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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 ������ý’s Board of Governors — Mrs. Pallares grew up in Santa Paula, near the California campus. Many of her family members have attended the ������ý 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 ������ý about the human person and the nature of happiness.”