Vinedresser & Scholar

Jane (Forsyth ’11) Pallares always envisioned a scholarly life, perhaps as a college professor. Yet after encountering a few providential turns in the road, she today finds herself still an academic, but also a wife, a businesswoman, and a farmer, proving that the versatility of liberal education bears much good fruit — both figurative and literal.

Mrs. Pallares, her husband, and his family are the owners and caretakers of Casa Carmen Wines, a vineyard and winery in West Grove, Pennsylvania. There, Mrs. Pallares has found a fitting balance in her active and intellectual lives. “There’s a kind of complementarity in reading poetry and drinking wine,” she jokes.

A granddaughter of John Schaeffer — one of the founding members of the College’s Board of Governors — Mrs. Pallares grew up in Santa Paula, near the California campus. Many of her family members have attended the College since its inception, and she was glad to follow in their footsteps. “I so wanted to go because the intellectual life and a love of books were always prioritized in our family and in our conversation,” she explains.

Following her graduation in 2011, she worked at a law firm for a year, then moved on to teach at a Catholic high school in California. Her love of literature next led her to the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where Mrs. Pallares is pursuing a doctorate in English literature, which she aims to complete later this year.

During her time at CUA, she met her husband, Felipe, who owned a winery and vineyard, Casa Carmen, in Maryland with his brother and sister-in-law. She helped the brothers with winter pruning and, after falling in love with Felipe and the vineyard, got married in 2022.

Founded with a commitment to local agriculture, sustainable farming methods, and low-intervention wine making, Casa Carmen offers a carefully curated selection of wines and vermouth. The whole family contributes to the business, from wine production to maintaining the grounds; for her part, Mrs. Pallares manages marketing and the property gardens. “It’s such a gift to become part of a family like this,” she says. “You get to know each other very quickly and very intimately, and it feels natural because we share so much in our values and dayto-day enterprises.”

Mrs. Pallares’ days are a balance of the physical and the philosophical, and she credits her TAC education as part of what led her to her current state in life. “A vineyard feels like a very natural place to end up,” she says. “I think it speaks to the different kinds of human creativity that you can have an intellectual life along with a more active life, cultivating a natural desire to make things in conjunction with nature. In many ways, it puts into practice ideas and values fostered by what we learn at the College about the human person and the nature of happiness.”