Meet the Sisters Making Wine More Accessible for Black Customers

[Celerity]

See how the McBride sisters brought Black girl magic to wine shelves around the country.

https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/mcbride-sisters-collection-black-girl-magic-wine



As a budding oenophile, I’m always on the hunt for new wines to try and add to my growing, albeit small, collection. Although they say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, one of the first things that catches my eye is the wine label. This was definitely the case when I did a double take at one of the bottles belonging to the McBride Sisters Collection. In big, bold letters across the bottle read, “Black Girl Magic Rosé,” and I knew I had to have it. After further research, I learned there were even more options from the McBride Sisters Collection line and I mentally made room for them on my wine shelf.



A local Black-owned wine shop in Brooklyn called Happy Cork is to thank for my discovery of the McBride Sisters wine collections. It’s virtually impossible to scroll down the shop’s Instagram page without seeing a post about the McBride Sisters’ Black Girl Magic wine. Sunshine Foss, owner of Happy Cork, says the McBride Sisters collection is huge at the shop, but Foss says initially she had to search “high and low” for their products.



For Black-owned wine brands, systemic racism makes it difficult for them to have access and equal representation in the industry. Phil Long, president of the Association of African-American Vintners and owner of Longevity Wines, estimates that Black winemakers and brand owners make up less than 1% of all wineries in the U.S. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Happy Cork was one of the stores deemed essential, so the shop never shut down, including during the peak of the fight against racial injustice after the murder of George Floyd. “There was a huge push for anything Black-owned,” Foss says. “With the traction of all these Black-owned wine brands, McBride Sisters was obviously at the top of that list and we’ve not been able to even keep it in stock.”



Robin McBride, co-founder of the McBride Sisters Collection along with her sister Andréa McBride-John, notes one of the main challenges in starting their business was their initial lack of knowledge of how the industry functioned and the obstacles that accompanied it. “Obviously, we were women who were not wine professionals, and on top of that, we’re Black. So, it became obvious very quickly what the biases were in the industry, which was definitely a challenge,” McBride says. “We had to figure out how to jump over a lot of the gatekeepers and a lot of what the establishment in the industry is and speak directly to the consumer.” The two sisters started their business nearly 15 years ago, but McBride says during that time, the wine industry was not catered toward women or people of color.

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