I Like to Blow The Cover Off What Everyone Else Keeps Private
And here is what that is right now.
Apparently I am a troublemaker at heart. I recently changed the “contact me” button on my website to say “CONSPIRE.”
con·spire
/kənˈspī(ə)r/
verb
make secret plans jointly to commit an unlawful or harmful act
scheme
To be fair, the third proffered (and sorta buried) definition is: to act in harmony toward a common end.
And this is what I meant when I added that button to my website. This is, I suppose, what I’m doing here—trying to act in harmony with YOU, dear reader, toward a common end. That common end being, of course: DO NOT LET THE WINE INDUSTRY DIE, because I need a drink our society needs wine.
It needs wine because of the connection, community, and ritual groundedness wine offers us in a world sorely, devastatingly lacking all of that.
It needs wine because of the way wine is an artistic and soul-nourishing yet also a scientific and physical, tangible product that, sure, figuratively but ALSO LITERALLY ties us to our planet, its soil, the other living creatures around it and us.
It needs wine because wine is outrageously delicious and texturally fascinating and SOMETIMES DRINKING IS FUN AND WHAT CRUEL GOD DO YOU MISTAKENLY BELIEVE IN WHO DOESN’T WANT HUMANS TO EVER HAVE FUN?
I wrote the following in a portion of the damn book I’m trying to write, which is about all of this—about why wine matters—and it gets to my point:
We consciously cultivate and intentionally celebrate opportunities for this incredible, historical, agricultural, social-cultural, magically intoxicating liquid to knowingly lower our inhibitions… because too often in our rigid and intimidating world, those inhibitions hurt us more than they protect our sweet, soft bodies. Too often, our rigid and intimidating world grooms us into allowing well-meaning inhibitions to mutate into insurmountable barricades: Fear. Shame. Envy. Unworthiness. Chronic discontent. They separate us from one another, sow fear into us about each other, block out and make inaccessible our innate and beautiful human desire to sometimes be silly, soft, vulnerable, unconstrained.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say, then, that for me (and I suspect for you), wine is holy.
My point of this post is not to just say this. Because I realized recently that everyone here already agrees. My point is that not enough people are talking about the Big Problem frankly and publicly, and even more importantly, no one really knows how to solve the problem.
While I’ve been ruminating over this, another great writer’s fabulous piece got me and many others in my precious bubble talking:
I ardently recommend you read it. Of course, I also recommend you like and agree with my comment on it (oh I’m shameless!), whose TLDR is: What if our current 2025 late-capitalist market is literally preventing us from doing what that author recommends, which is stopping the scramble to go viral and fostering more meaningful connection? I’m a little freaked out that this stage of capitalism we’ve slip-n-slided into doesn’t allow such sweet time or space for deep loyal meaningful long-game connection.
Oh, shit.
What if—as a friend asked ominously—society itself is dead? And, if that’s the case, what do we do?
But it’s NOT DEAD YET, I say!!!
However, we have to act now! We have to hurry to save it! And my big beef in this moment is with everyone who keeps insanely marching toward the looming archways of death, oblivious in their old ways, commiserating like hand-wringing wussies with each other over text and DM, trying the same idiotic and outdated methods to gain likes and go viral and scale fast rather than actually doing what they know they should be doing. UGHGHGHGH. Enough!
So, if I loathe that cowardice, then how do I advocate we do something legitimate? How do we fight back and keep society (and wine, its collateral damage) from dying?
I loop you back, finally, to my opening: We conspire.
We stop keeping our conversations safe and private and secretive. We blow up the spot. We look at, learn from, prop up and proselytize resilient practices.
Like I said: I am a troublemaker at heart, it seems, as I first did this several years back—starting in 2018!—with the launch of Bâtonnage.
/bah-tow-NAHJ/
(French) - stirring up the lees, or dead yeast and particles in a fermented wine, often to provide freshness and texture to the finished product.
The Bâtonnage Forum started as an annual conference (it’s now heavily mentorship based) where we stirred up conversations about the opportunities and challenges facing women in the wine industry. We did it to take the dead/spent/broken stuff and use it provide freshness and texture and to preserve our industry. I was—as I am now—really, really sick and tired of hearing women whispering ashamedly about their “me too” moments, or lamenting privately their lack of maternity leave or childcare, or commiserating behind closed doors about the imbalanced expectations and responsibilities their bosses placed on them versus their purportedly “equal” male counterparts.
I was wickedly sick and tired of EVERYONE talking about the SAME SHIT and NO ONE GETTING ANYWHERE because no one knew how to solve the problems. If one person had solved their own seemingly isolated (yet actually endemic) problem, they weren’t screaming about it from the rooftops, and there was no broader access to collective, pragmatic solutions that would spur the positive, inclusive forward progress of the whole damn industry. And isn’t that what we all wanted?!?!? ISN’T THAT WHAT WE ALL STILL WANT?!?!?!
I am so hot and bothered rn.
I am also a little too tired and burnt out to launch another forum in this moment (though I’m immensely proud of the real, tangible progress Bâtonnage and other similarly minded orgs did create and are still propelling). But I suppose all of this has something in common with what I am trying to do here with Resilient Wine. I suppose it is why I am typing right now.
Enough already. Here are a few lessons and tangible takeaways (gleaned from my time with Bâtonnage and… life…) that I’m advocating for in this moment. Here are some ideas on how you and me and everyone we know can save the wine industry:
Stop being ashamed or embarrassed about what you think are your own unique problems. Stop feeling like you can’t talk publicly about how your distribution partners suck or your HR is a shitshow or your marketing campaigns are not fucking working. Speak up! BE LOUD & PROUD. The worst that can happen truly cannot be worse than where you/we are currently headed. The best that can happen is people pay attention, value your honesty and vulnerability, and begin legitimately working with you towards a pragmatic solution.
Your bravery in point 1 will make certain scared people mad—and more afraid. They will act like the bullies in elementary school and try to make you feel scared and stupid, too. This is a sign it is working. Know that the resistance HATES courage like yours.
Your bravery will also embolden certain key people—or at least one person. These are the important people you care about anyway. They might be quiet about it or too busy or shy to tell you how you helped them, BUT! Those people, thanks to you, will not feel alone or uniquely broken anymore. Those important people, following your lead and thanks to your brave initiative, will gain the courage to go on and inspire at least one more person. And so on. Steadily, this is how meaningful progress gains momentum. This is how a revolution starts.
Be polite. Respect other people’s different experiences and perspectives and choices. I don’t know where in the hell we fell off the path of respecting one another, but knock off the ad populum fallacy. Grow up. Be respectful. Assume everyone is doing their best and is on different parts of the journey.
Put your money where your mouth is. Show the market what matters to you by investing in it literally. Shop with intention. This will mean a lot of inconvenience. In the end, that is probably less inconvenient than not having the option you really wanted around anymore.
This goes for the wine and other products you buy as well as where you buy them, AND it goes for the media you consume. I wish I didn’t know firsthand that even major “liberal” and “serious” newspapers, magazines and broadcasts are, with increasing frequency, chasing clickbait headlines, doomsday rhetoric, and snackable, sped-up, un-fact-checked junk-food stories in their frantic scramble for advertisers and paid subscriptions. You know what they say about junk food: If you don’t have it in the house…
You do need to feed yourself, so buy food. Subscribe to the nourishing stuff (👋). Pay more for it. Like you do for your chicken.
Share the good news. Ooh, it sounds so churchy. What I mean is that you should shout from the rooftops when you find a solution that’s working. Don’t hoard your wisdom! It’s not a pie! And for God’s or fuck’s sake, sing out and lift up others around you who are doing great, inspiring, resilient things. More positive news, more giving everyone the acknowledgement and thanks and praise and credit that none of us will ever get enough of. Ever. Some of y’all have been doing the damn thing for thankless decades, quietly and incredibly pulling this oh-so-very-long thread. I see you; I am so grateful for you; I hope I can share your stories some day soon.
I am drinking Birgit Eichinger Ried Gaisberg 1 ÖWT Grüner Veltliner Kamptal 2021 tonight. Sometimes Grüner smells to me like vomit, but not Birgit’s. Hers I LOVE. Did you know she co-founded two formative organizations in Austria? The first is the Österreichische Traditionweinsgüter (that’s the ÖWT listed above!), dedicated to identifying and classifying the region’s best single vineyards, and the second is called Elf Frauen und ihre Weine: Eleven Women and their Wines. The cohort began in 2000 with the goal of getting trailblazing Austrian women winemakers together to taste one another’s wines, provide honest input, and to support, mentor and empower each other. Resilience like what. Queeeeeeeeeeen <3.
❤️💪