WINE IS AN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT
Sawknee stands for farming before fermentation. For a return to ancient, low-intervention production methods. For sustainability and justice in the vineyard, the winery, and along the supply chain. For wines that are delicious, yes, but that provide more than pleasure.
Sawknee makes connections, and uses them to better understand our relationship to the earth.
In the summer of 2021, after six years in the wine industry, I fled Brooklyn in a haze, asking myself, “Is this — gesturing to Instagram tasting notes, stuffy sommeliers, the “unicorn” bottle of the day — all there is to wine?” When I examined myself, I realized I lacked something fundamental: even though my life revolved around it, I didn’t know how wine was made. Not many people do. So I left Brooklyn to spend a few months at my favorite winery, Clos Saron — one of the bastions of “natural” wine in America.
On the other side of my first harvest experience, I’m certain of something I’d previously suspected: there is magic and mystery in the winemaking process, and yet, the whole thing is stunningly simple. On the long drive back to Atlanta, I had a moment of clarity. I could spend my whole life studying wine, or I could just start making it.
Starting a winemaking career is daunting, for many reasons. You get one shot a year, and even if you make wine for a decade, you’ve only done it ten times. How many things are you good at after ten attempts? It’s a long process, and there’s no substitute for just jumping in. For the next few years I’m planning on helping established wineries, and hopefully (fingers crossed!) I’ll be able to carve out space for my own production alongside their wines. Northern California is an incredible place to grow grapes, and yet it is still under-appreciated in our understanding of American wines. I’ll be in the middle of nowhere, about two and half hours north of Napa, in a region with a handful of winemakers who have dedicated themselves to expressing a unique expression of California. I believe in this region, and I believe in the wines, but putting down roots in California is terrifying. The climate catastrophe is not “on the way”; it’s here, and it looks like a water-starved, burning California.
Last year during harvest I began to realize how deeply farming influences fermentationm and it’s led to a bit of a mantra that I repeat: wine is an agricultural product. Say it again: wine is an agricultural product. It sounds simple, but I think we as a wine-drinking community have a lot to learn about what this means. I believe understanding this simple truth is a great first step towards a more just, sustainable, and authentic wine culture. Great wines are made through dedicated and meticulous farming practices, and I’m setting off to learn that first hand.
I’m spending 2022 in the Sierra Nevada Foothills, in Yuba County, with a group of farmers who have demonstrated their farming skills. For the next 12 months, I’ll soak up year-round vineyard management skills, and cap it off by assisting with another harvest at Clos Saron. I’m hoping to be able to make a small amount of my own wine too, a barrel (maybe two!) of wines that will sleep in the Clos Saron cellar until they’re ready to be released.
I’m excited to let you into a journey towards winemaking. If you’d like to follow along, please subscribe to my newsletter, called THE STICKS, below. It will be the eventual distribution list for my releases, and it will give the context for those eventual bottles.