We, the organizing members of Wine Versus, want to personally apologize for the harm that was done to the community during our last live event. We did not properly prepare for the addressing of racially insensitive language during the event, and we did not immediately step in to correct it when it occurred. We understand that using the term “Viticultural Racism” to describe a distaste for non-vinifera grapes ignores, erases, and disrespects the impact that actual racism has in the real world, and that not correcting this language is a violent act against BIPOC, both in the audience and in the greater wine community.

We believe in accessibility, inclusion, and equity in all wine spaces, and we failed to provide for that in this case. The work we plan on doing to remedy this moving forward, to be completed before we plan our next event, is as follows:

This apology is being sent directly to all attendees of the event
All founding members will be attending Allyship and Active Bystander training
We will be working with a group of BIPOC wine professionals to better prepare ourselves for future events
Will will be inviting BIPOC members to our organizing group and we will ensure that they are better represented on our panels moving forward
We will update our code of conduct to better reflect these values and continue to ensure that all panelists in future events agree to abide by it, and are reminded of it at the start of any events

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