Florida’s first Black female vintner said her family’s love story inspired her to start her own wine company. Desriee Noisette founded Mermosa four years ago. “Mermosa is inspired by our family’s first mermaid.
Her name was Clestine Noisette,” she said. The story goes back seven generations when Celestine lived in Haiti during the late 1700s.
She met and married a white Frenchman named Phillipe. “Then shortly after they moved to Charleston, South Carolina. And when they moved to Charleston, Phillipe, unfortunately, had to protect his family from being sold into the slave trade because his wife was black and his children were mixed,” Noisette said.