2019 Green Fellow Gabriela Fontanesi featured in wine blog The Fizz 

2019 Green Fellowship alumna Gabriela Fontanesi produced a paid internship opportunity for descendants of California vineyard workers on the UC Davis Student Farm, along with educational opportunities as a part of her fellowship project. 

Amidst the outbreak of a global pandemic, she worked collaboratively to adapt workshops on sustainable vineyard management with help from mentor James R Muck, Field Operations Coordinator at the UC Davis Student Farm.  

Gabriela graduated with a degree in Viticulture and Enology from UC Davis in 2020.  She has big plans for her future and hot takes regarding racial equity, environmental sustainability and the economics of wine.  

From Gabriela's interview with The Fizz:

Steve and Jill [Matthiasson] were original donors to the Green Fellowship, and I reached out to Steve to talk about some of the realities I was noticing in the industry. I partnered with Steve to make an organic vineyard management series at U.C. Davis. We got together and opened up a class on organic farming within vineyard spaces through the student farm.

A lot of the student farm branding speaks to folks who have never farmed before and want to learn. It was an amazing opportunity to get to work on the student farm as someone who had never worked in agriculture, but we need to also create equitable opportunity for those who have worked in agriculture. We need these students to be in this space because we benefit from having folks who have generational knowledge and life experience in the field.

I’d like to leverage both my education and my knowledge of the industry to have these meaningful conversations. I’d like to use my privilege to benefit not only the wine industry, but also our larger food systems. It’s not sustainable to maintain our status quo.

Read more of Gabriela's thoughts on labor activism and the future of the wine industry in the original Substack post from The Fizz.