Kindra Dionne is making room for Black entrepreneurs in an industry where they remain vastly underrepresented. She launched Fifty Leven Wine in Leesburg, Virginia, in 2021, and she describes it as the only local Black owned wine company in Loudoun County.
“There is room for you here at the table,” Kindra Dionne says. “And if they don’t let you into theirs, you come to mine.”
She says she is among less than .001 percent of people who look like her in the wine industry, and she has decided she would rather point at what is already there than argue about who is missing.
“There is so much Black excellence in Loudoun County,” she said. The county is wine country, and she wants readers to understand how close it is. “When you look at the wine country surrounding D.C., the airport is 10 minutes from your nearest winery.” She names the Salamander Middleburg, the five star resort owned by Sheila Johnson, and adds: “That ain’t in Napa.”
What she is selling is not only what is in the bottle. “Fifty Leven is more of an experience than simply wine to be consumed,” she said. Her Two Up Wine Down festival runs on November 7.
And she is specific about where she wants to stand once the room is full. “I want to come to the event,” she said. “I don’t wanna be the event, if that makes sense.”
