Meet Jill Osur: CEO & Founder of Teneral Cellars
This interview has been edited for clarity. and was featured in the March 1, 2023 issue of Merobebe.
Merobebe
A quick ice breaker: If you could have any superpower related to wine, what would it be?
Jill
I would just say, like wine, I want to get better with time.
Merobebe
Oh that's a good one. And if you could have dinner with any wine industry figure, historical or contemporary, who would it be?
Jill
There are so many amazing women that have helped shape the wine industry like Madame Cliquot, or Isabelle Simi, or Hannah Weinberger, but I would love to have dinner with Master Sommelier Emily Wines. She is the current President of the Board for the Court of Master Sommeliers and she has done groundbreaking work to fight the sexual misconduct and assault accusations that hit the Court in 2020.
21 female students working through the rigorous programming of the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas (CMSA) said that they had been sexually intimidated, coerced, touched, and assaulted by male master sommeliers; in all, their accusations implicated nearly two dozen men. After a lengthy third-party investigation of 23 members of the CMSA, six male master sommeliers were stripped of their titles and ousted from the organization in November 2021—including Fred Dame, credited with founding the Americas chapter in 1987. With Emily leading the charge, she helped the Board rethink their internal systems and their power differential and influence as an organization, not just regarding certification programming but in the broader world.
With our mission at Teneral Cellars to reshape the wine industry to reflect its largest customer - women, I would love to have dinner with Emily and also allow her to pick all of the wines and take us on an amazing journey of fabulous food paired with the perfect wines. In full disclosure, Emily is one of our Advisors and we are blessed to have her be on this journey with us to create a more equitable world for all women.
Merobebe
You have a background in political fundraising, marketing and fundraising with the Special Olympics – a lot of nonprofit work and consulting. What interested you in wine, and what was the catalyst to finally getting involved in the wine industry?
Jill
I moved up to Berkeley in 1985 to play softball at Cal, and we were so close to Napa that I started visiting Napa. I fell in love with how wine connected people. And then, when I was a junior in college, I got very active in politics and every great party that I was at had wine. I just loved the way that when people would open a bottle, the best conversations would ensue.
And for me personally, over the years, every time I've had a significantly meaningful conversation with a group of people, there's wine on the table. And so I just – I love people. I loved the way it connected people and I just started thinking, I want to own a winery someday. And I want to create not only great, sustainably farmed wine, but I want to create a place where people can really gather, have great conversations, and have it be done in a meaningful way.
Merobebe
What does it mean to be an all-digital winery, and how has that provided opportunities for Teneral Cellars that may not have been available otherwise?
Jill
I started Teneral Cellars during Covid (in 2020), and in the first 8 weeks of Covid there had been more growth in ecommerce wine sales than there had been over the previous 8 years. This was a great opportunity for me to reach my customer base all over the country using a digital ad strategy and great social content. If I had been launching a brick and mortar location, it would have taken considerably more time for me to get up and running.
We are now in the process of getting a permanent physical location for Teneral Cellars so people can come and have an amazing wine experience, and also enjoy all of the community events we will be hosting so we can open a bottle and open the necessary conversations. Having started as an online brand, we have the customer base and the following to support this physical location once we open it in the spring.
Merobebe
Not only is Teneral Cellars 100% female-owned and operated, but you also donate 10% of all of the sales to charities that empower women and promote gender and racial equality. What goes into picking the charities that you donate to – and for those who don't know, each quarter you come out with a different [wine] pack [with proceeds] that goes to a different charity.
Jill
Part of it is what's happening in the world. I started Teneral Cellars to harness the power of business for good and to use wine as a conduit for change, but really the focus is on reshaping the wine industry to reflect its largest customer, which is women.
Almost 70% of all wine is purchased by women, but the industry doesn't come close to representing that. I think the number is maybe 14% female winemakers in California, but in [the United States] it's only 10% female. 0.1% Black winemakers, men and women. Female sommeliers, not all of them, but a majority of them are still making $0.70 on the dollar to their male counterparts. And when you look at the industry as a whole, even though there are women in tasting rooms, there are very few women in leadership positions and even fewer women of color.
Everything for me goes back to: how are we elevating women? How are we inspiring change and how are we being disruptive in what we do so that we can actually impact the number of the Global Economic Forum study, which says it's going to take 208 years in this country for women to achieve full equality if we don't do things disruptively differently?
What are those important topics? Some people might say, “is that political?” I don't think women's fundamental human rights are political. I don't think that when we're talking about women's health and the inequities that exist in healthcare, it's political.
So a lot of it is what's happening in the world. We try to plan as far out as we can but, like last quarter, when Roe was overturned and literally women's fundamental human rights were under attack, we did a “Ruthless” collection [celebrating Ruth Bader Ginsberg] so that we could focus on the fact that there are 52% women in this country, and there are simple things we can do so that nobody can take away that power.
We supported supermajority so that we could talk about majority rules, and we could talk about how we can vote with our dollar and be intentional and conscious about that. No one can take that away from us.
We can shift the dynamics in this country toward the majority, which are women. We wanted to focus on, “what does it mean when we attack women's rights?” and using female artists to create beautiful labels so that we can open up those necessary conversations. And also just giving amazing links to information because, you know what? Not all of your friends may agree with you, but our hope is that the wine will bring you all together to have the important conversations. If we can give you tools and conversation starters and real links to facts that you can print out that you can even use with the people that may disagree with, you can find those points of connection and use wine to do that.
So, we get input from our community. We have an advisory board that helps us select charities. We also talk to the organizations. We want to make sure that any funds that are going to them are really having the most impact possible, and not too much money is going toward overhead and things like that but to the actual mission.
It's fun and it’s tough because it's every quarter, and sometimes we're behind the eight ball. But it is a fun journey to figure that out and to think about the conversation starters that we put on the bottles, because those are really important, too – where the conversation goes from that point.
Teneral Cellars New Tasting Room in Plymouth, CA
Merobebe
I've always found that to be true. Where you're drinking wine, your inhibition is lowered a little bit and you start talking. With Teneral Cellars, I have always liked that there's the prompt – like those conversation starter type card games, but this comes on a bottle of wine so it’s 100% better!
Jill
For example, in our 208 collection, we asked “what systems need to change to remove the 208 [year] timeline [to reach gender equality in the U.S.]?” Just to ask that question, to think about how people are thinking about it. Maybe you haven’t even thought about the fact that it is systems that we have to change.
It made me think, what do we do disruptively different at Teneral Cellars? So committing to 100% of our vendors being women-owned or minority-owned means that I'm not going to be neutral. It’s like when RBG [was asked], “How many? When will there be enough women on the Supreme Court?” And her answer was, “when there are nine.” So in my mind it's like, yeah, if I did 50% or 51%, that would be nice. But if I do 100%, then I'm really actually impacting that number in a positive way.
Merobebe
That's amazing. Because you work with 100% women-owned vendors, has it been difficult to find vendors, just because there are so few women in the wine industry?
For example, I live in Los Angeles and Hollywood is always like, “Well, we couldn't find an Asian actor, we couldn't find xyz actor, so we had to cast a white person.”
Jill
Can we just call B.S. on that? I think when people say that, they didn't put the time and effort into doing that. And what's sad for me about that is that you truly are missing out on a diversity of voices and experiences and true representation which is so important. So to answer your question, yes, it's been challenging on a few fronts.
It was challenging to find a women-owned company that prints wine labels. Printing, no biggie, but printing wine labels. We found one, and the first one we weren't necessarily happy with the quality of their production, but now we have a fantastic women-owned printing company - they do amazing stuff. The other one that was challenging was finding a fulfillment house, but it turned out that probably the one that's closest to us up here where we are in El Dorado County is women-owned.
It's a mom and her daughter [that] run the company. It's fantastic. I do want to clarify – I started out with 100% women-owned [vendors/partners]. And I did transition to either women or minority-owned businesses because for me, yes, our focus is on women. But if I can also hire minority-owned business people that have been marginalized, it's making the right kind of impact.
We have a Black-owned company that helps us with some media buying. It's not majority-owned by a woman, but I feel very aligned that that is still the right play for us to make the kind of impact we want to make in the world.
Merobebe
What are some other ways you think that the wine industry can better support and also promote the work of female or minority wine producers or owners?
Jill
I think they have to take a step back and take an honest look at themselves and look at who their biggest customers are, because the industry isn't reflecting that. And I know the wine industry – we're not [so] isolated that we're the only one that has bad representation. I know [in] the music industry, there's only 10% female writers and producers.
And there's no way that – to your point earlier – it's like, “oh, we can't find any women that produce.” No, that's not the case. The majority of classrooms in wine right now, the seats are occupied by women but they're not necessarily being hired. And yes, there are lots of new female winemakers now that are starting their own companies.
But we need to really get the bigger companies to make that difference and to recognize how not only male dominated it is, but white male dominated, and to look at the necessary representation that is needed. It's wonderful that Black Girl Magic Wine [by] The McBride Sisters is doing well and getting huge support, but they can't be the only one.
Because if 70% of wine is purchased by women, then we should have that kind of representation on the shelf. I know a lot of big companies are doing their supplier diversity initiatives. I do believe they need to be a little more aggressive on that other than just posting that or saying that they're very committed to doing that.
There are big brands like Constellation Brands that are investing in women and minority-owned companies and circling them with expertise. I think that's a wonderful thing. But I do feel like there needs to be more public commitments to really shaking up the C-suite and giving women more opportunities to really move up that leadership ladder in the wine industry.
Merobebe
Absolutely, because like you were saying, there are plenty of women. Every time I go to a tasting room, it's full of women.
Jill
But those are women making minimum wage – it's like women in the front of the house in a restaurant, right? They're not the ones running the company. They're not the ones making the decisions. And that's where that has to change.
Merobebe
What advice would you have for women who want to get into the wine industry – and make more than minimum wage?
Jill
First of all, I would definitely push them over to the Women of the Vine and Spirits organization. They have a foundation that supports women getting into the wine industry. And then, when they're in the wine industry, to help them get further professional development to move up the ladder. There's lots of good resources there, lots of good information, lots of good topics and conversations and resources, and then they even tap into the WSET trainings that you can get if you're interested in doing that. [They’re] a wonderful organization that supports women and I would highly recommend anyone that wants to move up to at least check them out.
And then, knowledge is power. The more you know about your company and the more you even are aware of the lack of diversity, then maybe there's a possibility to really open up those conversations within the company and make the case of why it's so important to have that diversity of voices and experiences so that you can better reflect your customer base.
Merobebe
And bring your bottle of wine so everyone's ready to talk about it!
Jill
Exactly! Open a bottle, open a conversation.
Merobebe
That brings me to my last question. You mentioned that women sommeliers make $0.70 for every dollar a male sommelier makes, and also say that women are supertasters. What does that mean? How are we supertasters?
Jill
A woman’s palate is an amazing thing. There's an official test to become a supertaster, and there [have] been more women that have qualified as supertasters.
It's the dynamics in the industry that [make] getting your Master Sommelier certification extremely difficult. If you look at why there are fewer women, it's often because it's just such a tough journey to get there, especially if you're a woman and you have children, so there's a lot of women that tend to drop out.
It's not that women aren't qualified to be that. I mean, right now the president of the Court of Master Sommeliers is Emily Wines. And yes, that's her last name. She's got her seventh grade yearbook to prove that. She’s a supertaster – I think she was one of only 15 master sommeliers to pass all the tests on the first first round.
But Emily came in and it completely changed the Court of Master Sommeliers after the huge scandal that happened in 2020. So many of these men were literally abusing the women that they were supposed to be mentoring or bringing up. And we've made sommeliers, especially Master sommeliers – we've given them this rockstar status and they were abusing that power.
I think part of it is – I'm totally making this up from my own intuition – but I feel like women are more in touch with what we feel, and what we feel has a lot to do with what we taste and smell. I think there is something really beautiful about that.
I love the connection between tasting and smelling, and when all of your senses are heightened, it's like life, right? It's the energy you put into it, the love you put into making wine, how you enjoy it, how you sip it. But everyone has a unique palate. Your palate is uniquely yours. Mine is uniquely mine. I don't want to go drink a wine because somebody says I should drink a wine. I'd like to drink a wine that really pairs perfectly with my palate.
That’s why we brought this woman-owned technology on our website called Tastry. They've tested 179 million palates, they've tested our wines, and it's a 20 to 30 second test.
You take the test, it will shoot you back wines from Teneral Cellars that pair perfectly with your palate. And when you click on it, you'll see where the acid is, where the minerality is, all of these different things. You can start to understand your own palate so that that now, you'll maybe understand that when you say “I don't like chardonnay,” that you actually don't like buttery and oaky chardonnay, but you might really love a stainless steel chardonnay because it presents itself completely differently.
That's always a joy for me when I'm tasting. You know, two of our three chardonnays are unoaked, and it's just always fun when people are like,” Oh, I really like that!” We just released one that has a little oak on it. It's not over the top oaky and buttery, it's more of a mainstream. I [think] that everyone should just find the wines that they really like and also find the winemakers they like.
Because somebody will say, “I don't like merlot.” And I'm like, “well, is it for a reason other than the movie Sideways? Or what is it that you don’t really like?” And then I explain, you could give five different winemakers the same exact fruit and the wine will present itself in five very different ways because that's the artistic expression of a winemaker.
It's really about finding the styles you like, finding the winemakers you like. It's also obviously important for me that you find producers that sustainably farm and produce so that you're not putting toxins and chemicals in your body and damaging Mother Earth. But that's my preference.
Merobebe
It’s a perfect blend of art and science inside [the bottle].
Jill
Yeah it is. That is wine – the world of wine – when done right. Those are some of the issues with some of these huge, huge wineries. Everything is so mechanized and everything is a formula now that it's lost a lot of its artistic expression.