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sooo ... this week's zeitgeist being that time is done for the ego-driven fame of both chef and winemaker alike. true as it's ever been.
the chef part was tired, oof, YEARS ago.
the chef part was tired, oof, YEARS ago.
the wine part? true as well.
i got nothing to add on the Calcarius mess (wines were never my thing, the scale of it should have been a tipoff) but it can be easy to lose sight of a few obvious things in wine ...
i got nothing to add on the Calcarius mess (wines were never my thing, the scale of it should have been a tipoff) but it can be easy to lose sight of a few obvious things in wine ...
like, in most legacy Old World wine regions, it's actually not hard to figure out who's doing the work. (the New World is a whole different thing, and more complex. topic for another time.)
first thing you have to do, usually, is go visit someone to see what's what.
now, that's obviously a limiting factor. but if we're talking doing the work, you can't avoid that part. (we can talk sometime about the debt i incurred working on my next book.)
now, that's obviously a limiting factor. but if we're talking doing the work, you can't avoid that part. (we can talk sometime about the debt i incurred working on my next book.)
when you do, at least in, say, France, the reality becomes pretty obvious. does the vigneron greet you themselves? does she drive you around the vines in her old Trafic harvest van? mud-caked tools in the back? if there's a "proprietor," do they know their workers by name?
for that matter, what kind of scale are we talking? 20h in Bordeaux ≠ 20h in Cornas ≠ 20h in Châteauneuf ≠ 20h in Muscadet. if it's 80h, you're probably at a scale that raises questions. even in Bordeaux, where a lot more questions should be asked, that's big. (Latour = 78h.)
if you visit at harvest, you'll overtly see how labor is handled. most French harvesters, if not French, are eastern European — often they've worked w/the same domaine for decades. some are north African. (they sometimes don't want their photos taken, which may be a clue.)
you also see that vignerons provide harvest housing, meals and casse-croute; even now, harvest traditions dictate a certain hospitality. and few vignerons see field work as a caste system, save perhaps in parts of Bordeaux.
not to say there aren't problems. during COVID, for instance, a real concern was vineyard workers didn't qualify for partial unemployment, & were expected to work straight through. https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/emploi/metiers/agriculture/il-va-y-avoir-des-burn-out-chez-les-vignerons-l-annee-tourne-au-vinaigre-pour-le-secteur-viticole_4065253.html
(this versus, say, Alsatians complaining to visiting writers that their gewurztraminer was turned into hand sanitizer.)
one of the clearest learning experiences for me in the past few years? even the vignerons that we who laze in our city comforts classify as rockstars, are for the most part busting their asses. their cars are mud-filled. they eat a lot of reheated meals in their kitchens.
this isn't a fetish for the toil of the paysan, although plenty of wine marketers have leaned on that. this is people who are working hard, more interested in making sure they pay Credit Agricole their monthly nut than in where they're served in Bushwick.
the more we fetishize these wines, the more we enable a mythology around them.
now, that ISN'T to say we shouldn't love them. we should! supporting them helps small farmers and sustains local ag economies.
but what makes these wines great often doesn't scale. which means not everyone gets to enjoy the same fetish object.
but what makes these wines great often doesn't scale. which means not everyone gets to enjoy the same fetish object.
and that goes against where wine, even in its evolving state, is today. it's why, not long ago, i wrote (thanks @noblerotmag) that NattyWorld had the same problems with label-fucking as the larger wine world.
and hey, look, i'm a label-fucker, too. so are you. we all are. we want to be, if not cool, then cool-adjacent.
but now's a time to consider how we can temper those habits. as they said it once in a movie: i'm trying, Ringo. i'm trying real hard to be the shepherd.
/fin
but now's a time to consider how we can temper those habits. as they said it once in a movie: i'm trying, Ringo. i'm trying real hard to be the shepherd.
/fin
