It’s Black History Month, and the Wine Pairing Weekend Bloggers (#WinePW) are Celebrating BIPOC Winemakers & Winery Owners. We’ll also be gathering on Twitter on Saturday, February 13th at 11 am ET to share our finds. Feel free to join us by following #WinePW. Our host this month is Nicole from Somm’s Table. Check out her preview post here.

I had never heard of the McBride Sisters before searching for BIPOC winemakers and winery owners for this post. I searched online for wines to be delivered to my door and found that because people are focused on this topic this month, there are many wineries to choose from. I find it somewhat like International Women’s day, March 8th. Why should we only celebrate BIPOC winery owners and winemakers in February, why not all year long. I commit to writing about and buying wines from BIPOC winey owners all year. I’ve always been focused on Women in wine. Always. Now I’ll add a new series about wineries owned by BIPOC owners and winemakers. I’ll be looking for good wines and good stories to share.

I found the McBridge Sisters collection of wines readily available at Total Wine, a mega store which delivers to my location and probably yours too. Their story is pretty incredible, two half-sisters who met each other in their 20s from two different continents, one in California and one in New Zealand, Robin and Andréa. NPR did a couple of segments on them which are great to listen to. The sisters found their calling and cemented their bond over wine and a thriving business was born in 2005.

The wine I tried from their Black Girl Magic line was a lot of fun. They created this line to celebrate Black women and their resilience. Certainly 2020 showed their resilience of Black women and their power in the US to change the course of history. Be it Stacy Abrams in Georgia or Kamala Harris, our first ever female Vice President, I think it’s safe to say we all saw what strong black women bring to the table and the direction that they have moved our country in and I for one, couldn’t be more thankful. January 20th was the best day I have had in a long time, four years to be exact.

While I am extremely interested in politics, I recognize this is a wine blog, so back to the wine. It’s a Rose sourced from vineyards in Paso Robles, Edna Valley and Monterey AVA’s of the Central Coast of California and Hawkes’ Bay Region of New Zealand.

Tasting Note:

Light salmon in hue, it had strawberry and citrus on the nose with delicate rose petals as a backdrop. On the palate the wine was straightforward with the same aromas I found on the nose and a touch of grassy, raspberry as well. Refreshing with good acidity and some RS, I could see drinking a bottle of this wine at a party, a picnic, or any given Sunday. I love Rose all year and this was a nice edition to my rose files.

Pairing:

I’ve been a bit under the weather all week and dinners have been easy to make dishes. I had a Salmon croquette but an easy version. Left over fresh salmon to which I added onions, and an egg to bind it all together, seasoned Italian breadcrumbs and about 6 minutes frying in a pan with olive oil, salt and pepper and voila, a delicious and easy dinner. It was perfect with the Rose which was neither over nor underwhelming. Balanced and delicious, both warmed my soul and were part of a lovely evening spent finishing the last episodes of the Crown, my adult soap opera.

The sisters have been a very successful business and also give back which is another reason to support them. It’s like a book my son is reading in Kindergarten about being helpful and how ordinary people can do extraordinary things through their efforts. “The McBride Sisters SHE CAN Professional Development Fund” was created in 2019 to promote the professional advancement of women in the wine industry in a concerted effort to help close the gender and race gap. According to the website, “In the first year, the fund awarded scholarships of nearly $40,000 to empower women to strive for change and to create opportunities for themselves and others, where there had not been before.” That’s pretty awesome and it’s exciting to see people giving back. These ladies are also super smart marketers. To support the SHE CAN fund, they also have a SHE CAN line of spritzers in a can.

Reading their blog, I was impressed as well by how they wrote about the horrors of the slave trade and tied it to culinary history.

“People were being forced from their homes in Africa, they brought traditions, stories and distant memories of their homeland with them. Over many years, the slave trade was bringing a large and constant influx of people to Brazil, Columbia, the Carribbean and the United States. These movements brought culinary artists and expert agriculturalists across the Atlantic ocean, leading to a re-energized African culture that was incubated and permeated throughout rural and urban cooking throughout North and South America. The result was deeply rooted culinary excellence in new and evolved cooking styles, recipes, spices and flavors.” 

Learning about these impressive sisters and their mission to help other women was eye-opening and inspiring. Reading their blog and their focus on traditions, history and politics as well as typical elements one would expect such as Valentine’s pairings, was a real joy. I will be following these sisters and look forward to trying other wines in their collections. Cin-Cin.

Check out what my fellow #WinePW bloggers have discovered thus far:

• Truffle Chip-Crusted Goat Cheese Truffles + McBride Sisters Brut Rosé from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• The Many Talents of John Legend on A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Family and Wine Go Together for These Black-owned Businesses from My Full Wine Glass
• Black-Eyed Peas with Collard Greens and Maison Noir OPP by Cooking Chat
• Where’s Linus Sauvignon Blanc with a Shaved Vegetable Salad, Crostini, and Scallops on Cauliflower Rice Risotto from Crushed Grape Chronicles 
• A Taste of Theopolis Vineyards from ENOFYLZ
• Pairing Crab Legs with Carmen Stevens’ Sauvignon Blanc by Our Good Life
• “Meet Cheramie Law: Black, Female, and Founder of Texas’ Cheramie Wine” from The Corkscrew Concierge
• Sipping Wines from the McBride Sisters Black Girl Magic Line by Avvinare
• Camins 2 Dreams: When a Chumash Winemaker Meets a Spanish One And Sparks Fly from Gwendolyn Alley, Wine Predator
• And on Somm’s Table,  our host Nicole shared An Inauguration Day Toast with Bodkin The Fearless Blanc de Blanc and Cauliflower Curry

We’ll also be gathering on Twitter on Saturday, February 13th at 8 am PT/ 11 am ET to share our finds. Feel free to join us by following #WinePW