We flew to Lyon, and you drive through a lot of forest to get here. It was sort of suffocatingly claustrophobic, just pine trees, pine trees, pine trees, all through the Livradois-Forez [national park], and then when you arrive in Chassignoles, suddenly you can see again, and there's light. We were like, ‘Ah, this is nice.’ It felt like a blank canvas for doing whatever we wanted. - Harry Lester

Harry Lester is the British chef-restaurateur behind a trio of beloved Auvergne natural wine destinations, namely L’Auberge de Chassignoles, Le Saint Eutrope, and, as of this month, Le Comptoir Central des Bazars. Lester first drew acclaim in London as a chef-partner in the Anchor & Hope (est. 2003) before a chance tip from a friend (among other factors) inspired him to decamp with his young family to the remote Auvergne village of Chassignoles, where he and his wife Ali Johnson would transform a neglected rural auberge into an internationally renowned natural wine dining destination.

In 2013, after selling the Auberge de Chassignoles, Lester opened the Clermont-Ferrand bistrot Le Saint Eutrope, which he ran until selling it to his former employees Michael Hazlewood and Manon Descombats in 2023. Earlier this month, Lester opened a new establishment in Clermont-Ferrand, Le Comptoir Central des Bazars, retaining the name of the toy shop that formerly inhabited the site on rue Lecoq. At the new address, one rediscovers all of the hallmarks that have made Lester’s restaurants so essential to the contemporary Auvergne natural wine renaissance: masterful yet unfussy cuisine, simple thoughtful décor, and an aficionado’s selection of natural wine from throughout Europe.

I first met Lester on a pilgrimage to Le Saint Eutrope in March 2019, and have since leapt at any occasion to enjoy his fine company on the natural wine route throughout France. I joined him to record this podcast late last August in Chassignoles, where he still lives part of the time. On this occasion he was making an appearance as a guest chef at his former restaurant. Take a listen for Lester’s recollections of his first encounters with Auvergne natural wine; his tips for local food markets in Clermont-Ferrand; and how his tripe recipe helped win over the locals.

Aaron

This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus years of vigneron interviews, reports, and natural wine news - please subscribe!

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

Not Drinking Poison Podcast Series V: Chefs Who Give A S**t About Wine

Ep. 31: Jonathan Schweizer of Café des Deux Gares & Le GoncourtEp. 30: Mateo Breña

A Septemper 2022 piece on Harry Lester by Rachel Signer at La Mescita.A March 2013 feature on Harry Lester during his era at L’Auberge de Chassignoles at The Financial Times.

A brief Q&A with Harry Lester at Planque.

In Alsace, we won the first step, which is to be known as a natural wine region. and I’m happy about that. But now we have to make a second step. It’s to say, “Yeah we can produce some cheap wines - and it’s also good to have everyday drinking wines - but we also have great terroir and we can making f*****g good wines.” - Christian Binner

Christian Binner is the head of Domaine Binner, a 17ha estate in Ammerschwihr in the Haut-Rhin in Alsace, and the president and co-founder of the Associations des Vins Libres d’Alsace. His father Joseph Binner had never gone in for synthetic chemical viticulture, which paved the way for Christian to oversee a transition to certified organic and soon after biodynamic viticulture after joining the estate at the turn of the century. Initiated into natural wine circles by a meeting with Marcel Lapierre around the same time, Binner and his family embraced an ethos of natural winemaking; from 2012 (the year a new bioclimatic cellar was inaugurated) until 2022, Binner produced all his wines without added sulfites at any stage.

In addition to his estate work, Binner has been at the forefront of négociant natural winemaking in Alsace for over a decade, starting with a limited collaboration with Stéphane Bannwarth in 2009. In 2014, Binner partnered with the team behind DUO Oenologie, Pierre Sanchez and Xavier Couturier, to found Les Vins Pirouettes, an innovative négociant agency model that aimed to introduce neighboring estates just debuting in natural winemaking (with the aid of Sanchez and Couturier) to the wider natural wine market. Les Vins Pirouettes has since seen sizable growth and success on export markets, such that in 2023, Binner sold his shares in the business to his partners, preferring to concentrate on production at his own estate - and the founding of a smaller, higher-end Alsace Grand Cru négociant project entitled Mëralla, in collaboration with his wife Michèle Ramponi.

I first met Binner years ago at Camille Lapierre’s Festival Dézing in the Beaujolais, and have purchased his estate’s wines for a variety of restaurants and wine bars over the years. I joined him on an unusually sunny morning in May to chat about the precipitous rise of Alsace natural négociant wine; the challenges facing the Syndicat de Défense des Vins Natures; and the generational change that has taken place in natural wine service since COVID.

Aaron

This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus reams of vigneron interviews, reports, restaurant reviews, commentary, and more - please subscribe!

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

What is the Cost of Bargain Natural Wine?

Everyone Wants A Recipe: An Interview with Xavier Couturier of DUO Oenologie

Fighting with the Weapons of Big Wine: An Interview with Pierre Dietrich of Pépin

We Have to Re-do the Work: An Interview with Jean Walch of Au Fil du Vin LibreEp. 23: Mathieu Lapierre of Domaine Lapierre

My 2019 feature on Christian Binner in Sprudge.

I don't understand, but I respect people that can sit and drink Coche-Dury in their left hand, and Axel Prüfer in their right hand. I can understand why they still find [the former wine] interesting, but for me it was something that I'd let go of completely. I couldn't have moved to only working with natural wine without letting go of that other part. - Mads Kleppe

Mads Kleppe is the gravel-voiced Norwegian sommelier responsible for radicalizing the natural wine program at renowned Copenhagen restaurant Noma throughout the 2010s. Upon taking over in 2009 from earlier sommelier Pontus Eloffson (who had already begun emphasizing biodynamic and natural wines), Kleppe soon began championing the entirely unsulfited and unfiltered work of winemakers including Franz Strohmeier, Laureanno Serres, Anthony Tortul, Christian Tschida, Tom Lubbe, and Axel Prüfer. Arguably more than anyone else in Noma’s wine lineage, Kleppe is responsible for what in natural wine circles is often referred to as “the Noma effect”: the phenomenon by which the famous restaurant’s imprimatur encouraged an unprecedented acceptance of - and enthusiasm for - natural wines previously deemed controversial among high-end restaurant buyers and clients alike.

Kleppe initially followed a classical sommelier career path, working at Oslo Michelin-two-starred restaurant Bagatelle, while participating actively in sommelier competitions. He cites early encounters with Mâconnais vigneron Julien Guillot and then-burgeoning Etna star Frank Cornelissen (both in 2003) with sparking his initial interest in natural wine; upon moving to Copenhagen to work at Noma in 2009, he pursued the subject alongside peers in the Danish wine scene of the era, including Sune Rosforth and Anders Frederik Steen. Throughout his career at Noma, Kleppe made a habit of traveling to visit winemakers on his days off.

Since leaving Noma in 2022, Kleppe has relocated to Tbilisi, where earlier this year he began work as the beverage director for Temur Ugulava’s vast Adjara restaurant group, which encompasses dozens of hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs, in addition to its Tbilisi flagship, the five-star Stamba Hotel. I first met Kleppe in Copenhagen in 2021, when a chance meeting at Den Vandrette led to an unforgettable two-day bicycle tour of many of the Danish capital’s finest natural wine spots. I also owe to Kleppe two sublime visits to Noma before the end of his tenure there. We recorded this episode in mid-May in the private dining room of Copenhagen restaurant Barr, which inhabits the dockside building that previously housed Noma. Check out the episode for Kleppe’s recollections of serving natural wine to U2; his favorite Georgian hangover cures; and why, within his peculiar synesthetic approach to wine mnemonics, “soup” is a color.

Aaron

This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus reams of vigneron interviews, reports, restaurant reviews, commentary, and more - please subscribe!

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

Ep. 24: Sune RosforthEp. 25: Anders Frederick SteenEp. 26: Martin Ho of PompetteEp. 27: Riccardo Marcon of Barabba

Alice Feiring’s splendid July feature on Mads Kleppe.

Noma’s Mixed Message

Podcast Series IV: Copenhagen Natural Wine Chronicles, Part I

Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part IPodcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part II

Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part IPodcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II

Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part IPodcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II

Winemaker in English is a stupid word, because I don’t see myself as a maker of anything. I mean, we pick the grapes, we press them, we leave them to macerate; of course we do things. So we make stuff. But the wine? If you see the period of time where we actually work the grapes… Let’s say we work the grapes for six or seven weeks. Then it’s in barrel for four or five years. - Anders Frederik Steen

Anders Frederik Steen is a Danish vigneron-négociant based with his wife and collaborator Anne Bruun Blauert in the southern Ardèche village of Valvignières, where the couple established a winemaking practice throughout the 2010s with the aid of Ardèche natural wine progenitors Gérald and Jocelyne Oustric of Domaine du Mazel. Today the couple farm almost 6ha of viognier, sauvignon, grenache blanc, grenache noir, portan, syrah, and serine, supplementing it with an almost equal volume of grape purchases from Domaine du Mazel and from Alsace vigneron Stéphane Bannwarth. In 2021, Barcelona-based interiors magazine Apartamento published a very lightly-edited volume compiling seven years of Steen’s tasting observations and notes-to-self, entitled Poetry is Growing in Our Garden.

Steen’s charmed career in natural wine began in 2007, when he worked at Noma under pathbreaking Swedish natural wine sommelier Pontus Eloffson (and alongside another Swedish sommelier Ulf Ringus, now a partner in Sweden natural wine importer Vin & Natur). Steen left two years later to partner in influential Copenhagen restaurants Relae and Manfred’s, a time when he also began importing natural wine to Denmark. His winemaking practice began in 2013, in what was initially envisioned as an ongoing collaboration with the influential radical natural winemaker Jean-Marc Brignot, who at that time had recently left France for Japan. Their partnership lasted three years, by which time Steen had already begun to base himself in Ardèche, drawn by the sense of community and camaraderie surrounding the Oustrics at Domaine du Mazel. Steen and Blauert began farming their own parcels in 2017; today the couple live with their two children in center of Valvignières, where they are in the midst of renovating their own cellar after several years vinifying at Domaine du Mazel.

Although we’ve traveled in similar orbits for many years, it wasn’t until harvest time at Domaine du Mazel 2019 that I first encountered Steen outside of the context of a natural wine salon. And it wasn’t until January of this year that we finally found an occasion to chat and taste some wines together, on an unseasonably spring-like morning before the Montpellier salons. Check out the episode for Steen’s peculiar writing process (it involves text messages); which winemaking techniques he learned from Jean-Marc Brignot; and his dastardly scheme to ensure the couple’s wines take up as much layout space as possible on restaurant wine lists.

Aaron

This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus years of vigneron interviews, profiles, news reports, and commentary - please subscribe!

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

Ep. 24: Sune Rosforth of Rosforth & RosforthEp. 26: Martin Ho of Pompette

A long interview with Anders Frederik Steen and Anne Bruun Blauert by Madeleine Willis in Apartamento.

A terrific 2021 profile of Anders Frederik Steen and Anne Bruun Blauert by Alicia in Le Figaro.

Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part IPodcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part II

Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part IPodcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II

Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part IPodcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II

There's a lot of interest for wine in Denmark. Since we haven't really been a wine producing country, [people are] eager to really go deeply down into what wine is. - Sune Rosforth

Sune Rosforth is the head of influential Denmark wine importer Rosforth & Rosforth, which he founded in 1994, initially concentrating on wines from the Loire valley. Half-Parisian on his mother’s side, he hitchhiked around France as a young man and struck up what became a lifelong friendship while working for the family behind Anjou estate Château de Passavant. Cellar visits Rosforth conducted in the region alongside Passavant’s François David would form the nucleus of his initial portfolio, which also notably included the celebrated Saumur-Champigny wines of Clos Rougeard.

Since the early 2000s, Rosforth has expanded his company’s portfolio to include many key natural wine estates in Catalonia, Italy, Chile, Georgia, and beyond. In 2012, spurred by conversations with Olivier Cousin, he began conducting regular shipments of wine from Brittany to Denmark via sailboat. To a large degree, Rosforth’s free-thinking work as an importer (and later, as a restaurateur in his own right) has accompanied - and helped shape - Copenhagen’s emergence as arguably the world’s premier nexus for natural wine and forward-thinking dining. Today, both Rosforth’s office-slash-dining-room-slash-wine-bar-and-wine-wholesaler site beneath Knippelsbro (colloquially known as “Under the Bridge”) and Den Vandrette, the nearby wine bar run by his wife Veronica, represent a spontaneous, informal, and thoroughly vital contrast to the city’s renowned fine dining scene.

I first met Rosforth in 2020 over lunch at the home of Gard vigneron Alain Allier. Later we were reintroduced in Copenhagen by then-Noma-sommelier Mads Kleppe, and I’ve since had several occasion in that city to enjoy Rosforth and Kleppe’s supreme hospitality. (This includes Rosforth’s own thoughtful and daring cooking at the office, where he whips up, with little advance warning, dishes like shrimp in tomato-shrimp broth, or sautéed sheep testicles.) We recorded this episode in October 2023 in the Kulturtårnet (or Culture Tower) overlooking Knippels Bridge, a site chosen more for its sublime view than its amenability to sound recording. Take a listen for Rosforth’s take on the future of Clos Rougeard; his memories of Catalonian vigneron Joan Ramon Escoda before the latter began making wine; and his heartfelt apology for the intensity of his fellow Danes in Copenhagen bike lanes.

Aaron

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

Ep. 25: Anders Frederick SteenEp. 26: Martin Ho of Pompette

Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part IPodcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part II

Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part IPodcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II

Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part IPodcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II

I was thinking of when I was really young, five to ten years old, at primary school, [of posters that were] just to explain to us the cycle of a tree, or a flower... I wanted to take that kind of academic way of presentation to explain carbonic maceration to people. - Mathieu Lapierre

Mathieu Lapierre is the co-manager, along with his sister Camille, of famed Morgon estate Domaine Marcel Lapierre, which he has overseen since the passing of his father in 2010. Initially a chef by training, Mathieu Lapierre joined the family estate in 2004 after viticultural studies in Beaune. Few who have met him in his two decades at the estate fail to remark the breadth of his interests, which also include the piano, archaeology, and Legos.

The occasion for our chat in early January was the completion of a pet project he first mentioned to me several years ago: an educational poster about the process of carbonic maceration. I may just be the target audience for this sort of thing, but I suspect Lapierre’s finished poster has an impressive potential to improve the global wine conversation, which remains rife with inaccuracies and mistaken impressions where it concerns carbonic maceration.

It is a situation that persists simply because questions about carbonic maceration most often arise in wine shops, wine bars, and restaurants, where informed staff are often too hurried to effectively explain the process. In such a way, Lapierre’s new poster is an inspired marriage between message and medium: it offers, in the form of a handsome poster illustrated with watercolors by French cartoonist GAB, information that is helpful on the wall of a wine establishment. Check out the podcast for a history of carbonic maceration; the sociopolitical values embedded in its practice; and the link between carbonic maceration and aged meat.

Aaron

This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus years of vigneron interviews, profiles, news reports, and commentary - please subscribe!

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

Eloi Gros: An Homage to Vanishing Beaujolais-Villages

BOOK REVIEW: Jacques Néauport, Le Dilettante

Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part IPodcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part II

Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part IPodcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II

Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part IPodcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II

Despite the fact that I was in art before, I don’t perceive tending vines and making wine as art. And therefore I myself don’t feel comfortable excusing my prices because it’s a special little artsy thing... It’s not what I’ve been learning for the last fifteen years. - Stephana Nicolescou

Half-French, half-Romanian, and raised in Chicago, Stephana Nicolescou is a well-traveled natural wine jack-of-all-trades who, since 2017, has been helping run the 5ha Ardèche estate of her companion, renowned Czech vigneron Andrea Calek. In 2019 and 2020, she also produced négociant micro-cuvées of her own as Une Strop, an Ardèche cinsault and a Loir-et-Cher cabernet franc, respectively. In addition to her winemaking activities, she is an avid scuba diver and amateur pilot, and routinely organizes a natural wine stand at the Django Reinhardt Jazz Festival in Fontainebleau.

Nicolescou left the USA to attend art school in Paris at age eighteen. Her introduction to natural wine came a few years later, after dropping out, when she managed the popular 1st-arrondissement natural wine bar Le Garde Robe. She left the position in 2011 to embrace wine production, first working in Andalucia for Bodega Cauzon, and later for Clos Roche Blanche and Michel Augé of Les Maisons Brûlées. She moved to Ardèche in 2014 with her then-companion Samuel Boulay, who had taken up the vineyards of retiring Ardèche natural wine pioneer Gilles Azzoni. When that relationship ended, she returned to Spain, where she worked for Bodega Marenas, before returning to Ardèche at the end of 2016 to work for Andrea Calek

I first met Nicolescou shortly after arriving to Paris in 2009, when I worked in central Paris and frequented apéro hours at Le Garde Robe. I lost track of her when she left for Spain, only to re-encounter her in 2018, when I arrived for a tasting appointment with Calek and was surprised to see another familiar face. Nowadays I make a stop at the couple’s handsome bioclimatic abode whenever I’m in the region, most recently before the Montpellier salons in late January, when we recorded this podcast. Check it out for Nicolescou’s plans for her own winemaking; her perspective on the Chicago natural wine scene; and how she intends to survive a zombie apocalypse in Ardèche.

Aaron

This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all episodes - plus years of natural wine profiles, reports, and interviews - please subscribe!

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

NDP Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in FranceEp. 14: Katie Worobeck of Maison MaenadEp. 15: Hannah Fuellenkemper of ABRACADABRAEp. 16: Joe Jefferies of Les Bories JefferiesEp. 17: Jon Purcell of Vin NoéEp. 18: Michele Smith-Chapel of Domaine ChapelEp. 20: Kenji Hodgson of Vins HodgsonEp. 21: Stephen Roberts of Fondugues-PraduguesEp. 22: Oriane Rosner of Ori Vin

A Feb. 2021 piece about disgorging pét-nat with Stephana Nicolescou. The Legend of Andrea Calek’s Grande Arnaque

NDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part INDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II

NDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part INDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II

In Auvergne, the winemakers are very independent. I don't know if it's the Auvergne that makes you like this or if it's the people. Because not a lot of the winemakers in the Auvergne are actually from the Auvergne. They come from somewhere else and I think maybe they come to a place like this because they like to be alone. - Hannah Fuellenkemper

There are, I often say, two ways to fall in love with natural wine, not mutually exclusive. One is to learn about it, taste widely, and begin buying it in favor of all other sorts of wine. The other is to find yourself rearranging your whole life so as to be able to make your own natural wine. Hannah Fuellenkemper, a peripatetic American natural wine négociant now finally somewhat settled in the Auvergne, is a poster-woman for this latter way of falling in love with natural wine.

Born in Germany, raised between the USA and England, Fuellenkemper obtained a law degree in Amsterdam before discovering an interest in natural wine at the city’s wine bars. She followed her muse to wine salons in France and a revelatory experience harvesting with the Cousin family in Anjou in 2017. She interned for Manuel di Vecchi Staraz at Vinyer de la Ruca in Banyuls before moving her base to the Ardèche, where for several seasons she worked on and off for the regions’ natural vignerons, including Sylvain Bock and Andrea Calek / Stephana Nicolescu. In 2019 she did a season of work in the Loire for François Saint-Lô; the same year, she began making a small quantity of her own négociant wine.

Following a series of precarious and improvised cellar situations around Auvergne, Fuellenkemper at last established a stable cellar rental this year near the town of Brioudes. In 2023 she produced an impressive 10’000 bottles of her radically handmade natural négociant wines, sourced chiefly from the south of France, and recognizable by the paint spatters they bear in lieu of front labels. Fuellenkemper and I met in 2018 and soon began exchanging wine tips, crash pads, and winemaking labor in the course of our travels around France. I caught up with her in December 2023 as she headed home to America for the holidays. Check out the episode for Fuellenkemper’s memories of sleeping in a cave in Berrie; her list of emergency kit survival items for rural French life; and her experiences with Tinder in Auvergne.

Aaron

This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus years of vigneron interviews, profiles, tasting reports, and commentary - please subscribe!

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

NDP Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in FranceEp. 14: Katie Worobeck of Maison MaenadEp. 16: Joe Jefferies of Les Bories JefferiesEp. 17: Jon Purcell of Vin NoéEp. 18: Michele Smith-Chapel of Domaine Chapel

The Art of Aurelien Lefort

NDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part INDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II

NDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part INDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II

When my two-year visa was over, I asked the Ganevats to help me with a working visa... During that time, I did receive some job offers in Canada. But there was still nothing that was as exciting as the wines we were making in the Jura. And I [figured] I would rather be a little vineyard donkey doing whatever at [Domaine] Ganevat than be the head honcho somewhere making wines that I don’t really believe in. - Katie Worobeck

Katie Worobeck is a Canadian vigneronne (and fellow Substack writer!) based in the village of Orbagna in the Sud Revermont, where since 2022 she farms a 3ha vineyard boasting all five classic Jura varieties in nearby Saint-Laurent-La-Roche. Her French winemaking debut came earlier, in 2019, during her four-year tenure working for Jura natural wine legend Jean-François Ganevat.

Worobeck’s career in wine traces its roots to 2011, when she decided to take a break after obtaining a Master’s degree in International Political Economy at the University of Toronto to take a trip WOOFFing throughout France, Italy, Croatia, and Turkey. Upon her return to Canada, she worked in restaurants in Ottawa, where an eccentric local farmer encouraged her interest in farming, and a benevolent employer offered to pay for WSET courses. Worobeck followed her burgeoning interest in wine to work at Norman Hardie Winery in Ontario, where fellow cellar hand (and future Ibiza natural wine importer) Cassady Sniatowsky and Montreal wine maven Vanya Filipovic helped spark Worobeck’s interest in natural winemaking. She worked harvest at Bouchard Finlayson in South Africa in 2015, before setting her sights on France, where she arrived to intern at Domaine Ganevat in 2017.

I met Worobeck at a party at German Burgundy négociant winemaker Bastian Wolber’s house in 2021. In the years since I’ve had innumerable occasions to be thankful for her friendship and support, whether during visits to the Jura, or at natural wine salons throughout France, or on panel discussions during trips abroad. I joined Worobeck at her home one early evening this past November to chat about living in Jean-François Ganevat’s mother’s apartment; Worobeck’s early winemaking experiences in Prince Edward County; and the time she accidentally attended a Latin dance class in the Jura.

Aaron

This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus years of vigneron interviews, profiles, tasting reports, and commentary - please subscribe!

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

NDP Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in FranceEp. 15: Hannah Fuellenkemper of ABRACADABRAEp. 16: Joe Jefferies of Les Bories JefferiesEp. 17: Jon Purcell of Vin NoéEp. 18: Michele Smith-Chapel of Domaine Chapel

Katie Worobeck, the Maenad of OrbagnaPulling Wood at Maison Maenad

NDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part INDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II

NDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part INDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II

It takes a whole set of skills to communicate at very big levels [in music.] But you sacrifice communication in certain ways to do that. And I'm sure it's the same with food and wine. You cannot assume that you can convey the [same] subtleties at scale. - Damon Krukowski

Damon Krukowski is a musician and writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Inscribed in the annals of indie rock since his time as drummer in the influential dream-pop band Galaxie 500, Krukowski has since released music with his wife (and former Galaxie 500 bandmate) Naomi Yang as Damon & Naomi. Krukowski is also the author of several poetry collections, and two books on the changing nature of music and listening (2017’s The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World and 2019’s Ways of Hearing). In recent years, he has emerged as a noted advocate for the rights of recordings artists in the face of systematic exploitation by streaming companies.

Krukowski is also a lifelong wine lover, whose tastes were formed during childhood family trips throughout France with his father, a Polish World War II refugee and abiding Francophile. It’s an interest Krukowski has kept alive throughout his career, whether via the Kermit Lynch newsletter, or through avid exploration of local “grandfather” cuisine during tours abroad.

Following a comically ill-starred Damon & Naomi concert in Paris this past September, Krukowski kindly joined me to talk music and wine over a bottle of Matassa. Check out the episode for Krukowski’s recollection of seeing Led Zeppelin at age thirteen; his take on Taylor Swift’s stadium performance technique; and the surprising parallels between the economics of indie rock and those of natural wine.

Aaron

This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus years of vigneron interviews, profiles, tasting reports, and commentary - please subscribe!

FURTHER READING & LISTENING

Damon Krukowski’s November 30th piece in The Guardian decrying Spotify’s recent decision to cease paying artists whose recordings do not reach a certain threshold of streams.

NDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part INDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II

NDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part INDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II

Damon Krukowski’s excellent Substack: Dada Drummer Almanach