When Fern Stroud was growing up, she would tag along with her father as he drove a tour bus taking visitors from their hometown of Berkeley, California, to Napa valley’s wine country. She would notice how happy people were after a couple hours into the trip, and think: “I can’t wait until I’m 21.”

However, Stroud’s first visit to wine country as an adult was anything but pleasant. The name of the winery has faded from her memory, but Stroud, who’s now 45 and identifies as LGBTQ, remembers the feeling and her unhealthy efforts to belong. “I would go into that space with my braids, just being me and be ignored,” she says. “I didn’t feel very welcomed. I would overdo it, spending way too much money to prove to them that I can be in that space. … I was like, that’s BS. Why can’t I just be treated like anyone else?”

Stroud turned that frustration into action, creating and curating Black Vines, a community of Black vintners who pour their wines for people in the Bay Area who look like them.

Starting with a small event at an art gallery in 2012, Black Vines now holds a yearly event that’s become a social highlight for Black wine connoisseurs in the Bay Area, including being named one of the best wine festivals in Alameda county by USA Today. It organizes other live events and has a membership program and has grown into a powerful economic engine for Black-owned wine businesses, connecting them with consumers who have largely been ignored by the mainstream wine industry.

“It’s about building a Black economic ecosystem through wine,” says Freda Statom-Greene, a non-profit executive who helps Stroud produce events. “Fern is all about connecting people and creating community.”

These days, Black Vines’ annual event in February – during Black History Month – draws nearly 1,000 people. Women with flowing braids and locs in fashionable clothing and blingy nails sip wines ranging from central coast pinot noir by Indigené Cellars to Ayaba’s peach sparkling wine named after the Egyptian queen Nefertiti. Most wineries pouring are emerging brands, but wine stars come out, too. Earl Stevens, also known as the rapper E-40, attended the event this year, with his eponymous label.

“Fern is a connector and passionate about Black wine and how it’s experienced,” says Robin McBride, co-founder of McBride Sisters Wine Co, one of the largest Black-owned wine brands in the US. “Anyone who’s ever met Fern knows that everything she does comes from a place of love and respect.”

Building community, sip by sip

As a young software developer, Stroud never intended to build a large wine event. She was just enjoying meeting people. “It was more about the people behind the wine,” she says. She was impressed with the Sterling family of Esterlina Vineyards who then owned the entire Cole Ranch monopole in Anderson Valley, saying: “For them to have the smallest AVA [American viticultural area] in the country and for it to be Black-owned … When I tasted their Riesling, it blew my mind.”

One tasting at a time, Stroud made the connections to create Black Vines. Lou Garcia, the owner of Stover Oaks Winery, introduced her to members of the Association of African American Vintners and Mac McDonald, the founder of Vision Cellars and the dean of Black winemakers in the US.

Over wine, they shared stories of how it felt to be the only Black winemaker at many events. “For me to hear those stories of being the only Black person in the room reminded me so much of my experience being in tech,” Stroud recalls.

In 2012, Stroud was making decent money for her age, and wanted to host a Black History Month event. She invited mixed-media artists to show sculpture and painting at a small gallery and booked a band, but wanted one more element – wine tasting.

Garcia of Stover Oaks remembers helping deliver the wine for the very first tasting. “They were small and we could talk to people about our wine,” he recalls. “Those were the good old days.”

That first event inspired Stroud to learn more about wine’s origins. She headed to South Africa, which has a winemaking tradition dating back 300 years. Touring the city of Stellenbosch, she learned to identify the taste of limestone in a viognier, sipped her first pinotage and met Ntsiki Biyela, South Africa’s first Black woman winemaker. “That’s when the bug really hit me,” she says. “I was like, this is dope and there’s so much learning that comes with it and it’s never-ending.”

In 2019, Stroud spent three weeks in France with her Black Vines team and wine educator and mentor, Melody Fuller. Stroud developed her palate and grew more confident in her wine knowledge, she says. She was still reveling in her French wine tour when the pandemic hit in 2020, and she was laid off from her tech job.

“I went full speed into entrepreneurship and it was the best decision I’ve ever made,” Stroud says. “We’ve grown exponentially.” Thanks to business development grants from the McBride Sisters She Can fund, Beyoncé’s BeyGood Foundation, and others, she’s been able to do more advertising, and elevate the event.

Expanding the focus

While Black Vines began as a safe space for Black consumers in the US to learn about wine, Stroud and her team are expanding their focus. They hosted an event in Belize in 2023, and they’re looking to offer business-development support and create programming for LGBTQ+, women and Latino winemakers.

“We’re reppin’ the underdogs in this wine space,” Stroud says. “Actually, I can’t call them the underdogs. They’re the thread and the fabric that allowed this industry to be.”

For Black wine lovers in the Bay Area, Black Vines has been a refuge. “I’ve been to damn near every Black Vines event,” says Brianna Rogers, an initiative officer with the San Francisco Foundation. Her all-time favorite wine is the sparkling rosé from Black Excellence Wine Co, but this year she fell in love with Khēmia, a smooth Napa valley cabernet sauvignon made by Hendersons’ Harvest. “I come because I’m trying to have more intentionality with how I operate as a consumer. Coming to a space like this makes it super easy to engage with Black winemakers, she says.

Newcomer Savannah Bundy was drawn to Wade Cellars’ chenin blanc and a Provençal rosé by La Fête Wine Co. “Aside from being a fun and chic party, Black Vines shines a light on how much gate-keeping there’s been as far as winemaking and selling go,” says Bundy, a chef and food writer. “It’s an important space for making the wine world feel accessible to Black people.”

• The headline to this article was amended on 1 April 2024. A previous version incorrectly stated Fern Stroud is a winemaker; she is a wine event curator.