If you want glitz and glam in the Napa Valley, you are spoiled for choice: manicured lawns, limousine parking spaces and fancy tasting rooms are standard fare in the region dubbed the Disneyland of wine by jealous rivals. But Cathy Corison’s no bells or whistles approach to life – and winemaking – provides a blast of fresh air.
Corison’s winery is functional rather than flamboyant: the “tasting room” is the winery, and the furniture consists of a wooden bench balanced on two barrels. There’s even a pallet of wine sitting by the entrance awaiting collection, requiring a slight shimmy to get through the cellar door. Yes, you have entered a working winery and there’s neither a lion statue nor a fountain in sight.
And Cathy is a female winemaker. Okay, so that might not be a big deal in 2013, but it certainly was back in 1975 when – fresh out of university with a biology degree – she hopped in her VW Bug and arrived in the Napa Valley.
“Napa Valley was very rural back then and perhaps even depressed,” Corison recalls. After taking a job in a local wine store, she studied to become a winemaker, although she didn’t receive much encouragement from teaching staff: “Women didn’t do production then. My professor told me I would not get a job in the Napa Valley.”
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