In Edwidge Danticat’s exquisite, haunting work, “Create Dangerously,” the first essay discusses the exchange that happens between reader and writer as a type of intimacy. She references Haitian novelist Dany Laferrière who explores this intimacy brilliantly.
But what if we take his theory a little further? If a Cambodian reader is reading this post, for example, I become a Cambodian writer, yes. But as the Cambodian reader journeys through the idiosyncrasies of being a black woman and storyteller living in America, I, too, take on the reader’s familiar and unfamiliar, their traditions and hauntings, their love and rebellion, their courage and cruelty, their fears, their vulnerabilities, their hunger, their beauty. And to take it even further, their secrets, their palate.
I love the idea of this intimate exchange as its own necessary art. Oftentimes, there’s so much emphasis on who’s giving and who’s receiving, as opposed to the exquisite communion of bodies and spirits resulting in a fluid (even if chaotic) exchange of energy—the thrill, no more or less than thighs tied around hips.
The same applies to the culture of wine. We bring ourselves to every single bottle—our deepest fears and insecurities, our beauty and ugliness, our longing, our curiosity, our deeply-rooted prejudices, our unfulfilled passions, our abysmal need to be seen, liked, blue-checked. We bring it all, and our senses haveto filter that “empire of dirt” as Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor writes in the song “Hurt” to find a way to pleasure—pleasure that is as sweet and rich as it is dark and unknowing.
After two decades in this wine space, having died and risen over and over again from my own empire of dirt, what still alarms, beguiles, and to some degree, motivates me is to explorethe myriad ways wine separates as much as it brings together, and how that dichotomy mirrors a constant social tension that is, indeed, the American experience.
I sometimes wonder where the spirit can find rest in this state—the constant tension that is now so immensely illuminated by the pandemic and the stark presence of Death, the way it seems to tickle your neck when that masked stranger passes by—Covid’s shadow, the looming specter, or tighten your chest when that anxious driver overtakes you, speeding frantically to that painful red light.
We are all moving in the same direction. Aren’t we? Vegan and carnivore? Masked and unmasked? Asshole and altruist? Heterosexual and pansexual? Wine lover and wine tyrant? We are all moving steadily towards what my mother, “Sistah Sonia,”used to call “the golden bell” that will most definitely ring whether we drink André or Atmospheres.
I recently worked with a client who we’ll call Sheila. She hired me to procure wines for a dinner celebrating Jamaican independence from British rule on August 6, 1962. Of course, I was so excited especially when Shiela said that she wanted me to curate the wine list for a Jamaican-inspired menu. She told me that she loved “Perrier-Jouët and malbec,” but that she “was totally open to trying something new.” The vibe was old school reggae, flipflops, and Kaftans.
But as we sat in her two-floor condo near the beach, Shiela—a paste of sweat tracing her pristinely pressed edges, dark wavy, strands drizzling down her back, a Tiffany’s heart charm dangling from her sterling bracelet, it was clear that what she said she wanted was in stark contrast with the vibe was creating.
I often find that many of us, Americans, speak freedom but live in other people’s freedom. We must be led to our freedom as opposed to discovering it ourselves. Self-discovery is a burden.
Shiela brought her entire self to the bottle of Incantabiss Lambrusco I brought to for our in-first meeting. She talked about what she thought black folk “should” drink and how they “should” taste wine. Sheila wanted to make sure that when prompted, the guests sniffed and sipped when they were supposed to. She thought her guests would find the Lambrusco “basic.”
“We have to show them the proper way to swirl,” she saidin a tone that was supposed to be firm but was filled with question marks.
“Do we?” I asked.
This vision contrasted our initial ZOOM meeting where we talked about creating a space where we provided delicious,Jamaican food and beautiful, thoughtfully-made wine, and in the words of Ray Charles, “Let it do what it do.”
The idea of listening to Beres Hammond while forcing swirls under the moonlight just didn’t make sense to me. But the more Sheila spoke, the more I understood her. To some extent, I was her.
She was a digital content creator for a medical technology company, but her passion was cooking. She and her friends had been buying bottles and cooking together at each other’s homes which she really enjoyed. I remember having similar experiences in my early days of wine exploration. But after attending countless wine tastings and wine tours, Sheila was overwhelmed.
That innocent, intuitive exploration was replaced with what wine enjoyment should look like—the examining of rim variation, knowing where your olfactory bulb is, perceiving salinity. And even in that very moment, sitting with someonewho was more interested in discovering the styles of wine that just made her feel good, she didn’t know how to receive that.
We talked for hours.
Shiela brought her entire self to the bottle of Incantabiss Lambrusco—her ex-husband, narrowly escaping Covid’s deadly grasp, a gnawing struggle with her weight in a culture that tells her that her big, shapely, Amazonian body is unhealthy and therefore, she cannot participate in beauty. Sheila was rising through her own empire of dirt.
At some point in our lives, we all rise from some empire of dirt—some schist, some volcanic soil, some fossils and shells. What if we considered for a moment that when we pick up that bottle—its journey beginning in the dirt, the winemaker becomes us, and we become the winemaker as none can exist without the other. None of us is more valuable than the other. The looking, smelling, sipping—what if this process was meant to bring us together? In my case, the Italian winemaker becomes Jamaican-American from the first sip, and I become Italian. The maker and drinker are one. What if we allowed our imaginations to frolic through our moments unencumbered, unpressured by what pleasure is supposed to look and feel like, trusting our senses so fiercely that we discover a note so far out in the wilderness of our experience, it sparks sensations that last far beyond the glass. And, perhaps, maybe, the only thing we need to do in that moment in front of the bottle is sip. And if we dare, sip lovely.