Using Wine as a Catalyst for Change

Teneral Cellars 2018 Disrupt Now Cabernet Sauvignon

While working in politics, Jill Osur realized that at every great event she attended, there was some great wine on the table. She immediately began a quest to find her preferred style and instead discovered that wine can be a conduit to great conversations, community building and fundraising.

She left the political landscape for a much tougher industry: distribution. Osur found employment with a small distributor working to build brands and compete against the larger players, like Southern Wine & Spirits.

One of the brands she helped grow was Myka Cellars and Osur eventually left the distributor to work directly with the winery. They built two brands, employed 54 people and quickly became the fastest growing wine group in El Dorado County.

“But then, like so many people, it took a crisis to change your path,” Osur said. She, like so many Americans, followed the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and while sitting at home under COVID lockdown asked herself, “What am I doing as a leader in the wine industry to be part of the solutions I wanted to see.”

Growing up in a Jewish family, Osur said she was taught tikkun olam—repair the world. “I was very used to standing up and speaking out for social and racial justice issues, and yet I found that I had become very tame in an industry that is steeped in tradition and dominated by men,” she said. Then, after she posted about the Black Lives Matter movement on the winery’s social media page, she was asked by the winery’s largest investor to resign.

It made her rethink how she uses her voice. Osur turned to the numbers: 10 percent of winemakers across the country are women. Only 0.1 percent are Black. Female winemakers make 70 cents on the dollar to their male counterparts. All this and yet women make 67 percent of wine purchases.

She wanted to disrupt the industry, and be the change she wanted to see. After giving herself permission to do something daring but that truly aligned with her integrity and voice, she launched Teneral Cellars, a 100-percent woman-owned and -run company on a mission to reshape the wine industry to reflect its largest consumer and give back.

Teneral is the moment in which a dragonfly comes out of its cast and is in its most vulnerable state; Osur chose this as the winery’s icon because it represents the transformation she wants to see. “Its wings are colorless, and it can’t fly, but within a few days it gets its full colors and spreads its wings and takes off with amazing power, grace and grit,” she explained. “We all have that power within us. We just have to claim our power, spread our wings and fly.”

Her company only uses sustainably farmed grapes, purchases supplies from companies that are owned by women or people of color, works with a female-owned distributor and donates 10 percent of profits to organizations that empower women and fight for gender and racial justice—attempting to harness the power of business for good.

Every quarter, her advisory board, made up of an incredibly diverse group of women, helps her choose a new theme based on the charity they would like to support. In 2021, the first full year of operation, the company gave more than $51,000 to organizations like the National Women’s Law Center, the Endometriosis Foundation of America, Generation W, World Central Kitchen and several local charities. Themes for these El Dorado wines centered around influential women like former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and tennis great Billie Jean King.

“I feel like I can use wine as a conduit for change. We do a lot of virtual experiences. We even bring in some diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging training because wine allows people to relax a little bit so they can open up to have those necessary conversations,” Osur said. She’s working to find a home for Teneral in the Sierra Foothills, a place for women to gather for wine and wellness retreats or for community events.

“I love hosting and using wine as an amazing vehicle for creating the kind of change I want to see in the world.”