Name Cristina M Torres
Job within the wine trade Director of Sales and Marketing at Marimar Estate
How long have you been in this role/wine trade? I grew up in the family business, learning from my mom from a very young age. After 9.5 years of outside experience post-college, I just joined my mom full-time at Marimar Estate in January!
What made you want to get in to this area of work and what drives you to stay in it? I find it fascinating to try and understand consumer behaviour, what drives the success of certain wines and brands, and what trends become truly long-lasting. But most importantly, what really drives me most, is the pride in our family heritage of making wine (since the 17th century in Spain), and especially the opportunity to carry on my mother’s legacy in California. She built the business here from the ground up (the first vintage was a 1989 Chardonnay), and it will be the first time in our family that the baton is passed from mother to daughter.
What is your wine career highlight? That would have to be building the International Wineries for Climate Action, an organization founded by Torres and Jackson Family Wines, which is devoted to bringing the industry together to lower our carbon footprint in a meaningful way (minimum of 40% reduction in emissions by 2040). And the early but very exciting recognition from Wine Enthusiast, as recipients of the 2019 Social Visionary Award!
International Wineries for Climate Action
Wine Enthusiast Social Visionary Award
If someone wanted to get in to the wine industry, what would your advice be? Build your wine knowledge — work in a tasting room, as a harvest cellar intern, and if you can, take some courses (I recommend the WSET).
5 quick fire questions – Up Close and Personal!
1. Favourite food and wine match? Marimar Estate La Masía Pinot Noir (Russian River Valley) with my mom’s classic seafood paella — full of shrimp, clams, oysters, calamari, squid, and so much more.
2. Have you got tattoos if so, how many.. if not, are you tempted? No, and no, probably not. But I was terribly disappointed when my mom wouldn’t let me get my belly-button pierced when I was a teen! (Thank goodness…)
3. What did you want to be when you were growing up? I realized I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps quite young, much to her surprise! (She knows how hard she works and assumed I would be dissuaded.) But when I was a little girl, I was pretty sold on being a grocery store cashier. There was a wonderful lady, Judy, that I loved very much at our grocery store in Sausalito, and I wanted to be just like her, spreading joy (and counting cash)!
4. What is your favourite season? Fall : changing fall foliage + oversized sweaters + tall boots = happiness.
5. If you had 3 wishes, what would they be? To be able to run on less sleep. (Never enough hours in the day!) To develop a feasible option for the capture and sequestration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. To be able to teleport (is that the right word?) — I love hitting the open road with some good tunes but traffic and commercial airplane travel can sometimes be unbearable.
