The Times reported on July 10 that Maria Gasparovic, a female executive working at Moët Hennessy, sued the company over claims of sexual harassment and wrongful termination. Some instances that Gasparovic shares involve her male superiors telling her that she needed “anti-seduction” training to qualify for a promotion. This wasn’t the first time Gasparovic experienced sexual harassment, and she was allegedly told she was “gagging for it” during a meeting.
When she went to HR to complain about mistreatment, Moët Hennessy terminated her in June 2024, according to the New York Post. Moët Hennessy claims Gasparovic’s termination involved other reasons, and the organization alleges that she impersonated an employee during a call while she was taking sick leave to threaten colleagues. Friends of executives claim Gasparovic was attempting to blackmail Moët Hennessy.
Gasparovic denies these claims, and expressed that she was following a whistleblower policy.
She further alleges that former Moët Hennessy CEO Philippe Schaus filed an investigation into her with HR over a hunch that she was having an affair with an executive at the company.
Since the news went public, more claims of a “toxic” workplace culture are beginning to surface around the champagne firm.
“Lots of people were disappearing overnight,” an anonymous source told The Post. “It took on a disruptive tone.”
Though four women have come forward over claims of a “boys club mentality,” “bullying” and “sexual harassment,” the Post reports that men have also come forward.
“One former employee described how their boss would ‘scream at people like it was a fashion house in the 1990s — except we are in 2025,’ that behavior is no longer acceptable,” a source told The Times.
Sexual Harassment in Wine — ‘We Learn to Live With It’
One would think that in 2025, incidents like sexual harassment within the beverage industry would be an archaic thing of the past, but culturally, many organizations within wine feel more like 1955. Sadly, incidents of sexual harassment appear to be fairly commonplace, and complaints of a “boy’s club” are the norm.
Page Six reported in 2015 that Southern Glazer’s top salesmen sent lewd photos of themselves — one of the photos involved a stripper gripping their crotch — to a champagne executive at Laurent Perrier. The executive was female. Granted, Southern Glazer’s dismissed the salesman and that was ten years ago — but the examples continue popping up.
In 2020, the bombshell report about the Court of Master Sommeliers’ sexual harassment problem made headlines in the New York Times. Multiple sommeliers came forward, sharing experiences that involved the Masters offering professional favors in exchange for sex.
One of the masters allegedly asked a student for a pair of underwear that he could “snuggle with.” Multiple women shared accounts of some of the male sommeliers using the slur “sommsucker” to describe women involved in relationships with members of the court. There was even an account of rape.
“Sexual aggression is a constant for women somms,” a wine director in Dallas named Madeleine Thompson said in a statement to The New York Times. “We can’t escape it, so we learn to live with it.”
When it gets too difficult to bear, some women, like Thompson, opt out of professional opportunities like the court’s process. The ramifications on one’s professional life can pose its challenges, much like the challenges Gasparovic faces if her claims are true.
“It’s a compromise we shouldn’t have to make,” Thompson concluded.
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