Sukari Bowman in the Spotlight

Sukari Bowman carries a glow about her.

Her light is so potent, so pure, that it warms me even over the phone. It’s been a heavy month — peaceful protests surge through our communities and our collective consciousness aches with the strain of the work that needs to be done. I’m feeling exhausted mentally, physically, and emotionally. Opening Instagram feels like pressing my thumb into a bruise on my heart. But here I am, at the end of a long work day, with a glass of wine in hand and Sukari’s soothing voice slowly coaxing me back towards hopefulness.

As the host of the podcast The Color of Wine and author of the website Love and Vines, Sukari’s mission is to put the spotlight on people of color in the wine industry. The Color of Wine is in its seventh season, and though listeners get an unfiltered glimpse into the lives of Sukari’s passionate guests, we rarely have the opportunity to learn more about her own path to wine. It’s a privilege to spend a couple hours on the phone with her, learning more about who she is and how she came to do this extraordinary work, long before showcasing diversity in the industry was fashionable. In her own words, “So much of why we are where we [African Americans] are is because people have chosen to tell their own versions of history. Our history.”

So here it is: Sukari Bowman steps into the spotlight.

LA: Why and when did you start The Color of Wine? What was your motivation and how did the idea come about?

SB: It actually started with tragedy. I’d just moved back to Atlanta to New York — I was tired after 14 years of the city working in commercial real estate finance. My dad got very sick and passed away seven months after my move. We (my brother and I) flew to Southern California to be with our family, and on the way back to Atlanta I had an epiphany that the rat race wasn’t my life. My father would want me to live my life to the absolute fullest because that’s just who he was.

A little while later I was sitting on my porch, reading a wine publication (that shall go unnamed!) and drinking a glass. I suddenly started feeling so pissed off. I was thinking, “I drink wine, my friends drink wine, my 92 year-old grandmother drinks wine. I know African Americans make wine, so why aren’t we represented anywhere in this magazine?”

I called my brother — he’s a chef and music producer. We were trying to figure out where we, African-Americans, fit in to the world of wine and how. I was on the treadmill one day listening to a wine podcast and the host happened to be interviewing André Hueston Mack. His story fascinated me so much I almost fell off the treadmill.  The woman next to me literally asked, “Are you okay?!” But I jumped up, went home, called my brother and was like, “We are going to start a podcast and it’s going to be called The Color of Wine!”

The more I researched and the more I talked to people, the more my wine family grew. People would contact me and say, “Sukari do you know this person?” It was a lot of hard work but it all came together organically just by other people knowing what I was trying to do with The Color of Wine and connecting me to their industry friends. It’s become much larger than myself. I’ve interviewed probably 70 people over the span of 3 years. 

LA: The pride and joy you take in your work is evident. It’s amazing to be on the phone with you and feel how infectious that excitement is. What do you love most about hosting The Color of Wine? How has that love evolved over seven full seasons?

SB: Well, what we’ve done with The Color of Wine is create a much-needed oral history of people of color in the American wine industry. I started by thinking that I was being led to create this podcast, that the podcast was something I was supposed to do. What I’ve realized over the last couple years is that it’s almost the other way around. I was supposed to meet the amazing people on this podcast, they were supposed to be in my life and The Color of Wine was just a way of connecting with them. The biggest impact is realizing that some of my guests are now my family. These connections go so much deeper than just work — we help each other with whatever we need. There’s no price I can put on the impact my guests have had on my life.

When I first started, I was so concerned about having the “best” podcast out there. When you’re so focused on the outcome you lose a little of the joy of what you’re doing. It took a little trial and error to figure out what I really wanted the final product to look like. After my first season I wanted it to seem like it was just me and my guest, sitting on the sofa, opening a bottle of wine and getting completely lost in conversation. I found joy in the conversation, and realized the more comfortable I am the more comfortable my guest is. It’s great to realize that we’ve both finished a bottle of wine (each) and we’ve been chatting for an hour and forty-five minutes. That’s where I started to find the joy.

LA: You’ve created an inclusive and welcoming corner of the wine industry for people of color. Did you anticipate that happening when you started the podcast?

SB: Making this podcast has opened my eyes to a part of the wine industry that I always wanted to be a part of but had never really seen. So many times, I’ve felt like, “Oh my gosh this is exactly what I was looking for.” I was looking for this space to connect with wine and to connect with my own passion. Creating a space that celebrates people of color in the industry gives me a home base; I can go out and explore the world of wine confidently because I have a ‘home.’ I can adventure and feel that there is a connection no matter where I go — because I carry all these stories, all these connections with me. Not only am I able to then share those stories with other people, but I feel more comfortable sharing my own.

LA: Yes! It’s not often that we get to hear from you like this. What’s your personal journey been around sharing your personal story?

SB: Well, my brother keeps saying I need to do an episode where I get interviewed. He says, “We’re going to put you in the hot seat, do a deep dive.” I’ve stayed away from that for a long time. There’s a part of me that I try and keep safe; there’s a part of me that I want to hold back privately. But I realize that I need to start sharing more about who I am, about where this project has brought me.

At the end of last year I needed to take a minute. My 9 to 5 was insane, I was completely exhausted and after my last interview I felt like a weight had been lifted. I realized that something was not right. I called my brother in December and said, “I think I need to take a little time off.” I had moments in January and February where I started to feel that little spark in my belly, and then over the past month and a half that spark started turning into a fire. That’s when I realized that what we are doing is so much bigger than us, so much bigger than me and my brother. I started feeling a sense of responsibility, honor, pride in what we are doing.

In the past two weeks having all of these people follow us, all of these people reaching out to us, I was thinking about the fact that no one knows my story even though everyone knows my guests’ stories. There was a part of me that said, “It is time for you to tell your story, Sukari.” It’s time for you to get comfortable with being a little uncomfortable. You have to get in the front now — not forever, but for now.

LA: I love what you said about creating an oral history of people of color in wine. Can you elaborate more on the importance of documenting these voices given today’s political climate?

SB: So much of where we [African Americans] are here is because people have chosen to tell their own versions of history. Our history. As a Black woman growing up I learned African American history from my family, not from school. I learned history from my grandmothers (who are both still alive) and I’ve been able to compare that to what the majority of the folks in the country honestly believe is history.

Right now, it’s important to show people that what’s out there in the mainstream is not everything, not all of it. All of a sudden people are listening, and I’m less concerned with the “Why now?” than with the “What do we do next?” We have shown our anger and our frustration in a very open and vulnerable way. You can see it on TV, you hear it in our voices, and now it’s time to get on the battlefield and make some change. We need to cultivate our allies and relationships to effect change. We need to make use of the fact that people are waking up, we need to keep moving forward, and we have to keep sharing these stories. We are part of this industry just like we are part of the human race. Let’s really go out there and show people what we’ve done and what we are doing. Let’s do it now because we can.

LA: What do you hope the future of the wine industry looks like?

SB: For a long time I didn’t think about the future, mostly because I didn’t have a whole lot of faith that things would change. I didn’t allow myself to go there. We were moving and striving to attain and hit certain goals but for me, I just personally didn’t let myself think about the future so much. At this point, it’s less about what I hope to see in the wine industry than what I hope people feel. I want to go to a wine tasting and not feel like an outsider. I want to feel like I am a part of this industry and not just a piece of it. I don’t want to feel part of a community within the wine industry only because the whole doesn’t want us. For me the future is more of a feeling, the feeling of being wanted.

LA: Even though we’ve covered some hard topics during our conversation, my heart feels so much lighter. There’s been a lot of joy here, and I want to name that. Can we talk a little bit more about Black joy right now?

SB: Yes, we need to talk about what we [African Americans] love to do in the wine space, because that’s why we are here! The uncomfortable conversations are important but they’re also uncomfortable for everyone. They’re uncomfortable questions to ask and they’re uncomfortable questions to answer. But there’s another side to this, where our joy and our passion lie. That’s so important right now, at this time, to show that joy.

I love drinking Champagne and eating fried chicken. I love Beaujolais — not Beaujolais Nouveau, that’s not my personal cup of tea — but Cru Beaujolais. I could drink it all day, every day! We can find some joy in all this turmoil. I don’t want it to be just about the struggle because I am not just the struggle. Ultimately, I am a Black girl that loves wine.