Choosing the wine world at a young age

By Madeleine Hill Vedel

Sun contributor

As I round out my series on women in wine in Leelanau County, I feel a sense of elation inspired by the women I have met and the many jobs and opportunities that our local wine industry now offers. I have met winery owners, vintners, and vineyard managers, and in this last profile, a self-described cellar rat. For some it is a family affair; for others it is the fruit of a focused education and progressively more responsible positions. They range from their mid-twenties to their late fifties. I am struck by what appears to be a generational shift. Where for those over 40, this is a second career, or an unexpected turn in their life, those in their thirties and younger are choosing the wine world. Though aware that it is a world populated overwhelmingly by men, they know there is room for them to make their own mark. The winery industry requires the skills of many individuals: the farmer, the scientist, the blender/taster, the salesman, the communicator, the front person. Some of these positions are more physically demanding than others. Many shift depending on the season. Few days resemble others.  As my latest interviewee, Madison Vandenberg says:

In the beginning I was intimidated by the manual labor aspect. I’m 5’5” and 140lbs. I’m not going to be able to pump the pallet jack. I’m not going to be able to use my body weight to do that. And there are things I can’t reach. But there are workarounds. I can stand on a bucket, or a ladder. I can get a wrench or a hand tool, or use the forklift. I’ve gotten over the imposter syndrome, that this is a man’s world for a reason.

At 27, Madison, the youngest person I interviewed, sees before her the examples of Megan Budd, Kasey Wierzba, Paula Ciccone, and her boss, Taylor Simpson. She knows that her passion can be her career and resonates the assurance and excitement of someone who is on her chosen path. Thus her story is a fitting conclusion to the series, a woman of the millennial generation, enthusiastically integrating this world, learning and exploring on the job, clear-eyed in her ambitions.

Madison VandenBerg came to wine culture in a very personal way:

I discovered wine when I treated myself to a seven-course food and wine pairing in Portland Oregon. It was just a treat, and it was the first time that I had encountered a sommelier. I’d just turned 21 and I was loving it. He asked me, ‘On a scale of one to ten, how nerdy do you want to be?’ and I said seven. He was able to tell me the name of the dog at the winery whose wine I was drinking!

Following that propitious night, she began reading on her own and went tasting whenever possible. When she joined the Peace Corps in 2016 and left for Zambia, The World Atlas of Wine was in her suitcase, there to be studied by candlelight under the thatched roof of her hut. During the rare moments she connected to the internet – this depended on her biking 40 miles to town – she downloaded wine focused pod casts. 

“I knew all the crus of Beaujolais and the wines of Argentina.” She says, laughing.

Upon her return to Grand Rapids after her 27 months of service in the Peace Corps, she had an existential moment. “If I’m so passionate about this, it could be a potential career, not just a hobby.” She considered moving out to Oregon or California to look for a job working a wine harvest. However, in the end, the allure of Northern Michigan—and the presence of brewery tours by kayak and winery tours by bicycle—drew her in. This might just be the kind of place where she could settle.

A year ago July she came up to the area, camped out for a weekend, and sent out feelers to investigate jobs in the industry. Aurora Cellars got back to her first. Madison then found herself a place to rent in Suttons Bay, paid up front her first four months of rent, and committed to four months of harvest work; she would decide after if she liked the work and wanted to continue.

It was a huge learning curve. The whole first year was a learning curve: cleaning out tanks, setting up hoses, the crush pad. We had a seventeen-hour day, long hours, but I loved it, and I now know that the wine industry is what I want to be in for sure…. I’ve just turned 27, and it’s nice to know … [it’s nice] to stop vagabonding.

Working under the direction of winemaker Drew Perry, Madison is learning on the job. She is following the age-old tradition of interning under a master of the craft, with the goal of working as many harvests and vintages as possible to gain experience and knowledge on the ground, rather than return to school to learn in a classroom setting. 

Others in the industry say it’s on the job that you learn. Get as many vintages in as possible. And in the Custom Crush model at Aurora Cellars, I see so many wine varieties, models, and styles.

Though Northern Michigan is starting to feel like home, Madison is open to the possibilities of doing seasons in Germany or South Africa or even New Zealand. “I have a skill now. The cool thing about cellar work is that it is pretty universal. It’s something you can only learn by doing. I can clean tanks, hoses, blend wine anywhere. … I enjoy most things about the job: the lab work, running sulfur tests, inoculating wines. I’m learning the forklift, that’s fun.”

Every opportunity to learn more, she grasps: conferences, meetings, visiting the local wineries, getting to know her colleagues and the industry. Focused and enthusiastic, Madison radiates a poise and energy that is infectious. Curious, I ask her if she feels if being a woman has been a factor in or affected how she is received in the industry. Her response: “So far, for me it’s been a non-issue.”

And she goes on to point out that she’s fully aware of the stereotypes, that when she visits a winery and tells them she works in the industry, they generally assume she works in a tasting room. But she corrects them and the reactions she receives are welcoming and encouraging—even going so far as to shift the perspective towards the advantages of being a woman:

Some believe that women have better olfactory senses. That might differentiate me in the cellar somehow. I’m still working on my palate and detecting faults. If I can master this, it might come in handy down the line.

There is always more to learn, and no two years are alike in winemaking. Madison takes full advantage of the fount of knowledge in the person of wine maker Drew Perry, arriving many mornings with questions inspired by a book or magazine she has read, or a podcast she listened to the night before. If there’s downtime at the winery she’ll pour through Drew’s college textbooks on wine microbiology and wine chemistry, or soaking up The Natural History of Wine, the collaboration of anthropologist and scientists Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle. 

Madison’s positive attitude is infectious. She sees herself as lucky to have chosen this industry, in this place, in this moment in time. She shares the view that Leelanau County and Northern Michigan wineries on the whole are on the cusp of a transition towards national and international recognition. And that this will inspire expansion and more possibilities. Will the area continue its move away from cherries towards more grapes? Will some of those prime hillsides now covered in cherry orchards shift towards grapes? “There’s so much land and so much potential. We’ve only just begun. It’s cool to be in such a hot region.” 

I depart uplifted and excited as well.