You Can Sit Here!
Part 3 of a Resilient Wine movement: It's inclusive.
in·clu·sive
/inˈklo͞osiv/
adjective
including everything or all types of people
not excluding any of the parties or groups involved in something
Hi! Welcome back to the party! In launching Resilient Wine the Substack, the Instagram, and the movement, I’m outlining the three parameters that set this paradigm apart from the well-intentioned but ultimately flawed (bahahahahaha pun not intended but delightfully accepted) “natural wine” movement. While “natural wine” wonderfully helped push wine as an industry toward practices that are better for the health of our planet and people (and I am personally all about that), it fell short: It also divided makers, buyers and drinkers into camps or parties that inevitably seemed pitted against one another. Worse, gatekeepers deemed that the group accepted into the natural wine camp—based on dogmatic insistences on certain production methodology—ultimately got smaller and smaller, more and more exclusive and ultimately extremist. To understand this, one only need glance at the political landscape of 2024. Yikes!
If history and politics can tell me anything, it would be that I should put this effort to bed right now, because things are likely to get worse before they get better. But I’m an optimist, and a lover, and a staunch believer in the power of meaningful conversations and forward social progress fueled by a shared bottle of wine! So I will open my bottle of white Burgundy, pour y’all a glass, and carry my torch onward.
Anyway. Natural wine became too exclusive, which became further problematic because “natural” is such an ambiguous and highly debatable word choice to begin with. Exclusivity without clear rules of engagement makes me feel like I’m back in junior high when, one day, there was suddenly no room for me at the lunch table and none of my “friends” would scoot over to make room. WTF.
We are not in junior high. We are grown-ass adults who know the perils of bullying, who understand that diversity of opinion and approach and preferences make life interesting and beautiful. If we want to be exclusive, we can set clear guidelines. Then, if we want to kick someone out of the club, at least they’ll understand why. An even better option: We could kindly and graciously say, “I appreciate you doing you; however, this is a space for people doing this other thing right now.” If you as a winemaker decide that the right choice is for you to filter your wine, you are allowed to do so—transparency encouraged—and you won’t be outright rudely canceled from this hot-girl clique, “Seat’s taken”-style.
Inclusion is quite the buzz word of late as our world slowly, awkwardly and messily wakes up to social justice. It’s important to outline the notion of “inclusion” because it’s even more relevant to resilient wine as a word choice. I don’t mean that resilient wine by definition has to outright include winemakers and wine companies that are not working toward more responsible practices, that are knowingly opaque about their less-than-mindful practices or their pursuit of profits over people/planet-health. What I mean by inclusive here is more like the “I” in DEI efforts (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). Inclusion builds a culture where everyone feels welcome. It actively invites every person and group to contribute and participate. An inclusive, welcoming environment supports and embraces differences, even while it is aligned on the mission or goal (i.e. take care of our planet and people so that they can keep making delicious wine we can drink together). Participants offer respect to everyone in words and actions. There’s a sense of belonging, the notion of “calling people in rather than calling people out.”
So wherever you’re at in your wine making, buying or drinking journey, YOU CAN SIT HERE! Resilient Wine wants you. We’re going to hold you and ourselves accountable to our mission (again: take care of our planet and people so that they can keep making delicious wine we can drink together), but if you’re just getting started or you’re stumbling along, if you don’t quite know what you’re doing or you think you’ve got it all figured out, if you are practicing this one amazing thing today but need to change course to prioritize a different amazing thing tomorrow, we offer you kindness and grace and a seat at our table. We know that the world is a wild place and shit’s definitely gonna change tomorrow, so we’re all going to need to be ready to reconsider, adapt again and again, and put thoughtful, truly sustainable practices into place that allow you and that wine you’re making/buying/drinking to be—yup, you guessed it—resilient.
Thanks for your efforts. These reflections and conversations are long overdue. A lot of the topics you're touching on remind me that all of us who are in the business in any thoughtful way exist at the nexus of a lot of political, economic, sociological and environmental outcomes that on many days seem uniformly disastrous...yet, there's a kernel of opportunity there, if we're willing to do the thinking required to see better outcomes in the future and work toward them.