Women Who Crush; the women behind Cork and the bottles on the shelf

CORK: Vermont’s only all-natural wine shop and restaurant is a project spearheaded by Danielle Nichols in 2011. Her original goal may have been to showcase rad natural wines and serve tasty snacks to her friends and neighbors, but in the process of doing so, she’s also created a business founded on empowering women and highlighting products made by women around the world. 

Cork is a community-based wine bar and restaurant which recognizes individual talent alongside the power of collaborative action. In the kitchen, behind the bar, in the shop, behind the scenes or in front of the camera, women shape and transform spaces like Cork into welcoming and unique venues where the personal is professional, coworkers are family, and customers are stakeholders in a larger goal of equity, expression, and enthusiasm for our work. We want to bring that energy of collaboration and, more than ever, kindness, into everything we do- including the wines we choose to showcase. As a result, you’ll find selections from women winemakers get more real estate on our shelves than in many other conventional wine shops. And we’re super proud of that. We think it’s important as women business-owners, managers and partners to help level the playing field and bring these deserving voices into conversation. Here’s why and how we do it.

 As Vermont’s only all-natural wine shop and restaurant, we focus on bringing wines to our community which reflect our own ecologically-minded values. Organic, low-intervention, small-production wines which are created in harmony with the environment and help sustain our healthy lives while supporting independent producers who do things the right way. Crucial to our mission is to highlight those who work against major commercial systems and outmoded traditions in the wine world to make completely kick-ass bottles that challenge what we think we know about a region, a grape, a style, and a way of winemaking. At the forefront of these are women winemakers. In a field dominated by male ownership and production, with an unfortunate “boy’s club” mentality toward mentorship, press coverage and critical review, these vigneronnes not only face an uphill battle in being educated and working in winemaking, they’re constantly facing hurdles as business owners and producers in their own right. And despite all this (and maybe, indeed, BECAUSE of all this,) they create some of our absolute all-time favorite wines. We’re a woman-owned, woman-run business, and it’s these wines that symbolize our entire ethos, and are classic stand-out examples of how freakin’ delicious and accessible natural wine can be. Rogues, originals, iconoclasts—these are the ladies who CRUSH.

To name a few…

Iole Rabasco of Vini Rabasco

Faith Foster Armstrong of Onward Wines

Martha Stoumen of Martha Stoumen Wines

Judith Beck of Weingut Judith Beck

Sabina Cantarelli of Montemelino 

Athénaïs de Beru of Chateau Beru 

Brianne Day of Day Wines

Janie Brooks Heuck of Brooks Winery

Barbara Ohlzelt of Weingut Barbara Öhlzelt

Elisabetta Foradori of Foradori

Arianna Occhipinti of Occhipinti

...and many more, always evolving, always searching, and always enthused.