In Their Own Words: Bordeaux Mentor Week

Focusing on equity, inclusion and access, the Bordeaux Mentor Week is a boot camp of industry immersion, based out of a region that is crucial to the global wine trade. From harvesting to blending to meeting négociants and startups, our scholars return home with new knowledge, new skill sets, new contacts, and long-term support.

We bring people from around the world, with the programme underwritten by sponsors such as The Gérard Basset Foundation, the Academie du Vin Foundation, the Wine Scholar Guild and the Duquesne Club in Pittsburgh. Châteaux and wine businesses offer their time to support the initiative, including offering accommodation for the entirety of the week. It is a true joint initiative, led by Chinedu and Jane.

The premise of the week is based on education, paying it forward, sharing knowledge, exchanging ideas, and encouraging the scholars’ in their future careers.

For the 3rd edition of the Bordeaux Mentor Week in March 2024, more than 230 applications for this innovative mentor programme were received from 46 countries, spanning the globe from Lagos to Singapore to Sydney to San Francisco.

‘Being different in the wine trade and accessing top wineries is a dream for a lot of our students, some of our students have never been to a winery or had the opportunity to sit down with decision makers,’ says Chinedu Rita-Rosa. ‘This opportunity gives them an unparalleled access to sit one on one and talk about the bias they face day to day and difficulties to be educated practically in this space. And it allows the chateaux and their top management team to see the potential in these individuals with passion who despite their struggles have created a place for themselves in the wine trade, notwithstanding the fact that they have not been brought up with wine culture and from unlikely and sometimes financially retrained backgrounds’.

Our former scholars have gone on to see real career benefits – a Year One scholar, Tanmay, was working front of house in a restaurant in 2022 and is now a sommelier at the Tour d’Argent in Paris, and Lily from Year Two was just graduating from business school, and hired into LVMH weeks after finishing the programme. Folakemi who is the founder of the Lagos Wine Club has initiated various wine tastings of educational value and is currently preparing to  organise a wine fair in Nigeria with Vines By Rosa. You can see all three of these scholars, and others, in the videos below, sharing their experiences.

If you are thinking of applying next year, please check out these two videos to give a better idea of what to expect- The first one runs for 16 minutes, the second one is just over six minutes.

Make sure you are signed up to the newsletter to be informed of when applications begin.

We also have a shorter video from the Gerard Basset Foundation on the Bordeaux Mentor Week, recorded in London earlier in October.