The woman in charge of wine at Biltmore

"Wine is my boss!"

Yet wine can be a finicky boss, susceptible to weather and other whims of Mother Nature, not to mention changes in customers' taste. No one knows that better than Sharon Fenchak, head of winemaking at Biltmore Winery in Asheville, North Carolina.

The grapes sometimes cause headaches, but they are the source of her joy and the main ingredient for the winery's wide range of 45 different wines on offer. They make everything possible.

The company is a major wine producer based at the Biltmore Estate, an 8,000-acre property in the Blue Ridge Mountains with a 250-room French chateau still owned by descendants of the famous Vanderbilt family. It has long claimed to be the most-visited winery in the country. Last year, despite the coronavirus pandemic, they made around 2 million bottles of wine.

During pandemic closures, the winery was able to stay open since it was considered an essential food-related business. So even while the mansion, gift shops and restaurants closed, the winery kept buzzing with its staff of 20 employees together in production and the vineyard. The few who were temporarily furloughed are now all back; no jobs were lost. Many other businesses in the area didn't fare so well.

Still a man's wine world

Fenchak, who is from Pennsylvania, is the third winemaker in the company's history. Both her predecessors were Frenchmen. She studied food science before working at small wineries in Georgia in the southern US.

When she started work at Biltmore in 1999 as assistant winemaker, she was the only woman in the whole place. In 2003, she was made winemaker and in 2018 she was promoted to vice president of wine production, which means she is in charge. This puts her in a select group of women winemakers. Even with recent advances, only around 10% of American wineries have women as head wine masters.

She admits it may have taken a while to gain the respect of her colleagues, but she never really gave it much consideration. "I never thought I couldn't do something," she told DW.

Questions about being a woman in a man's field also never really came up until around three years ago, which shows a welcome new attitude, she said. Today her assistant winemaker and lab assistant are now also both women. For her, though, it is important to have the most qualified person regardless if they are a man or woman.

Wine is a specialized science

For Fenchak, wine is science. True, its raw material comes from nature, but creating it requires chemistry and specialty knowledge. Just to understand the business takes around three years she believes. In this regard, Biltmore has the advantage of many long-term employees. Some have been there 20 or even 30 years.

The minute grapes enter the winery she and her team start checking them for quality, sugar and PH levels. Keeping temperatures regulated is of the utmost importance right from the beginning. She checks the fermentation, making tiny adjustments if needed. Daily walkthroughs and team mentoring are part of the job. After all that is done, she can work on budgeting, costs or personnel.

When time is left, she can dream up new wines. This requires great skill. "I need two years to bring an idea to the shelf, if I have the grapes or can buy them," she said. "If I have to find the grapes or plant them myself, it is double so long. But I have a lot of creative freedom."

At the end of the day it is a dirty job and she often goes home in grubby clothes. Despite being the public face of the drinks enterprise, she always tries to remain focused on winemaking.  

A long time in the making

But it wasn't always like this. The hills around Biltmore didn't always glow with grapes. In fact, when the property first opened to the public in 1930, the building that now houses the winery was a dairy — one big enough to milk hundreds of cows twice a day.

In the 1960s, George Vanderbilt's grandson, William Cecil, took over the estate and thought wine could help pay the bills. In the 1970s, he experimented with different grapes and set up a provisional bottling room. By the early 1980s he took out a multimillion-dollar loan to invest in his dream.

Officially called Biltmore Estate Wine Co. the company was established in 1983. The dairy was refurbished and opened to the public in 1985. Despite hiring an experienced French wine master, it was a big gamble. The local weather can bring unwanted frost and rain. And would anyone even buy or invest in wine made in the Appalachian Mountains?

A bright future

Nonetheless, demand has grown so much that today only 10% of the grapes needed come from North Carolina in a good year. The rest is bought from trusted growers in California and Washington. Personally selected by Fenchak, these grapes let the winery offer a wider range of wines. It is something most wineries do to meet demand. No matter where the grapes are from, the majority is processed and bottled at Biltmore all year long — four days a week for wine and one day for sparkling wine.

Since taking charge Fenchak has brought in her own style. The biggest change is her sense of adventure, "trying to follow trends more quickly or trying things like blends to see what might work."

Surprisingly, sourcing grapes from other places is the most complex part of the job at the moment. As in other industries, supply chains are strained. Droughts in California and the pandemic have made this an "interesting" challenge she said. Meeting these new difficulties is eased because of Biltmore's many long-term relationships with growers.

But the whole place was founded with a long-term view to the future. Today, 36 years after opening its doors, millions upon millions of bottles of fine Biltmore wine have left for tables across the country. This liquid legacy has helped keep the Vanderbilt name alive and is now all under the watchful eye of its first female winemaker.