It is no coincidence that, in charge of the hundred-year-old wineries of Juvé & Camps is a person who bears the surname Juvé. What is not so common is that a woman, Meritxell Juvé, leads one of the leading wine companies in the Spanish market.
Since your great-grandparents founded the Juvé & Camps in 1921, what has changed regarding the genre after 4 generations dedicated to growing grapes?
The truth that seeing it in perspective is like night and day. A century ago, the role of women, except in very exceptional cases, had a very marked role of family educational and emotional support. Entrepreneurship was closely linked to man. This image was perfectly reflected by my grandparents, Joan Juvé Baqués and Teresa Camps.
Currently, that gender barrier has been broken in the corporate sphere. There is much more balance. More than women or men, I like to talk about trained professionals.
Did you have it easier because you were surrounded by vineyards since you were born?
I will not deny that the passion for the sector was inoculated in me thanks to the passion that my grandparents and my parents put into the cultivation of grapes and the production of cavas and wines. Ever since I can remember walking through the fields and playing among endless rows of hanging bunches of grapes, just before the harvest at the end of summer. But I have complemented the family tradition thanks to a solid training in business and winemaking.
Following the strategy of Juvé & Camps, I have combined family tradition and constant innovation.
And is it possible to successfully combine past and future, in a world as competitive as that of wine?
I don’t think it’s possible, rather I consider it the only way to face the next decade with guarantees. We take advantage of technological innovations to get the best out of our grapes, while at the same time fully respecting the cycles of nature. Through the application of ecological techniques we will be able to obtain wines and cavas of the highest quality that can rub shoulders with the best national and international proposals.
Now that you’re talking about the international arena, why is it less common to find women running companies in the world of wine?
The long tradition in Spain has worked against us, since it is more difficult to evolve than to start from scratch. In other countries, with much more recent companies, the incorporation of women into management positions has been more numerous, without being penalized by the weight of ancestral inertia. In the last five years the trend has been accentuated in our country, balancing the workforce in existing wineries.
Will the 21st century finally be that of women?
I believe that, as the decades progress, it will end up becoming the century of the collaborative populus (in Latin, collaborative people), ending the gender bias. Personally, I am interested in being surrounded by the best team, the most qualified, regardless of whether they are men or women, old or very young. At Juvé & Camps we want to attract and retain talent; only then will we continue at the forefront of the world of wine.
