Julia Coney is a wine writer and educator based in Houston and Washington, D.C., who regularly leads tastings and teaches wine classes. “I’ve seen both innate prejudice and innate assumptions about who has the power and the discernment. I’ve been told I look like the help.”She has grown tired of the tokenism, of being the only black person invited to a tasting or on a sponsored trip to a wine region. She is sick of seeing the wine industry toss money only to white social-media influencers. So she has created a database, Black Wine Professionals, in hopes that white gatekeepers who say they want to diversify will use this tool.

Source: New York Times June 29, 2020 15:43 UTC