My Perspective on Wine
I want you (yes YOU) to stop drinking shitty wine.
You take care of yourself, right?
You go to the gym.
You care what you put in your body.
So why are you ignoring all the chemicals, sugars, and additives going into your two-buck-chuck and commercial bulk wine?
It’s okay.
I get it.
You didn’t know.
The world of wine tends to be secretive… I mean, there’s not even an ingredient label on your wine bottle.
You probably assume it’s just grapes, right? Unfortunately, your grocery store go-to wine could have up to 75 ingredients other than grapes. These wines come from huge swaths of land (particularly central California and Provence), with “terroir” that’s barely suitable to grow anything at all. To cut on costs, these bulk wines are often made from rotten or low-quality grapes, under-ripe fruit, or even wine by-products. Then, to hide or “fix” this quality issue, the wine is typically treated like a chemistry experiment or lab formula. Mass-produced laboratory yeasts mask subpar grapes by adding unnatural aromas to the wine and speeding along fermentation, wood chips are used to add an oakey flavor and cut costs when oak barrels are too expensive, chemicals and dyes are added to chase the desired color, all to achieve the same, standard (read: boring) taste year-after-year.
Real wine is alive. Real wine is representative of the land. Real wine has a story behind it and the people who make it.
Maybe I’m being a romantic. After all, wine is a tricky business with grapes that prefer to march to the beat of their own drum and are finicky little beasts. I get that. But did you know that even the descriptions on the bottle of these mass-produced wines are often written by copywriters who have NEVER EVEN TASTED THE WINE? Money here is spent on marketing, product placement, and generating a buzz. Not on producing a high-quality wine. It’s one thing to guide a wine or make corrections to perfect it. But another thing entirely to alter its entire structure and add chemical additives or sugar to maximize yields and mask flaws.
Wine certainly doesn’t exist in isolation, but rather at the intersection of nature, intuition, AND human skill. Those real, genuine wines are the type of products I appreciate and want to support with my business and in what I promote.
I’m a big believer in supporting grape growers and wine makers directly, in any way I can. It’s the first big reason I decided to start my Instagram, my tasting business, and now this blog.
When I first got this idea in my head, friend after friend suggested writing about the best wines under $10, the best cheap wines at Trader Joe’s, etc. etc. The current trend in the market does seem to be skewed towards catering to the millennial market who just wants wine to be fun and affordable. I see that, and I support it. But I want it to be those things AND REAL.
Let me help guide you, through my Instagram, this blog, my newsletter, and my personalized wine shopping services. Together, let’s stop drinking shitty wine and support people out there who are making high-quality stuff.
