Anaël is finishing his last year of agricultural engineering studies at ESA in Angers.
The 24-year-old young woman, specialized in viticulture and oenology, intends to get into the vineyard after finishing her studies, in France or abroad.
She told us about her journey, what her work-study training brings her, but also the difficulties of being a young woman working in the wine sector.
How did you get into viticulture?
Since I was 11 years old, I have known that I wanted to pursue viticulture and oenology.
I don't come from a family of winegrowers at all - I come from Normandy - but my father is a sommelier.
It was a profession that intrigued me and I moved towards viticulture after a scientific baccalaureate that I obtained in the United States where I went to live for a year.
I realized there that the engineering degree was a degree that really interested me.
When I returned to France in 2019, I obtained another scientific baccalaureate with the idea of joining an engineering school.
Did you try directly after the baccalaureate?
No, because I then did a DUT in Biological Engineering in Caen and I wanted to turn to agricultural engineering schools afterwards.
I have always loved science!
It's thanks to that that I made this choice and also because my parents had a restaurant and I told myself that I would never have a restaurant in my life.
I applied to ESA because I had good feedback from the school, which has a viticulture and oenology course, and I know Angers where the school is located: my grandparents moved there, so is a city that I like.
What do we learn in the agricultural engineering program?
We have courses focused on general culture in the wine world, on the common agricultural policy, on current events in the agricultural world in a fairly general way.
We then had marketing, entrepreneurship and business courses.
We specialize in the 4th year and everyone chooses their options: agri-food, viticulture, environment, animal production or plant production.
And a few theoretical courses depending on the sector, but the work-study students don't necessarily go there because in business, we see a lot of things.
Are you doing your schooling on a work-study basis?
Yes !
First two years on a wine estate in Monbazillac in Dordogne where I worked on winemaking in the cellar and in the vines in winter, then in Bonnezeaux in Maine-et-Loire where I did more business and marketing for the valorization of old sweet wines.
Also read: More girls in engineering schools?
“We need inspiring role models!
»
It was important for me to do technique before commerce, because the two go together.
It's easier to implement business strategies and sell a product when you know what you're talking about!
Did the internships also allow you to discover other companies?
In work-study terms we go on an internship in the summer, I went to Portugal in vino verde to do wine tourism and eco-responsibility of wine tourism.
What do you want to do when you graduate?
I finish in two weeks and I begin my dissertation, on the valorization of sweet wines.
It is a niche market for which there is a lot of stock of old vintages for sale, stocks which take time to sell.
Then, for the moment, my ideal is sourcing wine estates for import-export companies!
I would like to focus on commerce and marketing.
Or be commercial for a domain.
If I don't find it, the advantage is that we can go and do winemaking seasons, I would always have work in oenology, in France and around the world.
The wine sector is very accessible, even more so when you are French.
And the place of women in the sector?
Abroad, women in wine have been better perceived than in France, much more quickly.
Even more so if we add French training, which is highly valued.
In France, entering the sector when you are a woman becomes easier, but when I spoke with winegrowers when I was 14 or 15 years old, they all told me “you are a woman, in wine it is complicated, go train your arms abroad.”
Also read: In business or engineering schools, 60% of students think that men and women do not have exactly the same professional skills
Many winegrowers discouraged me, I even heard one who said to me: “a woman cannot enter my cellar, it will disrupt the wine”.
I was 14, he was 65!
Today, fortunately, this is less and less the case!
You are not discouraged!
No, and my parents have always supported me, because my father and I share the same passion.
It helped me enormously.
For her part, my mother always taught me that I had to fight and not get discouraged.
I never took what others told me at face value.