changing market. It featured Remi Barrett of La Sirena Wines, Remi Cohen of Domaine Carneros, and Cynthia Lohr of J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines.
Barrett grew up at her family's vineyard in Calistoga, where her mother, winemaker Heidi Barrett, founded La Sirena. Barrett described La Sirena as both a family business and a creative project rooted in joy. The winery remains intentionally small, something Barrett sees as a strategic advantage in a changing market.
Small producers, she noted, can adapt quickly, experiment freely, and take calculated risks. She also emphasized the importance of creating wines that feel approachable, exciting, and attainable to younger consumers.
Cohen focused on what it means to guide an established luxury brand through industry transformation. At Domaine Carneros, strategic planning involves employees across multiple levels of the organization and balances respect for legacy with long-term adaptation.
Cohen's path to Domaine Carneros ran through molecular biology at UC Berkeley, a stint at Cliff Lede, and, before wine, a tech career touching Yahoo and Alexa, born from an Amazon acquisition. That 25-year arc of change shapes how she leads now, balancing the Taittinger legacy with three-year plans and ten-year visions built with employees.
Change, Cohen said, requires psychological safety. “Employees need to understand not only what is changing, but why.”
She described the winery’s goal as creating “accessible luxury,” maintaining excellence while ensuring visitors still feel welcome and included in wine culture.
She also pushed back on the idea that "no one is drinking wine." Her advice for winemakers weathering difficult times was, "Don't join the race to the bottom. Differentiate above it."
Cynthia Lohr, J. Lohr's Chief Brand Officer, described 40 distinct vineyard parcels across the family's holdings, and credited her father, Jerry Lohr, a civil engineer turned vintner, now 89 and still active in the business, with pushing the family from Monterey into Paso Robles in the 1980s, a diversification that helped the winery adapt through decades of market change.
Their Seven Oaks Cabernet Sauvignon from Paso Robles, first released in 1987, remains the entry point that gets people through the tasting room door before they discover the family's 40-plus sustainable wines.
Lohr described Touching Lives, a partnership with the National Breast Cancer Foundation that has funded mammograms for women in need through sales of Carol's Vineyard wine, named for her mother, since 2009, and has surpassed $1 million in donations.
She also spoke about risk in her own career, including pursuing an executive master's in public administration from Cornell's Brooks School of Public Policy while working full-time, a decision driven by her interest in climate and social justice. Growth, she said, often requires stepping directly into uncertainty.
Regenerative Viticulture and Climate Resilience
Dr. Cristina Lazcano, Associate Professor of Soil Ecology at UC Davis and recipient of the 2023 Viticulture Paper of the Year from the American Society of Agronomy, shifted the conversation from social resilience to ecological resilience with her talk, Building Resilience Through Regeneration.
Lazcano outlined the increasing frequency of extreme heat events across California wine regions and described “climate whiplash,” the rapid swing between drought and flooding that California growers increasingly face.
She showed us how healthy soil sits at the center of both climate adaptation and climate mitigation by explaining that soil with better structure acts like a sponge, absorbing rainfall during storms rather than letting it run off, which can buffer vines during hot, dry stretches.
Practices such as compost application, reduced tillage, cover cropping, mulching, and sheep grazing can improve water retention, infiltration, erosion resistance, and long-term soil carbon storage. While these practices are not new individually, Lazcano emphasized that the strongest effects emerge when they are stacked together as part of an integrated regenerative system.
Research from her lab and collaborators across 87 Napa Valley vineyards found that long-term cover cropping increased total soil carbon and aggregate stability, with benefits accelerating further when combined with sheep grazing. Regenerative treatments also held more soil moisture after rain events and improved water infiltration over time under no-till systems.
Lazcano closed by previewing future remote-sensing work with faculty collaborator Dr. Beth Forrestel to scale regenerative research.
Mentorship, Access, and Building Belonging
The symposium’s final panel, moderated by Alexandra Leite, Co-Social Media Coordinator of Women+ In Wine and Gianna Smoot, Vice President of Women+ In Wine, returned to the topic of community, featuring Louie Seamus, founder of The Vinguard and WineFare; Carolyn Wente, Chairman Emeritus of Wente Family Estates; and Terah Bajjalieh, owner of Terah Wine Co. and Mentorship Liaison Officer for the Bâtonnage Forum.
Seamus spoke about advocating for California wineries and creating spaces for people historically excluded from wine, emphasizing that meaningful community often begins simply by finding the right people rather than the right institution.
Echoing Brown’s keynote, Seamus encouraged attendees not to retreat from difficult moments, but to “turn it up.”
Wente, whose family's winery is one of the oldest in California and whose uncle helped found the Wine Institute after Prohibition, reflected on growing up absorbing institutional knowledge by osmosis. She described her family's role in preserving the Livermore Valley’s agricultural identity during periods of intense development pressure in the 1970s and 1980s through the South Livermore Valley Plan, which preserved vineyard land by requiring roughly 15 acres of permanently planted agricultural land per house built and blocking subdivision of 100-acre parcels.
On mentorship and networking, Wente offered practical advice, "Community requires participation," she said, encouraging attendees to join local groups or simply build relationships on their own.
Bajjalieh also focused on the importance of relationships in building a sustainable career. After 16 years in the wine industry, she explained that the relationships formed through internships, mentorship, and community spaces often mattered more than technical knowledge alone. She explained that mentorship works best as a two-way relationship, not a one-way transfer.
She spoke openly about the structural inequities that still shape wine today, from wages and workplace safety to representation and access. She expressed hope that the next generation of the industry will be more equitable, diverse, and sustainable.
A Different Vision for Wine
The symposium closed with a reception where attendees continued conversations over wines made by the speakers and panelists.
Whether discussing mentorship, climate adaptation, accessibility, or consumer change, the speakers returned to the same idea that resilience is not simply the ability to endure hardship. It’s the ability to build ecological, professional, and social systems that help people thrive through change.
“Rooted and Rising” showed that just as healthy vineyards depend on strong roots to weather uncertainty, the future of the wine industry will depend on the communities, relationships, and institutions that support the people working within it.
To learn more, visit these websites: Women+ and Wine, the Vinguard, Bâttonage Forum, J.Lohr’s Touching Lives Initiative and Dr. Cristina Lazcanzo’s research.
Kaylianne Jordan is a viticulture and enology graduate at UC Davis pursuing her master's degree. She has a background in culinary arts and a passion for sustainable farming and enjoys exploring the connections between agriculture, winemaking, and community. Outside of college, she loves trying out new recipes, and discovering local food spots.