The Search for Meaning in the Life of A Wine Merchant
by Al Drinkle
It's a reality of life. Assuming a lack of independent wealth, and unless one is willing to forfeit virtually all of the conventions of modern existence in the Western world, one must seek gainful employment. Since none of my innumerable passions doubled as opportunities to earn even the most basic living, this depressing fact daunted me for many years. It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties that the disillusionment gave way to a glimmer of hope when a burgeoning interest of mine seemed to coincide with an accessible “industry”.
Nobody gets into the wine business because they want to make a load of money. (Although last year in a wine bar in Mainz, Germany, I met a young Canadian who had his sights set on precisely that. I hope that my 20-minute Riesling-fuelled tirade helped set him straight). For my part, I was just excited that work and play could snuggle up a little bit closer than they ever had before, and somehow almost two decades have gone by without my noticing.
That's a good sign, but as I get older I'm increasingly burdened by existential thoughts. I find myself questioning virtually everything that humanity collectively pursues, but these questions are most assertively posed on a personal level. Since I spend so many of my waking hours dedicated to it, my line of work in particular is in the very crosshairs of this developing internal crisis.
When somebody asks me what I do, I'm always tempted to respond in a purposefully elusive way. “Well, these days it seems that I mostly shovel snow from one place to another; I read as much as possible; I watch a lot of noir and horror films; I relish in mealtimes more than the average person; I take long walks and bike rides; I jump at any chance to travel; I play guitar but not as actively as I used to; I spend time with my cats, family and a few close friends who I feel are occasionally preferable to solitude; I go to bed early and rise even earlier and I do all this to the persistent soundtrack of countercultural music and while rotating through tea, wine and ganja.” But I know what my interlocutor is actually asking, and the conversation perpetuates the unfair idea that we're all defined by how we earn a living. That's what we do and who we are.
Me? I sell wine.
It's this that gives me trouble. I sell wine. That's how I spend thousands of hours every year and how I invest incalculable amounts of creative, physical and emotional energy — selling wine. As disenfranchised people battle addiction and homelessness, as genocidal wars rage on, as our political climate becomes increasingly irrational and as we humans collectively destroy the only planet that can support us and millions of other species, I'm busy selling something that nobody actually needs. (Well, I would argue that I need it, but admittedly not in the same way that I need air, water and food). This is exacerbated by the fact that the only other human living in my home is my wife, who is a thoughtful, caring and creative elementary school teacher. I can assure you that she makes a difference through her work. But do I?
I'm not a natural salesperson, and in fact, I get no rush or satisfaction whatsoever out of “making the sale”. Zero. Nothing. Instead, I work in the wine business because I love wine. This sounds sensible enough but you might be surprised by how uncommon it is. However, my love of wine doesn't make me better than the apathetic people who share this line of work. In fact, being a mercantile parasite of something that I love might make me worse than others who are just indifferently earning a living.
Something that I know for sure is that selling wine can only matter if wine matters. And I'm equally certain that wine can only matter in a meaningful and intrinsic way if it's an authentic product that represents a particular “somewhere” on our planet that's lovingly tended by people who are connected to that place. It's crucial that the winegrower in question is farming in such a way that's in harmony with their environment, and even better if they're operating on an artisanal scale¹ I wish it went without saying that the wine must also taste good, with varying degrees of nuance fostered by the potential of the land and the skill of the vintner.
Human beings have been tending the vine for thousands of years. There was a time when vineyards were systematically relegated to hillsides or land with less fertile soils so that crops more essential to survival could be planted in convenient and fecund places. Over time, people noticed that some of these challenging environs regularly engendered more interesting, singular and delicious wine, and hence arduous viticulture still persists in places like Priorat, Côte-Rôtie and the Mosel Valley. Though a demanding terrain often signals a worthwhile wine (for why else would anybody invest the effort?), it's not a prerequisite, and all over the world you'll find stalwart vintners who grow distinctive wines with aromas and flavours that are unique to their respective regions. For those of us who live and work in urban environs, such wines at their best can act as teleportation serums to these beautiful places, providing a much-needed dialogue with the natural world that our busy lives deprive us of.
The Arbossar vineyard in Priorat, farmed by Dominik Huber of Terroir Al Límit, and Andreas and Barbara Adam’s steep Häs'chen vineyard in the Mosel.
An authentic wine is a gift from nature that reinforces the drinker's humanity by offering them the final role in a timeless process. The drinker in question may not actually care about this, but at least the potential for meaning is there for them. I'd much prefer that my customers have access to this potential as opposed to reinforcing their status as mindless consumers who unknowingly fulfill the predictions of reductive corporate research each time they raise a glass to their lips. But this all sounds suspiciously twee, so let's quickly discuss what it looks like when wine comes from the opposite end of the spectrum — while keeping in mind that we're indeed addressing a spectrum, and not a binary set of values.
The polar opposite of a wine that's meaningful to me is one made by a company that's either corporately structured or fuelled by an investor (or investors) who is keen on a quick return — just as any business-minded person probably has a right to anticipate. Small-scale production is out of the question in the corporate wine-world because nobody makes much profit that way, and even if the stakeholders like or love wine (which is probable), the majority of the decisions are going to be based on potential earnings. Boardroom meetings and quarterly reports that discuss terroir-transparency, vinous authenticity or environmental responsibility might give investors warm fuzzies at first, but sooner or later everyone will want to know where the fucking money is. This isn't to say that a definition of a great wine producer is one that has no hope of making a profit (we'll address this in time), but when one structures their production around answering to investors, several key winegrowing virtues — and basically all of those that I personally care about — are going to be sidelined².
The wine (I mean “product”) made by such a producer (I mean corporation) might taste good. In fact, according to their business model, it better taste good or heads are gonna roll! But there's a huge difference between something that merely “tastes good” and something that's appealing in an authentic and distinctive way. Coca-Cola tastes good — or at least millions of people around the world seem to think so — but how can one compare it to a perfectly-ripened wild strawberry, or to cite an example that involves human intervention, a peak wheel of Salers cheese? Coca-Cola is a manufactured product (albeit a clever and successful one) that's shaped by in-depth and expensive market analyses and bolstered by a formidable advertising budget, all of which is funded by charging outrageously more for the product than it costs to make.
Many of the world's wines, despite beginning with grapes (possibly of dubious quality and almost certainly sourced from vast and potentially-uninteresting terrains), are also manufactured and marketed this way. Being the result of a comprehensively-researched flavour formula and subject to countless manipulations and adjustments, they usually taste just fine — but they're not connected to anything except a big business model and it would be difficult to argue that they “matter” in any way. But maybe life already has too much meaning and I would understand if this wasn't the least bit discouraging to you. It's a fact that many people find Coca-Cola-like consistency appealing when it comes to wine. All I can say is that I personally find no such appeal or utility in such a product, and I'm certainly not going to arrange to ship pallets of it to Calgary and invest all sorts of effort in selling it to you. In fact, it's difficult for me to imagine a more pointless and unfulfilling way to live my life.
As a strictly personal sentiment, there’s something eminently distasteful about making buying decisions that further contribute to the wealth, market share and expansion potential of a company that’s already massive. Such corporate bullies have made significant international headway in the industry of wine production — not to mention sales and distribution — and it makes no sense for a small player like Metrovino to align ourselves with them. By doing so, we'd be encouraging the wine world to follow the path of countless other industries where a tiny number of exploitative players control the entire landscape. All else being equal — specifically, wine quality in a completely objective sense — we can instead choose to support small-scale, often family-run businesses whose sales merely and modestly fund the possibility of another vintage, and hopefully increasing the chances that this model of production can survive in our modern world.
Naturally, impressive and even “artisanal” wine can come out of the big-business milieu, but I don't think that this matters and I'll cite an increasingly common example as to why. When a multinational luxury goods company acquires a small Burgundy domaine that was previously family- or independently-owned, the question of whether the quality of the wine improves or recedes isn't the point. The acquisition probably happened by the company in question elbowing other potential buyers out of the running by offering an egregiously inflated price, which in turn artificially influences the land prices of the entire region, ensuring that only companies with similarly stratospheric funding will be able to make future purchases. Undoubtedly, “improvements” will be made at the newly-purchased domaine and perhaps the perceived consistency will be enhanced, but this, along with the nature of the original investment, will drive the resulting products further into the realm of “luxury goods" that most wine lovers can't afford.
Ultimately the domaine in question will have just become another emblem of prestige in the corporation's portfolio, and part of the profits will help to ensure that a gigantic bottle of their key Champagne brand will be conspicuously splashed around at a forthcoming Formula 1 event — which happens to be sponsored by the same company's profitable handbag brand. Wines that are born within this framework can't be meaningful to me, and in fact they very much represent a world that I don't want to live in.
There is, of course, a delicate balance and a complex relationship between artisanality and commercialism. There are definitely a few hobbyist vintners out there who, in theory, might represent some idyllic winegrowing ideal. But in our modern, transactional and international world, the historical tradition of winegrowing could not perpetuate itself on any significant level without enough vintners themselves — including many working on a miniscule scale — entering into commerce. In providing a conduit between such people and the final drinker, Metrovino is helping to preserve various cultures’ ancient and intimate relationships with the vine, which itself denotes a unique interconnectedness with specific parts of our planet.
Alexandra Künstler of Weiser-Künstler and Cristiano Garella of Le Pianelle & Colombera & Garella.
The issue of pricing has become a serious concern of mine as of late, and certain global and local factors seem to be ensuring that it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The wine industry isn't immune to inflation, and it's obvious that corporations are better equipped to absorb it than independent operators. The best wines from a few particular regions have sadly become untouchable to me, but there's bountiful excitement emerging from destinations that I've previously ignored, and I can honestly say that any compromises I've made have been based on where I drink from, not the quality of what I drink. I enjoy incredible, authentic wine every single day, and all this on a wine merchant's wages!
Paramount to pricing is the fact that, with very few and only very recent exceptions from decidedly particular regions, none of our winegrowing partners are amassing undue wealth based on the work that they do. We've ridden in their vehicles and eaten in their homes, and it's clear that they're engaged in a labour of love. For 98% of them, any incoming money is immediately reinvested in the operation and for the 2% that are actually becoming quite well off, this recent development is due to the wine world's spotlight shining on them after decades of toil — a fact that they themselves seem to find rather bemusing if not outright disorienting.
Partly for reasons of pricing and partly for reasons of accessibility to a greater number of drinkers, I'll happily concede that independently-run, medium-sized producers (to quote a figure, let's say one who tends somewhere around 50 to 60 hectares of land) play an important role in regards to authentic winegrowing. Sure, it takes a bigger team to bring it all together, and their production facilities may lack the romanticism of a cave lit by bioluminescent fungi where somebody's fermenting 50 litres of wine in a hollowed-out log, but it would be fatuous to say that producers like Chȃteau de Beauregard in the Mȃcon or Bodegas Cerrón in Jumilla aren't responsibly making interesting and delicious wines that are dutifully representative of distinctive places.
Carlos Cerdan García of Bodegas Cerrón and Frédéric Burrier of Château de Beauregard.
There's room for cooperatives too. From my experience, it's rare that the wine produced by a cooperative is going to be downright mindblowing, but the potential combination of small-scale farming and affordability can be attractive. It's not fair to expect that every winegrower should also possess the infrastructure and skills to be a winemaker, and the delegation of responsibility inherent to a cooperative often corresponds with polycultural farming on the part of some members, which is a boon to that particular region's biodiversity.
One of the truly gratifying things about my job is serving as a matchmaker between independent and authentic winegrowers and local independent restaurateurs whose guests are the final link in the chain from the ground to the mouth. Given Metrovino's diminutive status in the vast sea of wine commerce, it's an honour when our modest role can be imbued with this sort of integrity. Perhaps no less satisfying is the selling of bottles to more moneyed, corporately-structured restaurants. In the most optimistic (and admittedly slightly ridiculous) sense, these bottles are Trojan horses of vinous authenticity infiltrating the commercial mainstream — and we're sincerely grateful for our allies in restaurant buying positions who actively select these wines for their programs.
Human beings have been drinking wine for thousands of years, and despite all the media noise about the decline in consumption, this long-standing tradition will continue. I fully recognise that even amongst the wine-obsessed, very few people invest as much thought into the ideological side of wine as I do. Most people just want something delicious to drink, and perhaps therein lies the significance of the role that my Metrovino colleagues and I play (not to mention a few other estimable importers and purveyors in Alberta). We want to provide people with something delicious, yes, but only after taking into consideration countless other imperative values that our customers can then take for granted when they buy wine from us.
Every bottle of authentic wine that we sell is a tiny victory. It signifies the support of an independent winegrowing operation that farms responsibly and painstakingly communicates the soul of a distinctive place, and it perpetuates a traditional and culturally-imperative relationship with nature that precedes corporations and industrial practices. The structures of our world denote that in order to share such bottles on an impactful scale, we must distribute them through commerce, and to purchase such a bottle — knowingly or not — is to cast a vote that this model of winegrowing perpetuates in the face of all adversity.
Perhaps the next time somebody asks what I “do”, I'll give a more pedantic answer. I sell wine, yes, but bottle by bottle I'm imposing a tiny impediment on corporations that produce and distribute vapid, industrial beverages and I'm connecting people to a nature- and tradition-based nexus of deeper meaning and greater good. I'm no Mother Teresa, that's for fucking sure, but perhaps this minor role that I play can serve as a meager tealight candle during my sleepless nights of existential darkness.
