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Hebron Vineyard

“Thinking like a vine,” is a motto that Paul Rolt and Jemma Vickers of Hebron Vineyard in Wales, UK farm by. Hebron Vineyard is the first vineyard in Wales — and the UK — to be Certified Regenerative by A Greener World (AGW). Paul and Jemma use no sprays or off-farm inputs to grow their vines – zero zero farming which preceeds the same kind of zero zero, raw and living winemaking. To do this they focus on creating optimal health and growing conditions for their Rondo and Solaris piwi varieties of grapes by using what is available on site. In considering what might be optimal for a vine, they implemented an arbustrum and have grown vines for four years in a living willow tree trellis system. The design of this system is ingenious and inspired by ancient practices. Willow has unique advantages both below and above ground, and Paul and Jemma’s vineyard is just one of the many styles of vitiforestry that showcase the deep and multi-layered benetfits of married vine polycultures.

The biggest critique that I can imagine for this kind of approach to wine growing is that it can’t be commercial because some years you won’t get a crop. When I asked Paul and Jemma about the problems of farming wine this way, they admitted they have limits. They know them and know they must work within them. That’s very different than the persptive that sees limits as problems that must be overcome by any means necessary, though. Both of those mindsets have consequences. In Paul and Jemma’s case they have prioritized ecological and psychological health, beauty and biodiversity, family and quality of life, and long-term resilience and independence.

@hebronvineyard

https://www.hebronvineyard.com/

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Dave Bos

An epic conversation with David Bos of @BosWine in Michigan, so I’m going to keep this intro short. Dave is a fantastic ambassador for Michigan wine, and yet he spent more than a decade growing and making wine organically and biodynamically in Napa Valley first. So his enthusiasm seems well informed, and I hope you find it as infectious as I did. Seen through Dave’s eyes, Michigan sounds pretty exciting. Even more importantly to me Dave is a fantastic ambassador for biodynamic and organic viticulture, so this conversation is LOADED.

https://www.boswine.com/

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Gut Oggau

I’m delighted to share this conversation with Eduard and Stephanie Tscheppe of Gut Oggau in Burgenland in Austria. 17 years ago they started making decisions about how to farm and make wine that were not popular or even understandable to most of the wine world. It was a huge risk, maybe even a little foolish, and because of it, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say, they became one of the most loved and respected natural wine brands in the world, with unique approaches to nearly everything they do with wine. We talk about biodynamics, high density vine plantings, the magic of farming with horses, the creation of culture as agriculteurs, wine personalities, hybrids and ecological approaches to grape growing, planting trees and other perennials in, between, and around vines, making wine the same way the wine is farmed, the price and the cost of wine, the beauty of diversity, and so much more.

@gutoggau

https://www.gutoggau.com/

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Shelby Perkins

Shelby Perkins farms grapes beyond organically in the Eola-Amity Hills of Oregon's Willamette Valley, and makes thoughtful wines of place. And speaking of thoughtful, Shelby seems to have lived several lives already. In one life she worked for the US Department of Energy doing technical research related to nuclear weapons and waste clean up. She was also once Science Policy Fellow at the National Academies, examining climate geoengineering. A trip to Antarctica changed her life and she began her life in wine and uncertainty and living in the outdoors. We talk about terrorist squirrels, climate change, what's going on behind the curtain, nuclear energy, growing grapes with voles, what to do about voles in the vineyard, renewable energy, biodynamic and organic viticulture, craving failure, how farming will kick your ass and save you, and how to transition from being a warrior to being an artisan. There's so much in this conversation because Shelby is a special person with a beautiful mind.

https://www.perkinsharter.com/philosophy

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Land As A Living Being

It’s my pleasure to present this conversation with Robin Snowdon of Limeburn Hill Vineyard. Limeburn Hill Vineyard is an innovative, ecological vineyard near Chew Magna on the edge of Bristol. It is the only biodynamic vineyard in the south west of England, and one of only a handful in the UK. In addition to farming biodynamically, Robin and his partner Georgina Harvey have a vision of their farm as a nature preserve, and really want to approach the land as a living being that we can care for and also connect with. Robin talks of dancing grasses and trees and vines trellised at a height that little sheep can graze beneath, with foxes and rabbits and a vineyard full of wildflowers, and the attempt to build the system only with what grows naturally. He discusses having an intuitive, emotional connection with the land and our opportunity as farmers help it achieve its greatest potential. He talks about how integrating ruminants brings joy to the land and those who visit it, and how that joy translates into the wine. They’re growing some really interesting grapes, some hybrids that we don’t have here in the US. We talk about their winemaking and how their approach to not letting anything go to waste results in some really interesting approaches to wine... And how small is beautiful and sustainable in an approach to a wine business.

https://limeburnhillvineyard.co.uk/

@limeburnhill

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Ariana Ross

I’m really excited to share a conversation I had with Ariana Ross, a certified sommelier and the author of the book: Wine’s Way To Art: A Treatise on Wine as Art and Why Art is Something We Need to Be Human. It is such a pleasure to talk with Ariana because she has the unusual ability to entertain ideas and argue a perspective without getting her ego involved. Conversation is a tool that she uses to hone her own thinking and to move further down the path in the pursuit of truth. Because of that I could talk to her for hours, so this discussion feels to me like just the beginning of a much bigger conversation.

We delve into some pretty juicy topics including elitism in wine: how to separate that from expertise and acquired tastes and reverence, as well as questioning the idea of higher pleasures. We also ask whether it’s appropriate to refer to wine as art, and what it means for wine to be approached as an art. Among many questions discussed and unanswered, we discuss the importance of the canon of wine (one n, not two, as in the prime examples and archetypes) and whether a canon exists for other types of wine besides the commonly understood European grape wine. We don’t always agree, and that’s the fun of it…Ariana allowed us to explore these perennially important ideas through her book, which seems extremely timely, and the result was a dynamic and candid exchange that has left me looking forward to the next conversation.

@thesimplesomm

https://whoisariana.com/

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Esther Park

Esther Park leads Cienega Capital, a private investment company that invests in food and farming enterprises that are helping to build a regenerative food system. This episode is about the unique criteria and ways of investing that Cienega Capital uses, and why it shouldn’t be so unique. If you are a regenerative farmer or if you are helping to build a regenerative food system – and I think Esther would include wine in this – you may be very interested to hear what Ester looks for in a good investment, and how you might become one. But everyone, whether you’re looking for a regenerative investment or not, should hear the questions Esther asks of all of us.

https://www.cienegacapital.com/

https://www.noregretsinitiative.com/

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No-Spray Vinifera

This episode is about growing Vitis vinifera wine grapes without sprays. Yes, it is possible. My guest is Paul Vandenberg of Paradisos del Sol Winery in Washington state in the US’s Pacific Northwest, and he has been growing about 5 acres of vinifera with zero sprays since 2012. Beyond this pretty amazing achievement, Paul has a remarkable wine career. He started by making wine with blackberries, and has been making a living in wine since 1983. He was at Badger Mountain Vineyard when it became Washington’s first certified organic vineyard, and he was at Worden’s Winery to produce the first organic wine in the state. He was an organic gardener before he could walk, and so maybe it’s a fitting climax to his life’s work to figure out how eliminate pesticides, fungicides, and anyothericides, whether organic or not, from his vinifera vineyard completely. And he isn’t growing some obscure, special vinifera with super powers… they’re Cabernet Sauvignon, Chenin Blanc, Sangiovese, Riesling, Tempranillo, Zinfandel, and more. And teaching us how to grow vinifera without sprays is only one of a handful of incredibly valuable insights that Paul shares.

https://paradisosdelsol.com/

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Megan Bell

My guest for this episode is Megan Bell of Margins Winery near Santa Cruz California, and this conversation may cause you to have strong emotional reactions at times. That’s not a trigger warning, it’s a tease. Megan has hot takes on just about every topic related to wine, and I’m not shy about asking her some big questions. Most of all I think you’ll come to love Megan’s honesty and openness about her struggles and visions, some of the financial and business realities of her winery operations, and the state of the wine industry from her perspective. Her candidness is refreshing, and her dreams are inspiring.

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Daniel Hess

Daniel Hess is the owner of Convivium Imports, which has one of the largest Swiss wine portfolios in the US, as well as unique wines from lesser known producers practicing organic viticulture (at minimum) in lesser known regions all over Europe. The wine he imports to the US reflects his multi-cultural background and his desire to represent a greater diversity of producers who put great farming first in the wine import market.

https://conviviumimports.com/

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Ben Falk

My guest for this episode is Ben Falk. If you don’t know Ben, he’s the author of The Resilient Farm and Homestead, 20 Years of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design, which I would describe as THE homesteading manual and is the result of decades of Ben’s life in Vermont designing, implementing, and maintaining regenerative polycultures systems.

Ben is very well known in the permaculture world, but isn’t known so much in the wine world… which seemed a shame to me, as he has immense practical knowledge to share that would be useful to those of us growing wine. We cover many topics, as usual, in this conversation. From the state of the world, to learning how to design your life to be able to spend more time working in the land. And we get practical about many aspects of growing and maintaining fruiting perennials… which is my catch all term for grapes, apples, pears, berries, etc that we use to make wine.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how owners of smaller vineyards can incorporate grazing, since the larger ruminants like sheep and cows are difficult to keep in any significant numbers without a good bit of land. Ben loves working with cows more than sheep, as it turns out, and has some great suggestions about how to protect your fruiting perennials from them. But we also dig into geese, which are also amazing grazers for smaller vineyards and orchards, and have their own nuances, as well as ducks, chickens, fencing, livestock guardian dogs, and more.

Also, Ben has some beautiful things to say about mead making and has very much inspired me to consider mead making.

Ben asks us to consider resilience in our winemaking. What kind of winegrowing and making can we continue to do indefinitely? What kind of wine makes our land continually healthier and more lush? What kind of winemaking makes our lives happier and more energetic? What kind of winemaking can continue to nourish us regardless of the changing whims and trends of the wine market? I think you’ll find that Ben has some great insights into answering these questions.

https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/

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Why Regenerative

If you haven’t heard of Dr. Jonathan Lundgren and Ecdysis, you’re in for a treat. Jon is from the middle of this country and has seen the return of dust storms to our farmland. He was one of the most preeminent scientists in his field, but when he looked around at the farmland he passed as he drove through the Midwest, he saw that none of his achievements were making a difference. He wanted to effect positive change. Like most of you listening who see what is happening to your world, he wanted to make it better. So he did. I don’t want to over-hype him or the work he’s doing, but it may be unique in the history of the world. Ecdysis is undertaking one of, if not the largest science projects of its kind ever. Known as the 1000 farms initiative, the folks of Ecdysis visit and collect data from what will soon be over 1000 farms, including vineyards and orchards. Of course he isn’t doing this work alone. There’s a team of passionate, intelligent people who make this project possible. This data he has been collecting shows the ecological, economic, environmental, sociological, and psychological results of different types of farming practices. And as Jon and the Ecdysis team collect more and more data over more and more years, the results provide an avalanche of evidence that not only makes it clear that regenerative agriculture is the solution, but also provides the basis for policy and laws to change and adapt to the undeniable evidence.

https://www.ecdysis.bio/

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Nick Hillman

My guest for this episode is Nick Hillman. Nick has worked with vineyards on three continents, including all across the US. Nick now lives in Texas where hed does vineyard and farm consultation with his company Regenerative Agriculture Solutions. Nick has been on a journey that led him from conventional, recipe-type viticulture to a transformed regenerative outlook and approach. He tells us about the ideas and experiences that began to make him ask harder questions, the things that didn’t make sense or seem wise. We get technical about Integrated Pest Management or IPM, as well as the pros and cons of VSP versus high trellis systems, dormant spraying for the most effect with least impact, and Texas AVAs. Along the way, Nick digs into what regenerative viticulture is all about, and why it has grabbed him and led him on this journey.

https://www.regenerativeagsolutions.com/home

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Wine’s F-word

What if everything you ever heard about foxy wine is a lie?

Wine’s F-word is the word "Foxy," and I have been on a journey over the last few years to discover the truth about this word. It has been a surprising and surprisingly impactful journey because it turns out that this word is tied up with almost everything that is currently and perennially relevant to the wine industry because it has to do with deeply held prejudice. And that’s why I believe it’s important to understand what’s going on with this wine term. I don’t know of any journey that is more important than freeing ourselves of prejudice. Liberating our minds from the tyranny of misinformation and our own psychological hang-ups may be, I think, the only way that we will be able to adapt, evolve, and survive on a planet that is wired with a nuclear self-destruct button that has been entrusted to the care of chest beating apes.

In other words, Free your mind, and life will follow.

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Sylvan Farm & Cidery

Meet Charlie and Josh of Sylvan Farm and Cidery. They do such an excellent job of introducing themselves and their story, that it would be redundant for me to pre-introduce them here. But I will tempt you to listen on by saying that they talk about harvesting wildish fruit – you know wild is an illusion, right? So maybe feral is more accurate - and making wine cider from it. Or cider wine. They talk about Queer ecology, and living and growing on the feral side of agriculture. They talk about how they’re integrating tree breeding and selection and adaptive un-farming into their orchard program. And they talk about what they’ve learned from getting this thing started over the past couple of years. Now Sylvan Farm & Cidery is new, and I love the ideas and intentions behind it and through it because I think we’ll all be able to learn some really valuable things along with Josh and Charlie as they explore these ideas in their farming. Oh and they may be making some of the most deliciously interesting perry that come from a grove of wild feral trees that may actually be one tree, like one super organism tree, so I’m excited for you to hear about that and for us all to taste their first vintage soon!

https://sylvanfarmandcidery.com/

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The No-Spray Viticulture Revolution

Winegrowers around the globe have made it their goal to grow grapes without sprays. Not only are they succeeding, they are reshaping the way we think about wine.

This is a special episode featuring a story about multiple winegrowers who make wine from grapes that they never spray with pesticides or fungicides, neither conventional nor organic. If the thought of attempting this makes you queasy, it may be because of some foundational beliefs you hold about wine that you've never challenged. This story will ask you to challenge them.

In fact a wine publication who had bought this story as a pitch decided to kill it because of the questions it asks of the entire wine industry. Yet when we begin to ask how we might grow wine without sprays, we discover an entirely new way of thinking about wine, how it is grown and made, and what it is made with.

If you care about zero zero wine but have never considered no-spray viticulture, you're missing out on the fundamental zero that could and perhaps should be the essence of natural wine.

At the heart of the no-spray viticulture revolution is reconnection with the natural world, to see how it grows and thrives and produces abundance without sprays, and then to emulate and work in cooperation with these forces. It may take a perspective shift, and the eradication of some prejudice as well. The result will be economic benefits, emissions reduction, health, diversity, and true reflections of terroir in our wines.

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Sponsor: Paicines Ranch

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Artemisia Farm

My guests for this episode are Kelly Allen and Andrew Napier of Artemisia Farm in Virginia. They are hybrid grape growers, and winemakers, aromatized wine makers, makers of wine made with native American fruits besides grapes, writers and publishers, wine faire organizers, farmers who do a regular CSA, foragers, entrepreneurs, and more. We ask some really hard questions in this episode. How to motivate a sense of urgent responsibility for the earth with love rather than fear? Is wine sustainable? How do you make wine with paw paws and persimmons?

Kelly and Andrew use lots of wild fruits and ingredients, as well as some permaculture farmed fruits – so things that are far beyond organic – and they use some other farmed fruits that are farmed organically though not certified. But they don’t farm their hybrid grapes organically. This is an intentional choice they make because they believe it is the more ecological choice in their context. Virginia, for those who aren’t familiar, is a subtropical climate that also has cold winters. Their growing season is hot, sticky, humid, and wet… and the perfect conditions for every grape fungal and insect pest. In these conditions, many people in Virginia are growing vinifera. To do this often takes weekly applications of chemical sprays, as many as 15-25 conventional sprays in a growing season. That is frankly insane and is tantamount to poisoning our environment. But Organic sprays, which are less effective, often need to be applied at least as frequently in Virginia – that is weekly - even when using resistant hybrid grapes, which means a lot of substance buildup and compaction and fossil fuel use. Meanwhile Kelly and Andrew can spray their hybrids once per month and are learning how to manage the vineyard so they can do even less. I’m not saying what’s right or wrong here, I’m saying that if you are trying to grow grapes in the most ecological way in this context, I think an organic label doesn’t give you enough information and there are likely compromises to any path you take. However, Kelly and Andrew and I all agree that growing vinifera in Virginia is not only foolish, it’s irresponsible, and we aren’t afraid to piss some people off by saying that.

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Designing A Wineforest

This episode is the second part of the conversation I had with Nicolas Haack of Triebwerk agroforestry consulting in Germany. In this part, Nicolas asks me to go into detail about the vitiforestry project I’m planning near the Finger Lakes region of New York. As part of my education and design process for this farm, I took a permaculture design certification course last year through Oregon State University, and used the New York land for my design project. As we learned in last week’s episode, it’s probably more accurate to call this an analysis process, rather than a design process, because the emphasis is really on carefully learning about the land, who lives there, what kind of relationships exist prior to my involvement, how can we best enter the picture without doing harm, how can we ensure that the actions we take on the land are beneficial? Once you ask these questions, and listen and observe and research for the answers, the design almost takes care of itself… all of the elements of soil, water, wind, sun, fire, ecology, culture, social connections, climate, and history join together to guide what our stewarding of the land could look like. Our passions and intentions are important, of course, but in ecological design, they should respond to the land rather than force the land to respond to us.

In this episode we discuss many of the details of the vision I have for my vitiforestry project and how it was informed by this process of land analysis. As you’ll hear, even though grapes are what inspired this project, I’ve come to see them as only a part of what is best for this land. I think it’s an important point that I began by thinking about features, and through a lot of learning and considerations I realized I needed to pay attention to systems and relationships. The permaculture course I took led me to these considerations, and asks us to plan “plant system designs” rather than “tree planting” for example.

Relationships are at the heart of regenerative viticulture, and that’s what I love about vines growing with trees.

2000 years ago Pliny the Elder wrote a Natural History encyclopedia, and one chapter was about growing vines in trees. He said, “The experience of ages has sufficiently proved that the wines of the highest quality are only grown upon vines attached to trees…” Since then we’ve lost most of the knowledge that was common to his time about this practice of “tree-lising” vines, as Nicolas coins the term in this episode.

So much of the work that is being done in vitiforestry now is re-discovery… We aren’t providing answers, we’re asking questions. If you, like me, want to create a wine culture that isn’t built on fossil fueled industrial inputs, that is diverse and regenerative, then growing vines in living trees seems an important form of viticulture to consider. It has some obvious benefits. But it also has some obvious challenges. Like anything, there are some compromises to consider, and there are even more unknowns.

I mention this in the episode, but I want to underline that all of this planning and designing of a vitiforestry system on this land in New York is not my idea, I’m just mimicking what’s already happening on the land. Without any help or analysis or planning and designing, grapevines are already growing in trees all over the property. All I’m really doing is encouraging more of that natural cultural expression in a way that is easier for humans to manage and produce even more grapes and tree fruits. The Context – the ecology of the land – is of utmost importance. For example, if I was planning a farm in California now, I would probably be thinking about agave and prickly pears and peyote, rather than grapes and pear and persimmon trees.

There are some things that we know about vitiforestry. As Pliny pointed out, one reward for embracing vitiforestry is diversity. To me, diversity is one of the elements of beauty. As you’ll hear, my primary goals for my vitiforestry project are to ask what viticulture might look like if we designed our systems, if we built our cultures, to be beautiful rather than just efficient, to be self-sustaining, rather than just productive. I want my farm, my WineForest, to give you a sense of wonder as you walk through it, and to be resilient when the fragile systems we’ve built quickly with fossil fuels come crashing down. I don’t think beauty and wonder and resilience have to be at odds with living, but they might be at odds with my current mindset about some things, they might be at odds with our current dominant culture that exerts so much pressure on our thinking through its economic values. Maybe what I’m proposing is an alternative universe.

But I hope I can share it with you someday.

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https://paicineslearning.org/events/regenerative-winegrowing-workshop/

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Planning a Vineyard or Vitiforestry Project

“To care for what we know requires care for what we don’t, the world’s lives dark in the soil, dark in the dark.”

“Forbearance is the first care we give to what we do not know. We live by lives we don’t intend, lives that exceed our thoughts and needs, outlast our designs, staying by passing through, surviving again and again the risky passages from ice to warmth, dark to light.”

Wendell Berry, A Small Porch

I care deeply about the natural world. That’s why I do this podcast. And of course when I use the words “natural world” these aren’t exactly the right words. They’re just the poor abbreviated metaphor of the English language for something Wendell Berry refers to elsewhere as “the presence of the world being made, a fabric of interdepending wonders, moment by moment completed in beauty, leaf shadows on light leaves moving.” The Forbearance Berry mentions describes what it looks like to love in a world where we know so little. It reminds us that our actions have consequences much bigger and that last much longer than what we intend or even know, and the preeminent gift we can give to what we love is forbearance – patient self-control, restraint, avoidance of urge fulfilment and impulsive action.

When I first fell in love with wine and developed a taste for my favorite grape, I wanted to find some perfect terroir that rivaled the Crus of France and grow the worlds greatest version of my favorite thing. I’m really lucky I’ve never been rich enough to do all the stupid things I wanted to do with the earth.

Having said that, I have lived long enough and been fortunate enough to finally access to a piece of beautiful land. I’m also fortunate that this land came into my life after my ecological consciousness had been awakened and begun to be educated. I remember walking the land for the first time and thinking how absurd an idea it is that land can be “owned.” I remember how seeing the roll and slope of the land, walking its forests and meadows, made my heart beat faster. I fell in love with it, and this love made me terrified to harm it. It is something in itself, I realized. Not something for me to calculate as an asset, not a commodity to harvest. As Berry says, “The conversion of trees to wood to money, which is all “the economy” asks, is limitlessly the mistake of arrogance, for it is the forest, not the tree, that is the source of economic good; the forest as the whole community of itself, its lives living as the gifts of lives lived.”

This episode is the first of a two part conversation I had with Nicolas Haack. You may remember Nicolas from the episode just a couple weeks ago, as he was the consultant for the vitiforestry project implemented at Staffelter Hof, the oldest winery in the world. Nicolas is one of the founders of Triebwerk, an agroforestry consulting company in Germany, and vitiforestry projects are one of the kinds of agroforestry that he helps implement. So, naturally, I had to talk to him some more.

This first part is a conversation about engaging in a process of forbearance before embarking on any viticultural or agricultural implementation. We talk about the kinds of questions to ask, and analysis that’s advised, before acquiring a piece of land and altering it to achieve your goals. There are many valuable insights scattered throughout the conversation, but I hope the most important thing you takeaway is questioning your goals. Is what you want what’s actually best for a given place?

As Berry says, “We must acknowledge first that it is dark, and we are blind by sight.”

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What’s Wrong With Wine Education?

Joyce Jones and Charity Potter sound like the street names of Marvel super heroes, but they’re actually the real women I interview for this episode. They’re better than super heroes, though, because they actually live in this messy, complex real world and take part in the real battles that result from living with the courage to speak up and ask questions and call BS when they see BS.

This episode is an expose, and it focuses on the experiences and insights and conflicts and unquestioned assumptions and prejudices that Joyce experienced, and continues to experience, as a woman of color taking classes in what passes for wine education currently. We did not name the institution or the instructors where she takes classes, because it’s really unimportant. The things she experiences could and do take place in any wine education institution on any given day.

I’ve talked a lot about diversity on this podcast. It’s one of the few agricultural solutions we have to climate change. It allows us to adapt and be productive regardless of the crazy weather the year brings. It is the antithesis to our current dominant wine culture. And Biodiversity is the solution to our farms’ health and resilience.

But equally, if not more, important is the diversity of people we include and listen to and allow to challenge our perspectives. Our mental and spiritual health is an ecosystem just like the ecosystem of our farms and forests. We cannot grow without the help of diverse connections to as many different perspectives as we can find, understand, and learn from.

Joyce Jones stepped into the bubble of our dominant wine industry, and popped it. Her impressions of her wine education are an incredible example of how important it is to get a fresh perspective, to include those who have traditionally be marginalized, to let down our guards and stop defending, to listen, to see our hypocrisy and self-contradictions. Though there aren’t many like her, we need more Joyces in the world to keep us forever young, forever learning and growing. I want to thank Joyce and Charity for their bravery and their willingness to share their personal experiences and challenges. This is heavy lifting. It’s difficult, it’s lonely, and it’s frustrating… and I’m not sure the wine industry deserves it, but we certainly need this help and are incredibly fortunate for these women’s perepsectives.

I think that our current wine education is laughable, or maybe cry-able. It needs to re-envisioned and re-designed from the ground up, literally. It creates and reinforces an entire structure of prejudice and exclusion that is not only cringe-worthy, but completely unacceptable. If anyone wants to help me build a better wine education, please contact me at connect@organicwinepodcast.com.

In the meantime, I’m so glad to help Joyce and Charity swing the wrecking ball through our current wine education.

Joyce is a force of nature, in the best sense. If you are a wine educator and you want to learn, to really learn, you want her in your class. But let me leave you with a warning that Joyce sent to me in a text, her words, quote:

The air becomes still, reminiscent of the calm before a big storm. The sheep stop grazing and look out in the field. A shadowy figure emerges from the horizon and slowly approaches… is it an alien? Is it the death angel? No. That would be too quick and merciful. It’s Joyce Jones… and she’s hungry.

Gird your loins, and Enjoy!

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