Team

Amy Bess Cook launched Woman-Owned Wineries in 2017 to help create greater equity in the wine industry.  As longtime brand and operations director for a boutique winery, she came to closely understand the inner workings of an independent wine business. Along the way, Amy Bess consulted for other wineries and vendors. She also studied enology and tried her hand at winemaking in a startup wine project of her own. Her broad and varied experience taught her firsthand some of the challenges women face in the wine industry, and motivated her to seek practical, positive solutions. Her efforts to uplift her colleagues have been featured in The New York Times,  The San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, and elsewhere. For this work, she was named Imbibe Magazine‘s “Wine Person of the Year”. After 22 years of living in Northern California, she recently returned to live in her native North Carolina to live in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.