10 years ago, my life changed forever. I had been pursuing my life long dream of comedy writing. And I was really close, closer than most people get— represented by UTA and finally in the meetings I felt I deserved to be in. And then Grub Street published this article. I had a literary agent within weeks. By March I was working for VICE Munchies. I wrote my book proposal in a month & a half and sold it that June. I won the Saveur Awards for Best Wine Blog and was Wine Enthusiast’s 40 under 40. I wrote for nearly every food and beverage magazine, and by November, I’d been offered a job at my favorite of those magazines, Bon Appétit. In less than a year, I went from Mindy Kaling’s assistant to writing about wine for 18 hours a day.
Of course I burnt out. I mean, you saw it. I didn’t just burn out— I fucking skidded across Instagram Live in a pair of trendy cotton undies, engulfed in flames, cryptically screaming aggressive hip-hop, drunk on god knows how many bottles of wine, an exaggerated sense of self and misplaced idealism that had hardened into self-righteousness. And everyone saw it because I made sure they did. It was an act of arson, as if burning myself down publicly meant I could somehow put out the fires in my personal life.
Nope. That shit was toast.
And then, I couldn’t drink wine. I was repulsed by what was once my beloved respite; the vase for my creativity to fill, my only true writing partner. Saved and cherished bottles of Jura tasted like migraines. A whiff of a hint of Brett on a passing breeze would send me running to the nearest bathroom. I wanted to gouge my eyes out every time an acquaintance whipped out a bottle of orange “Gulp Hablo” at a party, asking for my thoughts with a self-satisfied smile. I just…
I just fucking hated wine.
I wish I could say it happened out of nowhere, or that my unhappiness tainted every bottle I came in contact with like a wild strain of TCA. But much like my love of wine, my literal distaste for it evolved over time.
Before I recommended a wine, I had to drink it three separate times to ensure it was as stable and consistent as I could possibly guarantee. But bottles that met this criteria started to grow fewer & further between. It’s no coincidence that the downward spiral of natural wine’s overall quality coincided with natural wine’s rise in popularity (that fucking bitch from Bon Appétit, am I right?). The demand for these wines became so high that winemakers began pushing production, increasing the volume of wine while decreasing cellar time so the wines could be shipped out as quickly as possible. And I don’t blame them— these are small producers, basically farmers, who saw their bag and grabbed it. They deserved that shelf space and money more than the flood of new, flashy labeled wines made without any intention other than capitalizing on the craze.
But you could taste the corners being cut. Wines began to lack deeper flavor profiles because they weren’t being aged long enough. There was a rise in wines that were “picked green,” meaning the grapes were picked intentionally early to increase acidity, but then they all tasted too similar. And while climate change is in part to blame for increased bacteria, many wines had become so faulted that you had to assume the winemaker never tasted it. Or if they had, they didn’t give a shit that it tasted like mulled sewage served from a burnt plastic Crockpot because “ThAt’S wHaT nAtUrAl WiNe TaStEs LiKe 🤡”
It wasn’t just winemakers though. Importers, distributors, wine shops, buyers, and other wine stewards were also (to a certain degree) accountable for the quality of a wine, or at least the experience drinking it. Their job as stewards was to preserve and serve the wine to the best of its expression. So, let’s say the new vintage of a wine is tasting really tight, one noted, high acidity. These are the people that would be responsible for clocking that and holding back the wine until it was ready. That’s some stewardship right there. But how could they even do that when the demand of natural wines was so high that they were having to purchase wines without even tasting them? When you consider these allocations basically became blind investments, it’s not surprising they were basically shipped right onto shelves and sold regardless of the wine’s condition.
I became increasingly frustrated. I’d buy a case of wine and half of it would taste like Bragg’s Grape Cider Vinegar or a hamster’s cage full of piss and Corn Nuts. I’d maybe get a good bottle or two but by the time I went to buy the extra bottles for my review, the wine would be gone. Now even my own systems of quality control were collapsing and I had to make choices. Do I publish an article about a wine I’d only tasted once? Or do I miss another deadline? Either way, my work and my character was compromised.
I did try to express these grievances. It went over as well as if I’d been Regan from The Exorcist, spewing slime and jackhammering my pussy with a bottle of Morgon while cursing your mother to an eternity of hellfire and Rombauer. Natural wine was no longer just wine: it was moral superiority, performative proletarianism, entire personalities. Criticizing natural wine was an attack of personal ethics and the integrity of “the community.”
Ah, “the community.”
What a quaint word to describe
the many
who drank the Kool-Aid
of the few
quietly monopolizing & manipulating markets.
I drank it too.
But I digress.
While everyone was getting Covid in spring of 2020, I got another virus that disproportionately fucks up senior citizens: stress-induced shingles. If you haven’t had shingles, it feels like lightening bolts are shooting lava out of your spine and through your skin, leaving scaled scars across your ribs that you can use in the future as evidence you’re Reptilian. I was lucky to catch it early on and get antibiotics, but I was still out of commission on the couch for nearly six weeks due to immunity issues.
The first thing I drank when I was finally well was a co-fermented cider from a producer I know and trust. I hadn’t finished half the glass before I was puking my brains out. The antibiotics had gutted my biome and I literally couldn’t stomach the same natural wines I’d been drinking for years.
On the one hand, I just needed to rebuild my biome. On the other, I started to question natural wine, and myself. I’d been one of the loudest advocates of natural wine, trumpeting its benefits as better for the environment, better for small business, and better for consumers. But was it really better for consumers? It certainly didn’t feel like it that summer, puking up glass after glass trying to meet my magazine deadlines. I couldn’t help but wonder, and worry, that I had been recommending wines that could make people sick.
I unceremoniously left Bon Appétit in August 2020. I quit because they were fucking me financially, but also because somewhere quietly inside, I knew I couldn’t do the job anymore. I physically couldn’t drink natural wine, and I didn’t want to.
If you’d told me in December 2014 that I would write about wine professionally, I would have laughed. And I would have laughed even harder if you told me in December 2024 that I’d ever be caught dead writing about wine again.
Wine had broken more than my heart, it broke me. And I hated that. I hated that my optimism wasn’t a reality, that I’d never get anything in return for all I had so readily given. I hated that I spent all my own fucking money on those wines and that I really thought those people were my fucking friends. I hated that I’d given everything to natural wine and I was left with nothing.
And even after I’d decided to hang it up, I still found myself hating wine. I was infuriated or bored by every wine I was served. I resented everyone at dinner parties that treated my knowledge as a party trick. I was assaulted by another winemaker, one I trusted as my brother for over a decade, when I brought him to meet my new boyfriend. Why wouldn’t I hate it?
But then I opened
one of the last bottles in my cellar,
a 2015 “Peek-a-Boo #6”
from Christian Tschida
at 3:59AM while
working on my novel.
It sang as sweet and yearning as “The Flower Duet (Lakmé),” a haunting operatic melody I only remembered from fleeting cinematic moments and had to track down through a number of embarrassing Google searches. And then I sat there, listening to the duet on repeat, drinking what was one of the most beautiful wines of my life.
Christian Tschida has always been one of my favorite producers and while I’d written a glowing review of this same bottle in 2018, it paled in comparison to the impact it had on me that night. The same part of me that wishes I hadn’t ever opened it is the same part of me that wishes I’d written about it, but I couldn’t bear to dissect what was so wholly immaculate. It was a ten year old natural wine that was not only faultless, but absolutely flawless and fresh with a complex and intricately woven flavor profile that was so deep I could taste it in my cervix.
It was everything I’d ever wanted in a wine. It brought me so much head-to-toe happiness that I had no choice but to believe there are still wines in this world that not only should be drank, but should be celebrated.
I posted this bottle last week and was taken aback by how many reached out urging me to return. These past few years I’d spent so much time reflecting on the pain I experienced working professionally in the wine industry that I had forgotten what had brought me joy as a wine consumer— sharing my experiences. That’s how this all started but got lost along the way, while I lost myself.
Thank you for reminding me why I began writing about wine,
as it is why I’ve decided to come back:
You.
The Ross Review is not only my return to wine writing, but my return to writing about wine with creative freedom. It is an important step I’m taking as a writer and public figure to create a space that is both safe & equitable for me & my work, as well as fostering a welcoming network of likeminded readers/drinkers.
Each week I will be publishing a wine review and every paid subscription will go towards purchasing wines and affording me time to write about them.
There will also be occasional posts about art, basketball, whatever I want, but these will only ever be in addition to weekly wine reviews, never a substitution.
Thank you for reading and for your support.