Wine & Spirits - Winter 2023 - 1

Editor's
Note
A Recipe
for
Change
W
HILE HE WAS RESEARCHING HIS
book, Finding Meaning in
Wine, Michael Sinowitz interviewed
me about blind tasting, and I
invited him to join one of our panels.
His extensive consideration of wine criticism,
in a parallel to literary interpretation,
led me to read the book a second
time, to try and understand why it
was so aff ecting to me, personally, aside
from the role he gave me in the text.
So, I scheduled some interviews with
Sinowitz, turning the tables, and have
presented excerpts from them on our
website. His insights into the way we talk
about wine helped me understand some
things about my own goals. It occurs to
me that I have used my career in wine to
make a political statement, not to infl uence
policy, but perhaps to infl uence
action. This is not to assign some grandiose
achievement to my own career, just
to explain some of the emotional intensity
I bring to my work. I came to wine
with an interest in writing and a passion
about ecology. Having lost hope in any
ability to impact environmental consciousness
through government action,
I took a detour, as I found that I had a
talent in articulating what I was tasting
when organizing blind panels for this
magazine.
Over the years, I worked with our team
to develop a tasting system that is driven
by my beliefs-in fairness, transparency
and, if my hunch was correct, that wines
grown with care and without chemicals
would taste better and be more identifi
ably tied to a place than those made
through industrial practice: That no
matter how precise and deliciously rich
a well-worked wine might be, its value
is limited to that of a beverage, while a
wine grown through careful observation
and made without a lot of intervention
might create a greater value proposition.
If I could get peers to rally around the
idea that there is value in a wine's clarity
of expression of a place, then the fi nancial
return on making such wines would
encourage more producers to focus on
clarity of site or regional expression,
which demands, in turn, that they treat
their land with care and respect. I must
have believed this would be a powerful
tool for environmental change in agriculture,
a subliminal, or not so subliminal,
political message-the same message
many drinkers of " natural wine " would
like to encourage.
You'll fi nd a review of Sinowitz's book
in this issue, along with reviews of books
by other authors who have, at one time
or another, collaborated on this magazine
project with me-Tara Q. Thomas
worked with Jancis Robinson OBE MW
and Julia Harding MW on the latest
Oxford Companion to Wine, and Ray Isle,
now the executive wine editor at Food &
Wine, profi led growers he has visited
in The World in a Wine Glass-a compendium
of growers who live on their
land (he calls out their farming practice,
mostly organic or biodynamic, in the
heading under their name). It's great
to see their exceptional talents reaching
broad audiences. Here at W&S, we continue
to focus on a more specifi c audience,
people whose interest is in discovering
new wines, whether professionally,
as guides to wine drinkers, or personally,
as wine drinkers themselves, looking for
wines that speak of a place.
Corey Warren considers how those
places are changing-and how wine
growers are adjusting-in his article,
Survival Vines. And Alissa Bica has been
working to take our spirits coverage in
a similar direction, exploring artisanal
spirits with ties to the land. She has two
articles in this issue-one from her visit
to Peru, where she researched Pisco. For
the other-coverage of non-alcoholic
spirits for Dry January, a fi rst for W&S-
we went all in: Alissa spoke with mixologists
about this burgeoning category of
drinks, and gathered recipes we look forward
to trying well before the New Year.
Whether you celebrate with Champagne,
Barolo, cabernet or an alcoholfree
cocktail...this issue is packed with
delicious drinking for your December
feasts.
JOSHUA GREENE
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Wine & Spirits - Winter 2023

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