Mimi Casteel is Imbibe Magazine’s 2020 Wine Person of the Year. She’s the vigneron for Hope Well, a certified organic vineyard and a winery in Oregon that she farms regeneratively with animals and birds and all kinds of flora and fauna with no tilling and no fences. Please do yourself a favor and find Mimi’s YouTube video about glyphosate. It’s a master class on soil and vine microbiology, and the devastating effect RoundUp has had on our food and wine. You can find it in a blog post I did.

Also, check out any article or interview you can find online about Mimi. She’s one of the truly brilliant scientific minds working at the cutting edge of regenerative viticulture and agriculture in general. She thinks deeply about so many of the issues facing the wine industry, agriculture, and society at large, and Everything she talks about is full of big, important ideas that could shape the future of our world for the better.

This interview is no different. We skip the backstory and dive right into the big ideas that are occupying Mimi’s mind these days involving experimenting with a sulf-sustaining community. We talk about the need for there to be more integration between rural and urban worlds, the ways that she farms and solves problems at Hope Well, the need to integrate and involve vineyard workers in all aspects of winemaking and the wine world, and so much more. As with anyone on the cutting edge, many of Mimi’s ideas are controversial and even incendiary. I hope you are incensed, intriqued, and inspired by this interview with one of the great minds of our time.

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