By Al Drinkle
2019 Wildman Wines “Astro Bunny”
Pét-Nat - Riverland, Australia $32
2019 Wildman Wines “Piggy Pop”
Pét-Nat - McLaren Vale, Australia $32
“The greatest pleasures of traveling are finding a sage hidden behind weeds or treasures hidden in trash, gold among discarded pottery. Whenever I encountered someone of genius, I wrote about it in order to tell my friends.”
- Matsuo Bashō
One of the worst things about all of this is that we can’t travel. Venturing to beautiful places is to drink from our spiritual wellspring, and it’s an immeasurably healthy pursuit. In the past, when some of you would walk into the shop to find that Richard or Matty or whoever was traveling, you might have said something like, “must be tough", or “I wish I had your job". You are right to think that travelling as a wine buyer is one of the most enjoyable activities of our profession, but you probably wouldn't like the requisite pay cut. And you never seem to catch us manually unloading hundreds and hundreds of cases at the warehouse!
The reason that we invest so much time and money into visiting wine regions is so that we can turn over stones and make discoveries that are truly inspiring. There are several talented importers in Alberta and it’s our pleasure to do business with them, but we’re also restless and indefatigable seekers. When we make discoveries of our own, we can ensure that the wine that we’re offering you comes from a confluence of factors that are essential to us.
Al with Tim Wildman
Deliciousness is indispensable, but we’re willing to sacrifice a bit of it for profundity; we’ll take both when we can have it. Admittedly, our wines at lower prices tend towards the former virtue over the latter. Across the board it’s essential for us to work with growers who farm responsibly and with whom we see eye to eye, and many of these fascinating people are the proud custodians of blessed environs. Many of them have also become dear friends over the years. Being a tiny operator ourselves, we almost always gravitate towards small producers as our values are more likely to overlap, and their wines tend to have more personality. It’s great to have some of the “finest” wines available to humanity in our catalog, but it’s most important that they provide us with pleasure, be it intellectual, spiritual or hedonistic. After all, we are still our own best customers.
The point is that we aren’t satisfied with others making our selection for us, and we love going on wild adventures to ensure that we can all drink better. A vast quantity of the wines on our shelves wouldn’t be in the province, or sometimes even the country, had we not walked the vineyards, visited the cellars and decided that we couldn’t live without them. That being the case, it would seem that we’re at a major disadvantage this year being prevented from traveling. It certainly is inconvenient, and considering that visiting wine regions that we love is like new-sheet-night for our souls, it’s also a bit heartbreaking. But it’s going to be okay...
Richard with Louis-Michel Liger-Belair
You’ve probably heard some variant on the adage that you don’t have to be an expert, you just have to know the right experts. For example, car owners don’t need to know how to replace a carburetor, but their life will be a lot easier if they have a trustworthy mechanic who does. Similarly, somebody who enjoys cheese need not know the intrinsic differences between Comté and Beaufort, as long as they know a cheesemonger who can direct them to the most tantalizing alpine cheese of the moment. We know these experts in the wine world, and they’re not going to let us down. After many, many years of traveling, tasting and developing relationships with winegrowers, we are confident that we’ve aligned ourselves with the most reliable producers on the planet. Are we going to see vintage variation? Absolutely! The influence of a particular growing season is an important part of a wine’s DNA, but growers who work in sync with nature summon the most flattering characteristics of the vintage without those features eclipsing the other attractive components of the wine.
Matty in Montalcino
So this year, we’re trusting our winegrowers implicitly and from a distance. These are people who have eminently earned our trust, and by virtue of this, we ask you to trust us, and to keep challenging us to be creative in the current environment. In the words of a grower in the Jura who my colleagues and I were prevented from seeing last month, “the situation is a lesson between the essential and the superfluous”, and she’s right. I’m not ready to admit that traveling to buy wine is superfluous, but the essential component is definitely to have great wine to sell you.
We do. And we will. Thank you so much for your continued support.
