What’s Wrong With Wine Education?
A Conversation With Joyce Jones & Charity Potter
Joyce Jones and Charity Potter sound like the street names of Marvel super heroes, but they’re actually the real women I interview for this episode. They’re better than super heroes, though, because they actually live in this messy, complex real world and take part in the real battles that result from living with the courage to speak up and ask questions and call BS when they see BS.
This episode is an expose, and it focuses on the experiences and insights and conflicts and unquestioned assumptions and prejudices that Joyce experienced, and continues to experience, as a woman of color taking classes in what passes for wine education currently. We did not name the institution or the instructors where she takes classes, because it’s really unimportant. The things she experiences could and do take place in any wine education institution on any given day.
I’ve talked a lot about diversity on this podcast. It’s one of the few agricultural solutions we have to climate change. It allows us to adapt and be productive regardless of the crazy weather the year brings. It is the antithesis to our current dominant wine culture. And Biodiversity is the solution to our farms’ health and resilience.
But equally, if not more, important is the diversity of people we include and listen to and allow to challenge our perspectives. Our mental and spiritual health is an ecosystem just like the ecosystem of our farms and forests. We cannot grow without the help of diverse connections to as many different perspectives as we can find, understand, and learn from.
Joyce Jones stepped into the bubble of our dominant wine industry, and popped it. Her impressions of her wine education are an incredible example of how important it is to get a fresh perspective, to include those who have traditionally be marginalized, to let down our guards and stop defending, to listen, to see our hypocrisy and self-contradictions. Though there aren’t many like her, we need more Joyces in the world to keep us forever young, forever learning and growing. I want to thank Joyce and Charity for their bravery and their willingness to share their personal experiences and challenges. This is heavy lifting. It’s difficult, it’s lonely, and it’s frustrating… and I’m not sure the wine industry deserves it, but we certainly need this help and are incredibly fortunate for these women’s perepsectives.
I think that our current wine education is laughable, or maybe cry-able. It needs to re-envisioned and re-designed from the ground up, literally. It creates and reinforces an entire structure of prejudice and exclusion that is not only cringe-worthy, but completely unacceptable. If anyone wants to help me build a better wine education, please contact me at connect@organicwinepodcast.com.
In the meantime, I’m so glad to help Joyce and Charity swing the wrecking ball through our current wine education.
Joyce is a force of nature, in the best sense. If you are a wine educator and you want to learn, to really learn, you want her in your class. But let me leave you with a warning that Joyce sent to me in a text, her words, quote:
The air becomes still, reminiscent of the calm before a big storm. The sheep stop grazing and look out in the field. A shadowy figure emerges from the horizon and slowly approaches… is it an alien? Is it the death angel? No. That would be too quick and merciful. It’s Joyce Jones… and she’s hungry.
Gird your loins, and Enjoy!
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