Les Emigré(e)s: Expat Natural Winemakers in France
Les Emigré(e)s: Expat Natural Winemakers in France
5 new podcasts with American, English, and Canadian natural winemakers who've made France their home. Katie Worobeck, Hannah Fuellenkemper, Jon Purcell, Joe Jefferies, & Michele Smith-Chapel.
2024 will mark fifteen years I’ve lived in France. Much has changed. One thing that hasn’t is the enduring Anglophone media fascination with the Expatriate. Mileage varies, but as a general rule, conducting any creative profession is considered more remarkable if one does it far from one’s native land, ideally in Paris or France. This trick works for writers, artists, musicians, chefs, and also for natural winemakers, the subjects of Series III of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast, which I’ve entitled LES EMIGRE(E)S.
Here’s Part 1: FIVE NEW PODCASTS with fellow fish-out-of-water throughout France.
CANADIAN expat vigneronne KATIE WOROBECK of MAISON MAENAD on accidentally taking Latin jazz dance lessons in the SOUTHERN JURA. (Listen here. No paywall.)
AMERICAN expat négociant (and micro-vigneronne) HANNAH FUELLENKEMPER of ABRACADABRA on her experience with Tinder in AUVERGNE. (Listen here. No paywall.)
ENGLISH expat vigneron JOE JEFFERIES on the COMMUNIST roots of the LANGUEDOC cave cooperative, and his own past as a FISHING JOURNALIST. (Listen here.)
AMERICAN expat vigneron-négociant JON PURCELL of VIN NOE on the THRILLS and HAZARDS of making UNSULFITED NATURAL WHITE WINE on BURGUNDY’S GREAT TERROIRS. (Listen here.)
AMERICAN expat vigneronne-négociant MICHELE SMITH-CHAPEL of DOMAINE CHAPEL on SHOWING THE WORK of manually farming STEEP SITES in the CRUS of the BEAUJOLAIS. (Listen here.)
These five winemakers all come from different places and made their ways to different wine regions within France. (My unlikely ambition for this series is to eventually record a podcast with an expat natural winemaker in every wine region of France.) Their individual circumstances vary. What unites their stories is a will to integrate within a local wine community - often with the support of a local natural vigneron or two - and the will to leave the USA or Canada or England behind.1
Neither is an easy task. In particular, quitting the dynamic, engorged economies of the USA, Canada, or the UK to set up in rural France requires a faith that one will someday manage to live well at what is usually, in real terms, a rather lower income bracket.
I can’t speak for everyone who has ever dreamed of moving to France. I’m sure people do it for all sorts of reasons. But nowadays what interests me about expatriate natural winemakers is this renunciation - or this partial renegotiation, anyway - of the lifestyle they might have enjoyed within the highly “developed” economies of their home countries.
-
I’ll follow up with a Part II of this series sometime in February, with a few more vigneron(ne)s from a few more regions. In the meantime, two IMPORTANT ERRATA from my last emailed post, TEN NATURAL WINE FASCINATIONS OF 2023:
In my notes to Nicolas Carmarans’ “Josette,” I accidentally cited the wrong US importer for his wines. (A dicey mistake, if you know this world! It was a misunderstanding.) His actual importer is Steven Graf Imports.
In my notes to Axel Prüfer’s “Fou du Roi,” I misremembered the vintage of the wine I was describing. The wine I had in mind was 2021; there is no 2022 “Fou du Roi.” Oops!
Both errors have already been corrected on the Substack itself, but it felt necessary to address them here, since one can’t go back and correct the email versions.
Finally, here are two upcoming wine salons where I’ll be signing copies of The World of Natural Wine and offering pours of my own strange wines from abandoned vines:
Jan. 28th - La ZOOM Sur le Vin (Sète, FR)
Mar. 2nd - Hokus Pokus (Ostrava, CZ)
Many thanks for reading, as always! And for listening!
FURTHER LISTENING & READING
NDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part I
NDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II
NDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part I
NDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II
France is also home to numerous expatriate natural winemakers from Australia, Denmark, Japan, and beyond. I limited this series to expatriates from North America and the UK, because the individual stories seemed to have more impact when the winemakers’ origins had more in common. If I could have found a dozen expatriate winemakers from New Jersey alone, for example, that would have been really interesting.