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Unlike perhaps in South Africa, there are very few wineries among the thousands of wine estates in the US that were founded by, or are run by, African-Americans. But the White House was able to zero in on two of them for the delegates of the US-African Leaders Summit in Washington DC where 40 Heads of State reportedly came together.
To mark the summit, a dinner was organized on August 5 by the White House where the visitors were poured wines from two wineries owned by Black Americans-Black Coyote and Vision Cellars. Black Coyote, based in Napa, sells Cabernet for more than $100-a-bottle and was founded by Dr Ernest Bates in 1997. Bates was previously a pioneering neurosurgeon. Vision Cellars was founded in 1995 by Mac McDonald, son of a Texas moonshine whiskey distiller. Although the two award-winning winemakers come from diverse backgrounds, they have two things in common- they are both wine producers and are both black.
Selection for any White House dinner is a privilege that uplifts the profiles of the wine producers and helps increase business. Bates and McDonald reportedly agree that it’s an opportunity to encourage more black Americans to develop an interest in a pastime where the barriers to entry have been a combination of factors like cost, education and cultural tradition.
“We want the world to know that African-American and Hispanic-American people, once they’re given the opportunity, can succeed and make a product that’s as good as any,” Bates said.
There are about a dozen prominent black American winemakers or winery owners like Bates and McDonald today in the US- mostly in California. The number is negligible when compared with about 8,300 wineries reportedly producing wine in North America, again mostly in California. But a growing number of black celebrities, athletes and investors are lending their name to wine ventures or bottling small numbers of cases.
Whether the White House’s dinner wine selection this week is meant to send a diplomatic signal to African leaders or a message to U.S. wine consumers and the black American population at large, McDonald’s Vision Cellars has been supplying wines to be poured at dinners served under other Presidents like Bill Clinton and George Bush too. He says it’s good to see people of colour having their wines served at the White House.
Statistics compiled for the Wine Handbook 2013 by a Connecticut-based Beverage Information Group and published by Bloomberg show a racial difference in the type of wines consumed that could be extrapolated within the Indian context. Whites are more likely to choose table wines, while blacks are more likely than whites to drink wine coolers, sparkling wines and sweeter wine
What is of more significance and also good to note for future reference for India is that the group also found a high correlation with the education level of wine drinkers. There were 49.3 percent of college graduates drinking any kind of wine compared with 27.9 percent among Americans whose education stopped at high school level and 19.8 percent among those who didn’t graduate high school. Generally, multiple Studies have indicated that higher educated people and the white collared professionals prefer to drink wine as a part of their lifestyle-an indicator not to be taken lightly by the Indian producers.
Indo American wines at the White House Reception for PM Modi
It is ironic that whereas India prohibits serving of liquor or even wine and beer at State Banquets, the latter are the personal favourites of President Obama who is known to prefer beer but occasionally does drink wine. The White house stores and sells only the wines produced in the US. This is an opportunity for the Indo-American community, especially the senior diplomats, bureaucrats and the producers working in the Obama Administration to come together and lobby hard to the White House to serve wines only from the wineries founded by the Indo- Americans and push for these wines to be stored in the White House, if it is not so already. This will give a boost not only to the wine consumption of Indo Americans but also it might be a diplomatically clever strategy. The visitors may not drink wine but are bound to be moved by this diplomatic gesture.
There are perhaps more Indo Americans than African Americans who own wineries- a few of them are Napa based Revana Estate owned by Dr. M Revana of Houston and Patel Winery owned by Raj Patel of San Francisco; and Mushal Winery in Sonoma owned by Avatar Singh Sandhu who migrated from Delhi though originally he hailed from the village Mushal in Punjab.
For earlier articles related to these wineries visit: NVV: Indian Duo Sing Wine in Napa Valley
And Avtar Singh Sandhu: First Indian Winegrower Of USA
Subhash Arora
Tags: Black Coyote, Vision Cellars |