(WineSpectator) - Working mothers everywhere are all too familiar with the difficulties of balancing professional life with family life. Mothers in the wine industry face their own particular challenges, such as grape harvests that refuse to observe children’s bedtimes and frequent travel for sales trips.

For Elena Walch, who started her namesake winery in Italy’s Alto Adige region, and Susana Balbo, who founded Argentina’s Dominio del Plata in Mendoza, the trying years of winemaking-plus-childrearing have paid off with what they say is the ultimate gift: Their children have joined the family business. In honor of Mother’s Day, which falls on May 10 this year, we spoke with Walch and her two daughters, Karoline and Julia, and Balbo and her two children, Ana and José, about their experiences.

“It is never easy for a mom to do both—to work and have a company and to raise a family,” Balbo says. “You feel guilt on a daily basis. When you’re at work, you’re thinking of your kids. When you’re with your kids, you’re thinking about work.”

Walch notes that her demanding job made her daughters more independent. “I wasn’t sitting with them doing their homework, like many women who are at home,” she says. “But now I’m very proud, having these girls with such independence, and choosing something that I never told them they have to follow.”

To call Walch and Balbo trailblazers is no exaggeration. Both had family ties to winemaking but broke with tradition when they set off on their own ventures. When Balbo graduated from university, in 1981, she became the first woman in Argentina to hold an enology degree.

Walch, who trained as an architect, found herself suddenly immersed in the wine business when she married the proprietor of the Wilhelm Walch estate, which had been in his family since 1869. “Why don’t you let me do my own business inside your business?” she asked her husband, envisioning a wine brand that would be more terroir-focused, and a little higher-end, than his.

The decision to launch her own company, Walch said, was met with considerable skepticism. “It was not only unusual for the wine business, it was unusual at that time for women to lead any business,” she says. “There aren’t very many women winemakers in Alto Adige, not at all.”

Balbo is grateful that she was often able to bring her children to her workplace when they were small. They would run around the winery while she worked; thank goodness wineries are kept so clean, she says. This exposure to the world of wine at such an early age instilled a passion for the business in Ana and José.