Hey folks,

This month’s newsletter explores the tension between sustainability and marketability. It turns over a question that we’ve long struggled with: what to do about the weight of our glass bottles?

How can we make a sustainable product within the parameters of common market aesthetics? Is it possible to produce a sustainable bottle of vermouth? What kind of sustainability are we actually selling?

These questions and more. Read on to hear them.

Should we Put It in a Box?

Andrew and I are standing on the long side of our little kitchen table. On the other, there are three members of our wine distribution team, here to tour the winery and sample our wares. Most wineries would use their tasting room or a nice portico for such a visit, but we have neither. It’s either the kitchen, the winery (which is technically a garage stuffed to the gills with wine tanks), or I suppose the field where we grow our botanicals (as an obligatory third option).

I chose the kitchen to be our all-purpose business and entertainment center. We’ll have a cursory visit to the winery later, where we can relish in its rusticity for exactly the appropriate amount of time.

Visits from distributors to wineries are standard in this industry. It’s a way for the distributor to more deeply learn a winery’s story, taste the upcoming vintage, or visit library bottlings (if available). In a word, it shows goodwill. This is just one of many ways in which distributors and winemakers build trust with each other: an essential thing in a sometimes volatile industry.

There are two men, one tall, one average, and one short woman. The three of them listen with an acute, receptive intent that I know very well. Before I made vermouth, I worked in sales with a different distributor, and pouring samples for prospective buyers was part of my pitch. I met with restaurant sommeliers, wine shop owners, boutique foodstuff purchasers… you name it.

Whether winery-distributor or distributor-purchaser, both dynamics are an exercise in trust. A tasting doesn’t just showcase the flavor profile of the wine. It’s an atmosphere of human connection. A handshake, if you will. I’ve done this thousands of times. The difference, in this case, is that it was always someone else’s wine, someone else’s story. Now, the wine is my own. We are the story.

Andrew stands at my side as I pour small sips of plum vermouth into their waiting glasses. The bottle is heavy enough that I have to pour it with both hands, a minor industry faux pas. There’s about a half-inch of solid glass at its base. It’s functionally useless but aesthetically indicating. High-end products have more glass. That’s what the market dictates. That’s what the consumer understands. More glass means better flavor, higher prestige… all the trappings and associations with value that are inexorably woven into our cultural identity.

I think it’s silly. But it does make an impression.

The distribution team swirls, smells, holds their glasses to the light. I dictate the barest synopsis of last year’s vintage. Then I wait. If I learned anything selling wine, it’s that the open space of silence allows for far more discovery than an overabundance of verbiage. Learning how to wait was the hardest part of the job. I still don’t like it.

A portfolio of my work stands in a neat line on the table between us, a rainbow of brightly colored aperitifs. I designed the inside, Andrew drafted the labels. In the slanting light of our kitchen window, they glow like fae potions from another time.

We work our way down the line, visiting each bottle in turn. Pour, speak, wait, repeat. All the while, I find myself chewing on a question, but I just can’t bring myself to ask it. Vulnerability is a tricky thing in this industry. It’s a hyper-competitive, highly social arena populated almost exclusively by empaths. Reveal too much, and you might find yourself ostracized.

But… I can’t help myself.

I take a slow breath as I cork the last bottle, angling it towards our guests.

“What do you think about a lower-glass bottle shape? There’s a lot of unused glass here,” I say, tapping my finger against the heavy glass foot. “We’re considering the idea of a more eco-friendly bottle.”

The tall man shrugs and nods at the same time, betraying multiple, conflicting answers. “We always support a more sustainable direction,” he begins, “but… these look nice.” At this, he gestures to my vermouth. “The heavy bottle imparts a certain sense of value.”

I give my own nod. The bottles do look nice, but they come with a cost. Their price tag is not insignificant, but more importantly, they’re expensive ecologically.

The Price of Beauty

More than half of an average winery’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the shipping and manufacture of glass bottles. Producing glass bottles is a heat-intensive process, generating around 86 million metric tons of CO₂ annually worldwide.

Between production, packaging, and transport, glass packaging alone comprises 30–50% of the wine industry’s total carbon footprint. An average bottle weighs 500–600 grams, while premium bottles can reach nearly two pounds. Multiply that by a few million, and you can imagine the fuel required just to get it from the factory to our winery.

The glass itself is (theoretically) infinitely recyclable, but therein lies a second problem. The U.S. population recycles only about 33% of glass produced, either through lack of intention or improper sorting. That translates into billions of wine bottles lost to landfills each year.

There is a very big problem with glass.

…but this is all ancillary to the moment. Well, it isn’t, but it feels far enough away not to collapse under. We wrap up the tasting, shake hands, say our farewells. Andrew and I began tidying up the glassware and bottles.

The air feels deflated, like a bow string undone. I can guess why. Sustainability has its guardrails. I find myself thinking of a conversation I had with a winemaker I apprenticed with many years ago in rural New Hampshire. He told me that “everything you do in this life will be a sale.” I hated the sentiment at the time. Now… I’m not so sure that I disagree.

I lean back against the kitchen table, bracing myself on the palms of my hands. “Do you think we could put our vermouth in boxes?” I want to swallow the question back; it sounds so definitively unsellable.

Andrew is elbow-deep in suds, washing the glassware from the tasting. He doesn’t respond right away, but unconsciously starts shaking his head.

“You know…” I continue aimlessly, “Those sustainable wine boxes that are super light to ship and fully recyclable? They even make them in bottle shapes.” I dangle that last detail like it somehow makes this idea more digestible. Ex-sales indeed.

Andrew sighs. “I mean…” he trails off. The ridiculousness of my suggestion is so obvious that he’s at a loss for words. He sighs again. “No one would buy it. I like the idea. Of course, I want us to use less glass. Of course, I want to reduce the fuel and materials it takes to make our bottles, to make our work better for the planet… but, no one would buy it.” Suds fly as he gestures in frustration. “If people don’t buy it, we don’t stay in business.”

I know he’s right. The bottles have to look good, in the most classical sense of the word. The sales part of me understands this. But, the rest of me doesn’t want to. If the environment forever comes second to marketability, then we’ve already lost this game. The very word “sustainability” can’t be trusted. There’s no legal definition, and we need it that way just to make ends meet. Sustainability means “you’ll have to trust that we’re doing the best that we can.”

But surely, you say, there must be visually appealing, sustainable glass bottles? There certainly are… and they cost a fortune. Even if (if!) we could afford the per-bottle price, the purchase minimums are prohibitively high: many pallets more than we could ever need or store. It’s not approachable on a small scale like ours.

In the end, Andrew and I will find a compromise on the bottle: still glass, still conventional, but with less of a foot at its base and thinner walls. An airy silhouette with a lighter ecological footprint that maintains all the aesthetic principles of proper modern marketing. A happy ending, for all intents and purposes.

Our first product to use the lower glass bottle is our plum vermouth: Solstice. This vintage is quite delayed, but it’s finally back, with a second (very large!) bottling en route this summer.

There will be no boxed vermouth or compressed cellulose bottles. No recycled plastic pull tabs or aluminum screw caps.

It will be glass, because glass is nice and feels old, and real, and substantial, and even these lighter bottles have a psychological weight that somehow tethers their purchaser to another (possibly imaginary) time in which everything mundane felt true and whole.

A time that, in a word, felt safe.

This is a story about glass, but it’s also a story about what sustainability really means.

Simple and Tangible

You might say that sustainability in sales is less ecological and more psychological. The target is the customer’s value system. The message: your beliefs are correct, and because they are correct, you are safe within the social hierarchy. For only a few rare people is true ecological sustainability a mean driver of purchasing habits.

But, is that so bad? Is marketing psychological safety inherently disingenuous? Is its pursuit unjustified?

I don’t know. I just make wine.

What I do know is if that bucolic past did exist, where life was uncomplicated and tangible in a way that didn’t feel like a crumpled old newspaper, I want people to know a piece of that. We have our glass-bottled vermouth and our old-time waxed vegetable boxes, and these notes that I keep writing to whoever will read them… all smatterings of palpability in what feels to me like a humanity with its heart hollowed out and dropped somewhere forgettable.

There’s a problem with glass. More glass isn’t going to fix it. Less isn’t going to, either. What’s inside the glass is almost inconsequential. Or, is it everything entirely?

The problem with glass is that its psychological imprint isn’t deep enough. Like all good branding, it communicates something essential, but the message is incomplete. It’s too brief, a sentence, half-finished. It feels like safety and promise, and then culture steps in to fill in the gaps with how nice it is.

Maybe if there are enough bottles, they’ll fill in the gaps themselves, crowd out culture’s insistent message to accumulate, dominate. Maybe a sufficient pockmarking of genuine beauty will tip the scales, and we can meet where unsullied “sales” was always meant to help us meet: as one and another, sharing something lifegiving in a primeval and fathomless world.

Maybe with enough glass, we can finally go there together. When we arrive, we’ll keep the glass or leave it. It will be both beautiful and incidental. Then, the real conversation will begin.

…and with that, I’ll say: our vermouth drops soon. I hope you like the bottles.

Until next time,

Kelly

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It’s been a while since our last update. Andrew and I caught a particularly bad bug this winter, and the newsletter has suffered for it. This post is about that bug, and the silver lining it had.

A Very Bad Bug

In late December, Andrew and I caught this winter’s super flu at a family holiday party. There were lots of little children with lots of toddler-grade touchy-sneezy energy stumbling around. We washed our hands and slathered them with sanitizer between brushes with each potential patient zero, but it was all for naught. In ways unseen, infection was inevitable.

I developed a cough that eventually became so severe that it withered my voice down to a rasp. It would remain as such for the next two weeks. Andrew followed suit, although in true resilient form, he recovered much more quickly than I did. This is why I call him my better half. He’s just built better.

Most curiously, losing my voice put a stop to my writing. As above, so below: I was wordless in all directions. A monologuing well, gone dry. I went quiet, and my internal world went quiet with me. There was simply nothing to say.

I think of myself as a words person, and this sudden mutism was at odds with how I experience the world. I had to be selective about what I needed to communicate because words were, quite literally, painful (and at the rate I was running through cough drops, getting expensive.)

Extraneous words were a strain, so I accommodated my injury the way one does when they stub their toe or strain their knee: I changed my gait. I spoke only when necessary, augmenting with expressive but often confusing hand gestures, lots of pointing, and the occasional typed iPhone missive.

In my unscheduled retreat into monastic silence, I was loosed from the pull of social media, a place where I (in better moments) use short-form to share business updates and (in less ideal times) share my own indulgent earmarks with the unsuspecting world. Instead of all that, I refocused inward. I put my need to communicate on unpaid leave and, in my quieted, fluey haze, I started to really listen.

On Listening

I listened.

I listened to the creaking frame of our old cottage, to its groaning pipes and squeaky hinges. I listened to the sparrows and wrens at the feeder outside our kitchen window. I listened to Andrew in work and life with a stillness and presence unmuddled by my own need to speak. I listened to the sound of life gently ebbing around me in its soft, meandering tide.

Then, I listened to the digital world, to emails pinging the iPhone in my back pocket, to the explosive reels and photo carousels of social media, to my jaunty, always-overflowing to-do list app. It was loud.

When my words quieted, my mind quieted. With my mind quieted, I could better hear just how loud modernity can be.

At the time of this writing, I now have my voice back. In some ways, my old gait is back, too. I have too much screen time. I interrupt and interject more than Andrew probably likes. I sometimes forget about the sparrows at the feeder, or the grumbling of our old cottage’s bones. I have things to do. Very important things.

But something has shifted. There’s this nagging question that won’t go away. What words are worth saying? What ideas are worth communicating? What is essential and what is superfluous?

These questions aren’t just about words.

Reader, have you read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince? It’s one of my favorite books. I have it in both English and in French. At one point in the story, a tamed fox tells the protagonist, a young prince, “L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux,” or “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” When I lost my voice, I was unceremoniously reacquainted with the essential: that soft clockwork of the heart that we all share.

This business that Andrew and I are building began with the search for a gentle and peaceful life. Many years later, it has become something broader and more encompassing. Just before the flu propelled me into existential reverie, we received a barrage of holiday cards and emails from our CSA members. There was so much gratitude. Short notes. Long ones. Little gifts. Holiday treats. Sometimes, just a wave, a nod, or a smile.

We have delivered hundreds (maybe thousands at this point) of vegetable boxes. Our CSA members have prepared innumerable meals with our produce. Untold numbers of leftovers have been repurposed for breakfast, hastily packed for lunch, or reheated for a second go at dinner. Our weekly recipes, recreated in homes throughout Virginia and the District, improvised and improved, have slowly taught people how to eat seasonally.

In countless small ways, our humble CSA has done good work in this community. It’s perhaps the best kind of work anyone can do: we’ve made life just a little bit better. We found our gentle and peaceful lifeway, and we’ve helped others to find it as well.

Fate Intervenes

It’s taken me two months to pen the loss of my voice and the perspective that loss gave me. Two months to process how I’ve reintegrated into the louder world.

Maybe this newsletter is just the fallout of billions of flu virions inflaming my brain. Humans have a long history of mind-altering experiences unveiling philosophical truths. I want to believe that it was a natural and convenient nudge back in the right direction. In December, I caught the flu. A few weeks later, I remembered how to be a better person. Fate intervenes in its own way.

Losing my voice helped me remember that life-building isn’t just big ideas and grandstand posturing. It’s in the small things: how we talk, how we love, how we eat, how we work, and how we rest. These are the essentials of life. You won’t find them on a screen or in your inbox.

What happens from here? Like our CSA, our pace of life is seasonal. Our story continues from winter to spring: wine bottling on the near horizon, planting schematics for new berry plots and herb beds, a pale vermouth and native fruit aperitif in the works, a vineyard to prune before the spring thaw, and of course, our step-by-step journey to remember how to live peacefully, together.

I’ll be back with my words to share it all with you.

Until then,

Kelly

P.S.

Our CSA runs year-round. If you want to learn more about it, check out our website.

Feedback

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Hey folks,

Running a business is a bumpy road, and we’re not shy about sharing those bumps here. We spend a lot of time talking about the hurdles in our journey, but this newsletter tacks differently. It’s a list of little victories that fell through the newsletter cracks. Think of it as a one-time gratitude journal.

Happy reading/listening,

K

Close Angle

This newsletter is a camera lens. Sometimes it’s wide-angle: big picture, long game. Sometimes it’s a macro lens: close up, hyper-focus.

The camera can’t capture everything. There’s just enough space in the frame for the occasional, notable render. I collect these moments and write them down here to share with you, like chapters in a book.

This month’s newsletter is a retrospective. It’s a collection of moments too small for their own chapter, but that nonetheless shaped our story. Here, at the precipice of winter, is a good place to stop, rest, and remember the small wins that made this season possible.

Without further ado, the little victories:

The Wine Fête

In late April, we received an invitation to participate in the [ABV] x Oenoverse May wine fête at Waynesboro’s Common Wealth Crush. [ABV] Ferments, or Anything but Vinifera is, in their words:

“…a nonprofit events + education platform, and host of travelling wine summit ‘Anything but Vinifera’ where artisans, land stewards, and local communities gather to share resources around hybrid grapes, native agriculture, regional fruit, and solidarity economics.

To keep our messaging true, we rely solely on peer-to-peer fundraising, resource donations, and a dedicated network of volunteers and activators.

Through a decentralized approach, [ABV] will encourage a people-first, planet-first wine industry by facilitating workshops and seminars around experimental ferments made from hyperlocal and sustainable ingredients.

Our messaging will build across events, ultimately becoming a think tank aimed at achieving the liberation we dream of.”

Oenoverse is “an access and opportunity initiative dedicated to building a more inclusive Virginia wine industry through focused outreach to people from historically excluded and underrepresented communities.” Together with [ABV], they’re pushing for a more culturally and environmentally sustainable mid-Atlantic wine industry.

[ABV] has a fast-growing reputation in the U.S. for its emphasis on minority winemakers and hybrid or native grape varieties. Their Virginia wine fête was a gathering of local pioneers shaping the future of our state’s wine industry. With open discussion panels on wine and culture, and a ticketed tasting for the public, it invited its participants to rethink what independent, diversified winemaking looks like.

We were (and are) long-time devotees of their mission, but assumed that we were just too small to ping on their radar. We were wrong.

When they announced their plans to host a fête here in Virginia, we were among those invited to pour. All of our industry friends and colleagues were going to be there, as well as out-of-state producers whose work we’d admired for years.

It was an incredible opportunity for a small winery like us. There was just one problem: the buy-in.

To pour at the fête, we needed to supply four cases of wine. This might not sound like a lot, but for us, well… it was. Our production volume is pretty low, and every unsold bottle takes a bite out of our overall profit. We hadn’t budgeted for an extra four cases of unsold wine. We couldn’t afford the loss.

I emailed the organizers to say thank you very much, but we wouldn’t be able to attend. Then, I put it out of my mind as best I could (which is to say, not at all).

About a week later, an email landed in my inbox. The fête organizers talked it over. They felt so strongly that our products should be included in the lineup that they were willing to drop the case requirement down to just two cases.

We went to the fête.

There are so many happy memories from that day, but the one that stands out is walking into the tasting room at Commonwealth Crush and seeing our bottles in a lineup of like-minded makers along the bar. It was the pre-fête tasting for the participating winemakers and organizers, a space for us to connect and explore each other’s work.

Bottles from winemakers physically present at the event were stickered with a little yellow circle. In the middle, it read, “I’m here.” I found our bottles with their yellow stickers alongside Demarcation Wine Co.’s soft-launch vermouth, R.A.S. Wines Maine blueberry spritz, and Patois’ extended élevage cider. For the first time in this strange and wonderful journey, I felt like we’d finally made it. I’m here.

The rest of that day is a happy blur. Somewhere between the symposium on diversity in fermentation and the open public tasting, I realized that creative entrepreneurship need not be a lonely path. We are surrounded by other makers, each on their own unique journey to leave a small mark of color on the canvas of humanity.

It was a very special day.

The Upgrades

A Few Big Tanks

If you tuned into our October newsletter, you probably read about our first major winery investment of the year: new fermentation tanks. If you haven’t, it’s worth a look. The October installation is a snapshot of our very garagiste grape crush (the good and the difficult).

In total, we added five new 600L variable-capacity wine tanks to our lineup. They arrived the day before the start of the crush. We put them together at the last minute with the help of neighboring CSA members. It was an afternoon of laughter, and just like the wine fête, a gentle reminder that mountains aren’t scaled in isolation. It takes a village to build great things.

At the end of the crush, hands blistered and backs aching, it was the memory of that laughter that got us through our final hours on the winery floor.

A Bottling Line

This one calls for a little introduction, so I’ll start with some scene-setting:

It’s 7 PM in early November, dark, with a full moon rising. I’m just getting home from a day delivering CSA shares. I pull my SUV through the frost-dusted gravel drive and around the winery’s shoulder. The motion-sensing winery floodlights burst into flame at my arrival, illuminating a ten-foot, plastic-wrapped monolith in front of my bumper.

I slam on the brakes. It’s a tilting hulk of a rectangle, latched down from four sides with heavy-duty plastic straps. The whole thing leans slightly to the side, the sheer weight of it sagging the panels of the wooden pallet under its base.

I stare for maybe thirty seconds, dumbfounded. Then I remember… the bottling line! We ordered it weeks ago. UPS was, apparently, generous enough to drop it directly in front of the winery doors, blocking both the drive and the doors themselves.

I text Andrew a photo of the moonlit plastic monolith, “Bottling line is here.”

“Great!” he replies instantly, immune to the sight of the unnerving rectangular tilt.

We mutually decide that the hour is late and leave the monster to sleep outside overnight. The following morning, we spend three hours shearing through its wrapper and maneuvering the two-hundred-pound steel bulk of the thing off its pallet and into the winery.

It’s a six-spout, fully automated mobile line that fills at a rate of one hundred cases per hour. That’s 1,200 bottles. With just the two of us hand-bottling (assuming no equipment breaks), Andrew and I can fill at a rate of about forty bottles per hour. This is a serious step up in efficiency.

We’re producing a lot more wine than we did a few years ago, and we plan to keep growing. The more wine we make, the longer it takes to make it. That’s where machines like this enter the picture. This bottling line is more than an investment in speed. It symbolizes the next level of our evolution as a winery, from impassioned garagistes to something bigger.

One step, one piece of equipment, at a time.

The Very Good Viticulturist

Frank Lazarus is wiry and sun-tanned, with bright eyes, feathery gray hair, and a clear, dictatorial voice. In a previous life, he was a college professor, later working in collegiate administration. In his post-academic retirement, he’s a viticulturist in Virginia’s Loudoun County. He meticulously tends a few acres of Vidal and Chambourcin along with his daughter and son-in-law. His vineyard is a mote of quietude tucked back into the woods of rural Hamilton.

Frank is our vineyard partner, without whom our wines wouldn’t exist.

Our vineyard is still too immature to produce grapes fit for wine. We work with local growers for each vintage, but it’s been a tricky road to navigate. We’re too small to be worth most growers’ time, but big enough that we need a dedicated supplier to support our production needs. Our early vintages were a real scramble, scrounging together contracts for whatever hybrids hit the local grape market. These last few years, we’ve been able to work solely with Frank. It’s made a world of difference.

Frank is old-school: kind and courteous, and diligent in communicating the harvest in every detail. From regular Brix updates to seasonal variations in grape disease activity and pests, he’s refreshingly organized and down-to-earth. Qualities that we very much appreciate in today’s wine industry.

After he dropped off this year’s harvest, he told us that he was taking a trip to visit old friends in Ohio and beyond.

“You know,” he said in his buoyant, professor’s voice, “These are old friends, some of whom I’ve known for many years. I’m not sure how many more times I’ll get to visit them.” He put his hands on his hips and looked from Andrew to me, and then with a chuckle said, “You might say this is a kind of farewell tour.”

“Oh Frank…” I stuttered. And then… I didn’t know what to say. To me, Frank looked so strong, so vital, but suddenly, I could see how this trip must’ve felt from his perspective: the question of how many more cross-country travels lay ahead, how many more seasons friends ten years his senior would be around.

I hope Frank is wrong about his farewell tour. I hope this is just one of many more trips he’ll take, just as I hope there are many more vintages from his vineyard to come.

I handed him a ready bottle of botanical wine in gratitude for his work. We shook hands and hugged, and Frank packed up his truck to leave.

By the time of this writing, Frank is back from his not-a-farewell tour. He’ll probably read this, so I just want to say here, Frank, thanks again for everything. We couldn’t do it without you. Happy holidays.

We also couldn’t do it without you, dear reader (or listener!). If you’re reading this newsletter, you know our story. You know it hasn’t always been easy. There have been tough times, but there have been more beautiful times than I can ever begin to capture through the lens of this newsletter.

Thanks for walking this path with us, for reading our story, and for helping us to remember, “you’re here.”

Remember to be grateful for the little victories. Happy holidays.

Until next year,

Kelly & Andrew

Feedback

Community is built when we are in conversation with each other. Was there something you loved in this month’s newsletter? Or hated? Do you have a question about something we said, or a response to us?

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This week’s newsletter is a snapshot of the grape harvest. We substantially increased our production volume this season, and we couldn’t have made it happen without the support of family and friends. It was truly a journey in companionship.

With the harvest over, we’re left with a new understanding of how human intention impacts our idea of terroir, and what that means for the kind of wine we make.

K

Pressing Thoughts

Crank! Crank! Crank!

The greased neck of our basket press whines as Andrew yanks it round and round. A heavy base beat rattles the cement floor: my alternative electronica blaring from an overextended speaker. Red, raw vermouth gushes from the press spout into a catch basin below. There’s a morbid, skittering splash as it stains everything it touches (skin, clothing, concrete, hair) the darkest crimson.

Next to him, a squat steel tank full of what appears to be blood-red bracken, stands open to the air. This is our vermouth in process: wine, brandy, and botanicals. No sweetening, no dilution. It looks like a horror show swamp, all shredded leaves and mangled sticks, tinged dark with a healthy dose of rosehips and sumac.

I’m crouched beneath the wine press, watching the basins to make sure they don’t overflow. I swap the basins and transfer the wine to a larger steel tank. We’re not fully automated yet. Transfers like this still happen by hand.

“It’s maximalist! Maximalist terroir!” Andrew shouts over the music.

“What?” I yell back from the floor.

“Maximalist terroir!” Andrew shouts again. I barely catch his voice through the screen of sounds around me.

Andrew gives the arm of the press a good, long pull. Wine hisses through the holes of the metal basket. A spray of red dots fans all over everything within a three-foot radius.

“Okay, muscles…take it easy,” I say.

Andrew wrenches back the press arm, and the pressure lifts. The flow of wine through the spout slows to a thin stream. He looks at me sidelong and grins. “You were just talking about how vermouth is the most handled and human wine genre. It’s the opposite of traditional table wine. Traditional wine is about minimalist terroir…terroir expressed just by one plant in one place at one time. It is minimalist art. Vermouth is about maximalism: the terroir of many plants, each in its own time, still reflecting the place as a whole! It is maximalism!”

This is what happens to Andrew when he works the press. Something in him wakes up, something brilliant and bright and full of ideas.

“I like it,” I say, after a beat. “But, it’s a hard pitch. The wine industry is obsessed with the puritanical. Traditional table wine is defined by the untouched capture of pure, pristine terroir. This isn’t that.”

Andrew tilts the press forward using his boot to prop it up on two legs. The basket shimmies precariously. Neon red juice dribbles through the press pan into the basin below. “That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the norm is or what other people think. What we’re doing is important. There are multiple ways to understand a sense of place. Minimalism is one, ours is another.”

I lean back against the horror-show vermouth tank, blades of homegrown wormwood jutting out of its surface like stalagmites. “So, what you’re saying is that there are plenty of good winemakers stewarding minimalist terroir. It’s no less honorable for us to capture it using the medium in which we’re fluent.”

“Exactly!” Andrew lets the press fall backward onto all four feet. It screeches into position. He starts unscrewing the press head out of the basket, revealing a compacted cake of spent bitter botanicals: the concentrated remains of our vermouth.

Working together, we slough the cake off the press pan and into a plastic bucket. Andrew hoists it up with both hands and slips out the winery door, heading to the compost.

In his absence, the room feels strangely still. The music, suddenly too loud. The drip-drip of wine from the press pan, painfully obvious. The winery, which, when in action, feels so full of potential and rigor, suddenly feels like exactly what it is: a very big garage, overloaded with equipment, reaching (uninvited) above its pay grade.

My thoughts slide sideways into self-doubt. What are we doing? Is this viable? Is this what success looks like?

I shake my head to clear it. There isn’t time for thoughts like these. We aren’t like traditional wineries. Our work is different. Our path is different.

The winery door creaks open. Andrew is back, empty bucket in hand. He smiles at me, flecks of sticky vermouth botanicals plastered to his cheeks and glasses. My self-doubt evaporates like fog beneath the sun. With him here, the room snaps back together. The winery is, once again, a winery. Everything is suddenly of a piece. Our conversation resumes without a hitch.

“You should make this the next topic of the newsletter,” he says.

“Maximalist terroir?”

“Maximalist terroir.”

My hesitation is brief. “Let’s do it.”

Fingerprints

Clang!

A three-foot-diameter steel tank lid slips from my hands and lands resoundingly on the cement floor. I mutter a curse under my breath and crouch down to dust it off.

There are four of us, each sitting in our fold-out farmers’ market chairs: Andrew and I, and two of our neighbors, Ann and Adam.

Ann is about the same height as me (which means everything in the winery is just a little too high), but with an atmosphere that makes her feel about twice as tall as she is. In contrast, Adam is tall, with a presence that makes him less intimidating than he could be.

For some reason, they find it worth their time to do monotonous manual labor in exchange for occasional free veggies. I think we’re getting the better end of the deal.

Behind us is a triplet of shiny new variable capacity wine tanks. They arrived just two days before our scheduled grape harvest.

Too much happens from this hip in this winery, but somehow we always pull it off.

The tanks come pre-fab, but the lids are piecemeal: a center metal disc, an inflatable rubber gasket, a plastic hose, a hand pump, and a few hose clamps. If we want to crush the 3.1 tons of Vidal currently jammed into our walk-in tomorrow, we have to puzzle these lids together tonight.

On the floor, Andrew and Adam wrestle the gaskets around the lips of the lids. Ann knots a tow string to the tops of each lid, while I clamp the pumps to the hose and the hose to the gaskets. When inflated, the pressure of the gasket against the tank holds the lid in place, and the lid can be raised to accommodate multiple tank volumes, minimizing the risk of oxygen exposure at low volume.

We crack jokes, laugh, and finally manage to inflate one. Success! Everyone erupts into cheers.

I look around the room: Adam kneeling in to help Ann with her knots, Andrew testing the seal on a freshly-clamped gasket pump, and me, slicing open a bag of lid fittings with an old harvest knife.

I realize that this, too, is a kind of terroir, a humanized terroir. Laughter and cooperation, all written into the shape of the wine like fingerprints. It’s not a thing you can taste. It’s something you feel when you drink it.

Terroir Looks Like This

The following morning, I’m back in the winery. We’re mid-crush: the loud churn of our manual crusher/destemmer rattling the bones in my chest, the skid and thump of grape-filled lugs punctuating the air. Everything smells like fruit and leaves. The floor is slick with smashed grapes. Their hardened seeds and stems crunch under my juice-sticky boots.

There’s been a character change: today, it’s Andrew’s parents, Kathy and Ron, and a family-friend-turned-adoptive-aunt, Susanna. They’re arranged in a semi-circle around a tower of lugs, meticulously sorting compromised berries from viable ones.

In larger wineries, there are mechanized conveyor belts for this work. After destemming, the berries are shuffled down the belt in an even layer, manually sorted as they pass. It’s five times as fast as lug-sorting, but costs twenty times as much (at least). Needless to say, we have no belt.

Crush days are brutal. Once harvested, the grapes cannot be held for more than a day or so before they start to break down. The longer they sit, the more unpredictable microbial activity enters the ferment.

To complicate things further, we must finish crushing the grapes before our next round of CSA deliveries in three days. For those unfamiliar with our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) membership, we offer weekly home delivery of fresh vegetables from our farm and other local small farms nearby. It’s a pay-to-play eat-local model adapted for busy lifestyles, and the financial bedrock of our business.

Andrew and I deliver the boxes ourselves. If we don’t finish the grapes before our scheduled deliveries, they’ll degrade beyond usability. The five of us have no choice but to process 6,200 pounds of fruit before then.

The day begins in high spirits and peppered conversation. Kathy talks about a recent project with Rotary International, connecting students in need to academic scholarships. Susanna recalls her childhood in Austria and how it was so different from the American experience. Ron brings up the discord in Gaza, and the weight of the world beyond the winery sinks in for everyone.

Andrew and I listen, and smile, and work the crusher and press.

As the hours lag on, however, we grow quiet. Our feet hurt from standing on the cement floor, our backs and hips from lifting hundreds of grape lugs over and over, our arms from churning the crusher wheel around and around. The sun fades beneath the trees, and a chill snakes through the single winery window. There’s no space for levity at this hour. Only sheer determination.

I have blisters on both hands from gripping the press handle and a string of bruises on my left arm where it bangs against the crusher base. My back is in a brace. My left wrist should probably be on one, too. A spray of grape juice just landed in my eyes, and it feels an awful lot like lemon juice. A small muscle in my right foot feels like it might be pulled…but I can’t stop.

We started this together. We finish this together.

If yesterday’s terroir looked like laughter, today’s looks like ragged breath and aching limbs. This isn’t the glorified garage I saw a few days ago. There’s no creeping imposter syndrome haunting my thoughts. This is a real winery. It’s our human grit that takes everything from possibility to reality.

Eventually, at the eleventh hour of the third day, we sort, crush, and press our final lug. Our helpers leave for home to recover. Andrew and I will spend the night hours cleaning the winery and our equipment, tumbling into bed sometime around two in the morning.

The next day, we will pack and deliver boxes of vegetables to our CSA members as if nothing had happened at all.

Notes to the Universe

The Merriam-Webster definition of terroir is “The combination of factors including soil, climate, and sunlight that gives wine grapes their distinctive character.”

We propose a different kind of terroir, one of soil and sunlight, yes, but also of people, plants, and time.

Grape skins continue to breathe well after harvesting. They remain permeable to the air quality of our little walk-in, and to the ambient yeasts and microbes of our garage-winery. But perhaps, just maybe, they remain receptive to delight and desperation, to ease and resolve. Whatever energetics or aura or magic humans bring to the winery, maybe they leave a little bit of that sparkle on the grapes, too.

If that’s true of grapes, then why not the wormwood and rosehips from our garden, or the hickory bark from the nearby hills, or the wild persimmon from the farm down the road? What glimmers of our passing echo in the tissues of these plants? What non-human life has left its unseen mark before us?

Nature is inherently maximalist. From ecosystems to star systems, it is an ever-changing, always-duplicating abundance of failsafes, a scale of checks and balances that ensures its own continuity.

The terroir we bottle, one of grapes and bitter herbs, and aromatic leaves, of the seen human and the unseen nonhuman, is a small homage to the multiplicity around us. Just a small note of thanks left by two little primates on a tiny rock, racing around a giant ball of plasma in the vast darkness of the abyss.

…and that brings us to the end of this note, the one I’ve written for you.

Until next time,

Kelly & Andrew

Post Script

If the idea of bottling notes of gratitude to the inclusive terroir of the universe appeals to you, I’d suggest taking a peek at our Wine Club. It’s a twice-yearly drop of our most seasonal aperitifs.

Each release comes with production information for the bottles included, as well as recipe cards created by yours truly. Our autumn collection launches in early November.

Check it out.

K

Feedback

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Just dropping in a quick note to say that we’ve had our hands full between the winery and the incoming grape harvest. We’ll be a little less present here for a while, but not to worry, we’ll be back soon.

In the meantime, this month’s newsletter is about how our work in wine and agriculture is simultaneously our practice towards living a peaceful life.

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Hey folks,

Just dropping in a quick note to say that we’ve had our hands full between the winery and the incoming grape harvest.

We’ll be a little less present here for a while, but not to worry, we’ll be back soon.

In the meantime, this month’s newsletter is about how our work in wine and agriculture is simultaneously our practice towards living a peaceful life.

I hope you enjoy it.

K

In the Vineyard

It is dusk in the vineyard.

The sky is all periwinkle birdsong and thready stratus. The black silhouettes of evening barn swallows cut across the setting sun. Above them, the occasional bat flits in and out of sight.

Andrew and I make our way down the grassy trellises to row twenty: Sabrevois. It’s the wildest of our collection. In Andrew’s words, “Sabrevois likes to grow out…” and at this, his arms gesture explosively wide. Not exactly how I would communicate a sprawling foliar growth pattern, but he does make a point. Some vines need more encouragement than others.

Our hands are in trellis wires, tucking in leaves and straightening the trunks of young vines. The low light makes the lenses of Andrew’s glasses liquid. His brown curls shine copper.

Dusk changes us. Or, maybe it unveils what’s already there.

At this hour, the day-green leaves are shot through with late, golden light. The vineyard is a Klimt, a gilded dreamscape framed by a creeping darkness.

A few hour prior, when the sun was at its zenith, the outside temperature was over 100°F. At 100% humidity, my handy little weather app said it felt like 115°F.

Neither Andrew nor I are built for the heat. It makes us slow and inefficient. Tending the vineyard at midday is a great way to waste a lot of time. So, we decided to turn today on its head. We arrived at the vineyard just after the heat broke.

I’d initially been against the idea. Our days are already too long. I was loathe to give up my evening respite. But, now that we’re here, in this crystalline space, it feels less like a chore and more like a haven.

No pinging emails, no glaring screens, no buzzing calls, vibrating my back pocket. There is no to-do list. We’re just two simple humans, doing what humans have done for thousands of years: tending their grape vines in the summer twilight.

Mid-row, Andrew turns to me. “It’s nice to work in the vineyard with you again.”

I smile. “I feel the same.”

This is why we started our business: to work in tandem against a quiet backdrop of vines and open sky. Reality would hold that running a business is more harried than either of us expected. Moments like these are rare.

Separately, I’ve been noticeably absent from the vineyard. Last year, I suffered a health crisis that damaged my capacity to sweat properly, amongst other things. We’re still not sure what happened, but something caused my immune system to become abruptly dysregulated. We mentioned it in our July 2024 newsletter. Working outside in the heat has been a challenge.

Over a year later, I’ve recovered notably. While the heat is still a concern, I can handle the slanting, late-hour sun just fine. My relief at this goes beyond any words I could write here.

Andrew and I spend a few more hours quietly working the vines. The sun sinks behind the trees. What was a duet of starlings and sparrows fades to a hush. The vines go from a burnished lattice to a threadbare filigree. Stars poke holes in the night sky. It’s hard to see now, the dusk is so deep and purple.

We find our way back to Andrew’s SUV and clamber inside. He shifts it into gear and trundles through the iron vineyard gate. I hop out, pulling the creaking, heavy doors shut and locking them with an ancient bolt (and a modern padlock). Then, we’re off, taillights streaming into the night.

Dinner is on the road tonight. Andrew pulls out a burrito wrapped in foil and proceeds to steer one-handed with the expert agility of a man practiced in the art of eating and driving.

I spring open a lunchbox full of lentil curry and dutifully ignore any concerns I have about traveling at speed in the dead of night under the guidance of a single palm.

For a long time, there’s only the hum of the engine and the distant murmur of crickets in passing hay fields.

“This is nice,” I say. “It almost feels like a road trip. Like a vacation.”

“We should have more days like these,” Andrew replies.

“I agree. I wish every day could be like this.”

He sighs. The foil wrap of his burrito crinkles as his fingers tighten. “I know, my love,” he says. “Me too. We’ll get there. It’s just taking some time…but, we’ll get there.”

The words are just as much for him as they are for me. The mantra that all small business owners know by heart: One day. One day. One day.

Moments

The rest of the drive back is long and quiet. It’s worth mentioning here that our vineyard is located almost an hour northeast of our farm. Like most small farms, continuity is a luxury we can’t afford (yet). Every trip to the vineyard costs two hours of lost time.

With no eyes on the vines and no remote monitors, we can only guess at the weather. Sometimes, we make the drive only to be drenched by an errant downpour that our combined weather apps couldn’t predict.

This is why most vignerons live on their vineyard. As my old viticulture mentor once told me in the thick of my first harvest, “the vines don’t work nine-to-five. They need someone to watch over them. They need a mommy or daddy.” He was a great mentor, both educational and inclusive, to boot.

It’s long-distance parenting for us. By the time we get back to the farm, the sky is dark as pitch.

We step inside to the soft glow of our kitchen. It feels like a warm hearth against to inky Appalachian night.

I put the kettle on and prompt some lazy Spanish guitar on our kitchen speaker. Andrew splashes water over his face and arms. We move in a close, comfortable silence, each making their evening drink choice: tea for me and a quick cocktail for Andrew.

Being the resident and professional vermouth-maker in this house, you’d think our preferences would be reversed. Not so. I get enough alcohol in my work, and I find the neutrality of warm tea to be my most preferred mental space.

As the glue holding this business together, Andrew deserves something stronger. Tonight, it’s a spritz made with a gregarious Californian vermouth. Here’s the recipe:

Summer Vermouth Spritz

• 2 oz red-wine-based vermouth, such as Les Lunes Sweet Vermouth

• 1 oz aromatic gin, we used Condesa Prickly Pear and Orange Blossom Gin

• 1 oz cantaloupe syrup (recipe below)

• 3 oz soda water

• lemon wheel, for garish

• basil sprig, for garnish

1. Make the cantaloupe syrup (this recipe yields about 12 oz of syrup): Cube half a medium cantaloupe. Combine 2 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar and bring to a boil. Add the cantaloupe and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool in the fridge. Strain the syrup, removing the cantaloupe solids.

2. Add the vermouth, gin, 1 oz of cantaloupe syrup, and 2 oz of soda water to a cocktail shaker with ice. Stir gently

3. Strain into your glass of choice (we like a wide-mouth stemmed wine glass) over ice.

4. Add the remaining 1 oz of soda water, then garnish with lemon and basil.

We nestle in, side-by-side, at the dinner table. I sip my tea and he sips his cocktail.

“What I’m about to say won’t feel accessible,” I begin, “…but I believe that moments like this don’t have to feel so far away. We chose to go to the vineyard tonight, and we’re choosing a quiet, peaceful evening now,” I say.

Andrew nods. He picks up my thread immediately. “Even when things feel chaotic, we can still choose to live peacefully. We can make peace a practice with intentional decision-making.”

I take a long sip from my mug. “You might say that we started this business as a kind of practice. A lifeway dedicated to being peaceful.” I chuckle. “Although sometimes it feels like we’re a little off the mark.”

Andrew shrugs, waving my words away. “That’s why it’s a practice. It takes doing.”

He’s right, as usual. The point is to choose the peaceful path, no matter the chaos. Easier said than done…except for today. Today, we chose to work slowly and quietly into the watercolor vineyard twilight. We chose to settle in the warmth of our cottage kitchen. We could have filled this evening with grueling office work and an American-typical stint of mindless binge-watching over crinkle-bagged snacks…but we didn’t. We returned to our practice.

There’s a quote attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus that captures this succinctly: “We don't rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.”

I blather a butchered version of this quote to Andrew, look it up on my phone, and then correct myself. He sagely nods his agreement.

There will always be chaos. We can choose how we navigate that chaos, and with every decision, the choosing becomes easier.

This night is the first night in which Andrew and I recognize our entrepreneurial path as simultaneously being a practice of peace. The actual nature of the work, the people we do it with, is secondary to how we choose to approach it…and for good measure, how we choose to approach ourselves.

It all comes down to how we navigate the moment.

Andrew ruffles my short mop of unchecked hair. His sea foam eyes are hazel in the low light. A lilting melody of plucked guitar strings fills the air between us.

As if on cue, I ruin what possible moment there could have been between us with a huge, very vocal yawn.

Andrew chuckles. We smile at one another like two shipwrecked sailors, washed ashore. And how lucky that this particular shore comes with hot tea and artisan cocktails, no charge. As the kids say (or used to say?), clutch!

We put our dishes away and head upstairs for bed. Day closed.

Until next time,

Kelly & Andrew

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There are big legal changes on the horizon for small wineries in Virginia. Those changes affect if/how we can continue to operate.

We’re getting into the weeds of state legalese, sales projections, and production numbers.

Chances are, if you’re an economist or an accountant, or if you own or you’re thinking of starting a small business, you’re gonna enjoy it.

Let’s get to it.

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The Problem with Being Small

We’re a small outfit. I don’t mean “cute boutique winery in the hills” small. I mean “blink and you’ll miss it” small. I’m talking “held together by duct tape and staples” small. We don’t have a tasting room. Our winery is an oversized garage. We have no staff.

Instead of a tasting room, we have what I charitably call a “tasting tent” at our local farmers market. Every Saturday, we wake up before dawn and drive an hour and a half to the suburbs of D.C., where we sell botanical wines and bitters to morning grocery shoppers. With our CSA now operating as a 100% delivery model, we leave our veggies behind.

Pitching alcohol at eight o’clock in the morning in the hot sun, torrential rain, howling wind, and/or frigid snow, or simply through the caffeine-deprived fog of the AM weekly shop…isn’t easy. Despite this, Andrew and I regularly convince groggy, post-yoga girlies and their beaus to drop $40-$50 on strange vermouth before their coffee has had a chance to cool down.

It works, but it could be better.

Imagine that same vermouth, but instead of an all-weather tent, you’re inside a quiet, sun-drenched bar. It’s just past four in the afternoon, and the soft pop of corks leaving bottles peppers the murmuring conversation around you. On one side of the space is a bar with a chalkboard menu just above. On offer today: vermouth flights, cocktails, and seasonal small plates. Bottles and foodstuffs line the opposite wall: everything you need to recreate the same energy in your own home.

The space is easeful and honest in a way that most tasting rooms and restaurants aren’t. There’s a noticeable deficit of plushy pomp. There aren’t even proper servers, just a young woman behind that bar with short hair and a studious face, and a quiet man with glasses chauffeuring plates to and from the kitchen.

You order a cocktail and a few small bites. Then, you take a few minutes to meander along the far wall, perusing the bottles, barware, and cookbooks. When it comes time to leave, you realize you don’t want to. So, you buy a bottle to go and make a mental note to come back.

This is our dream: a someday space that makes everything between the farm and the winery click. Now, that dream is looking more and more like a reality. This thing is, it’s happening faster than we’d like.

We’re in trouble. Our winery is running out of time.

Out of Time

Our garage-winery sits on a 1.25-acre parcel of land just outside the Shenandoah National Park. Our adolescent vineyard is a separate, leased property about 45 minutes northeast. That’s another two acres, if I’m being generous.

Last year, we bottled just over 1,500 liters of wine, or 336 six-pack cases. The industry standard for a “limited production” winery is an output of 1,000 cases annually. That’s in twelve-pack case measurements, mind you. Just a little context for how small we really are.

We operate under what the state calls a Class A Farm-Winery license. It’s a special license for agriculturally-focused wineries that carries unique privileges. Specifically, we have the right to sell our wines off-site at venues beyond the winery (like a farmers’ market).

Our plan under this license was to grow gradually and exponentially. Little by little, we’d increase production along a predictable and conservative track. So far, so good…until now.

Our acreage and our production volume are both about to become extremely important. Our smallness is a very big problem.

In July of 2028, the Virginia state legislature will formally revise the requirements for farm-winery licensure. These requirements are in place immediately for new wineries, while established producers like us have a few years to navigate the transition.

Once implemented, there will be four new farm-winery subclasses. Most have requirements for the vineyard to be on the same property as the winery (obviously not possible for us). For our purposes, we can only reasonably consider the Class III license. In a nutshell:

• 75% of the fermentable sugars must be grown/produced in Virginia (not a problem for us)

• Minimum production volume of no less than 4,500 liters of wine per year (remember, our 2023 vintage was 1,500 liters)

• No less than 75% of wine produced must be fermented on-site (this would require some build-out to our existing setup)

If we fail to meet the new class requirements, our farm-winery license will revert to a standard winery license, and we’ll lose our capacity to sell at the farmers’ market.

For a large winery with a public tasting room, this is a minor inconvenience. But, we don’t have a tasting room. We sell our retail bottles almost exclusively at farmers’ markets (the lovely all-weather tasting tent), with some online orders to pad the numbers. Retail sales comprise 50% of our total wine sales. We sell 40% via wholesale distribution, which is notably lower. The remaining 10% goes to samples at a full loss (the cost of business for selling at a farmers’ market.)

This split between retail and wholesale allows us to make a reasonable profit. If we shift too much of our production into wholesale, we don’t make enough per bottle. There’s some wiggle room on this. The more we can buy in bulk, the cheaper, our supplies become, and the more we can sell through wholesale distribution. The more we can sell wholesale, the more consistent our revenue is, and the less we need to rely on direct public support.

As a happy side note, there’s no lack of wholesale demand for our work. We are beset with inquiries from wholesalers, shops, restaurants, and people beyond our distribution circuit, asking how they can get our wines. This isn’t a humble brag. It’s an asset. We know that our growth has guaranteed success based purely on demand alone.

When we started our business, we assumed that the legal requirements for licensure would essentially remain static. We anticipated slow, consistent growth over a span of years, eventually upgrading to a larger space and better equipment. Now, we’re looking at a very short runway.

To meet any of the new winery licensure class requirements, we have two options: buy land (contiguous to the winery itself) or significantly increase wine production. The price of land is high in these parts. That’s before infrastructure.

An increase in production is more tangible, but barely. We need to triple our equipment, storage facilities, raw fermentables, packaging, etc. To afford that increase, we need to generate greater upfront revenue from our wine sales or our CSA. The catch here is that more revenue calls for a higher pricepoint and/or more sales, which means greater production.

A circular problem.

Assuming we increase production to the arbitrary point of state satisfaction, we could then retain our farm-winery license and continue selling our wine at farmers’ markets. We could also move more of our production to wholesale.

Or, we take a different approach. We keep increasing our bottle output, but we don’t hit the license requirement right off the bat. By 2028, we just clear the bar. In the interim between now and then, we massively increase our retail sales.

In this model, we don’t double our farmers’ markets or plug our wine club (two suboptimal Hail Marys).

We open a brick-and-mortar instead.

This is the difference between a farmers’ market tent and a brick-and-mortar. More money for half the effort. Greater retail sales increases revenue on a shorter timeline. Greater revenue allows for a faster increase in bottles produced.

Our retail sales go up. Then, our wholesale sales go up. The state is happy, our sales partners are happy, and we’re happy.

This is how we keep our winery alive.

A Long Shot Dream

So, what’s stopping us? In a word, time.

The start of the growing season marks a calendar booked solid with crops, vineyard work, winemaking, and CSA deliveries. We don’t stop until late December.

Tucked around this schedule are early-morning and late-night meetings, the two of us poring over spreadsheets and reviewing sales projections. Our brick-and-mortar is profitable on paper. We just need the time to make it a reality.

This is where we are now: running headlong into another full growing season. In a few months, the grape harvest will dominate our waking hours. Fermentation tanks and carboys will take over our winery. Weekends will still go to farmers’ markets. Through this time, we’ll be harvesting and delivering our CSA, without which our business ceases to exist.

Amidst all of it: numbers. Precise, extensive calculations. There’s only one truth in business, and this is it: get your numbers right, and everything else will follow. This is what gets us our brick-and-mortar. I suppose we should thank the state for putting the gas on everything… or not.

One day, I’ll write to you here with an invitation to our grand opening. After all, you’re the reason we’ve made it this far. Until then, we’ll be farming by day and playing mathematicians by night, like all good agriculturists.

Until next time,

Kelly & Andrew

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This is also a catch-all, general update on what’s happening here on the farm. It’s a busy time of year, with lots of projects taking off at once.

Buckle up for a download, because you’re about to get one.

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Flight

"We just need a few days off..." one (or both) of us said (or texted)...while packing CSA shares…after a day of weeding…halfway through the grape crush…in the dead dark of winter. It’s a conversation that often starts and never ends.

Except this time, it did both. This month's newsletter is about how we took a week off. It might be the longest break we've had since starting our business in 2019.

It’s hard to read that, let alone write it.

It was a chilly December 25th evening when Andrew's mother, Kathy, extracted us from our all-hours work ethic with the prospect of a family trip to Denver. Andrew's sister, Mary-Katherine (otherwise known as MK) and her husband, Brendan, live just outside downtown proper. The family was well overdue for a visit, so Kathy very efficiently scheduled it.

This is a good opportunity to mention that Kathy once worked as a high-octane executive with Thermo-Fischer Scientific. Logistics is one of her many specialties. Now that she's retired, she uses her brass-tacks intellect to arrange our convoluted individual schedules into restorative family getaways. Certain skills never go to waste. Where there's a will (and a Kathy), there's a way.

Our Southwest flight landed in Denver at 4:33 PM. I spent most of the flight there thinking about this newsletter, and most of the flight back writing it.

On the Ground

For Andrew and I, this was more than a family trip. It was an opportunity for respite: very needed, and taken with much gratitude. Here's the short list of where we went:

- History of Colorado Center: We expected a family-friendly brief of Colorado's gold rush era. Instead, we found an exhibit on the Sand Creek Massacre, a deeply disturbing assault on peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho settlements. It was a jarring reality check against Denver's largely whitewashed urban population. The experience framed the rest of the trip, as well as mirrored the political discord in our present timeline.

- Denver Botanic Gardens: The Botanic Gardens are an old friend of mine. I visited them about a decade ago during my AmeriCorps VISTA service, and I was happy to find them largely unchanged. Andrew and I spent the day quietly wandering the gardens together, letting the hush of windblown leaves and blossoms fill the space between us. Spans of quiet wandering are one of our favorite things to share, and we seldom have the time for it. There was no better place.

- Rocky Mountain National Park: In two words: pretty and cold. We opted for the scenic drive, stopping along the way for a few photo snaps. We then attempted an unequipped, snowbound hike to Bear Lake (supposedly one of the most beautiful lakes in the state), only to find it frozen solid. Still pretty. Still cold.

- Manitou Springs: Manitou Springs is a quaint tourist town with at least four taffy shops and just as many ice cream parlors. It also houses a death-defying 14,000-foot cog train incline to Pike's Peak. The oxygen level at the summit is about 60% of that at the train station. It stands well above the tree line, with a permanent contingent of EMTs on call.

Travelers to this abyssal precipice are rewarded with views as far as Kansas, possible hypoxic delirium, and a homely rest station serving apple cider doughnuts and hot chocolate. It was a treatise on extremes.

- Manitou Cliff Dwellings: A hands-on recreation of ancient cliff dwellings. Most notable was the paucity of space in doorways, hallways, ladders, and just about everywhere else. People were much shorter and thinner back in the cliff dwelling days.

- Garden of the Gods: A labyrinth of gargantuan, wind-scoured rocks and winding scrub gullies. Andrew and I took the first trail we found and let our intuition tell us where to go next. We got lost once (just!), and were both sunburned and dehydrated by our return to the car. Once in the car, we both immediately fell asleep. It was our favorite part of the trip.

- Denver Art Museum: An expansive collection with impeccable attention to detail. Andrew beelined for an exhibit on historical and modern chairs (yes, chairs), while I was delighted to discover a display of vintage ceramic laboratory equipment (think beakers and cell spreaders). We noodled around the prospect of artisanal intention in the face of modern consumerism, but I won't belabor you with that discourse here.

- Meow Wolf: If you find yourself at the end of a long trip and want to fully and completely burn out the last of your sensorial tolerance, head over to Meow Wolf. Meow Wolf specializes in immersive, experiential world-building. It's an amalgamation of multiple creative geniuses, all smashed together without seams.

Meow Wolf-Denver's “Convergence Station” is an intergalactic space-time interweaving of worlds. The space is about the size of a football field, fully enclosed, and entirely directionless. We left it feeling right-brain-illuminated and energetically exhausted.

I could say more about all of this, narrate all the tender, hidden moments every journey has in all their soft detail, but my newsletters are already too long. The most important takeaway is this: we came up for air after a very long underwater swim. Sufficiently oxygenated with unworking (minus Pike's Peak), we're ready for another descent.

On Taking Time Off

Here's the bit where I tell all the entrepreneurs in the room what they don't want to hear: take the time. Even when the money isn't there. Even when you've maxed out your calendar into next year. Even when you’ve blown through deadlines and upset a few folks (who, us?) After a few years of nearly no time off, we have some idea of where you're coming from.

Like every good entrepreneur, you've already read the studies on how rest increases productivity and focus, how company morale directly impacts the bottom line, and how the human brain on cortisol functions just about as well as a spare tire on a road trip…but, do you actually rest? Or, are you like us? You keep meaning to...when there's enough time, or enough money, or enough energy, or just "enough."

Rest can be found. Best done in the company of others, if possible. It might not feel like there's time, but one day, there absolutely won't be. That makes now a very good time for a break.

Everything Else

As soon as our return flight touched down in Virginia, we hit the ground running. Here's what came next:

- The day after we returned, we bottled our first vintage of Chamomile, a small-format aperitif infused with pears and chamomile blossoms. You can learn its origin story in last month's newsletter. Most of it pre-sold immediately after its release, but we still have a few bottles on hold for new wine club signups.

Speaking of our Wine Club, our next release drops the first week of May (so, almost now!) There's still space for new club members…if you happen to find that information useful…

- We joined our friends at Common Wealth Crush for their monthly Common Salon: an informal gathering for creatives to share their work and ethos with members of the public. It's a refreshingly authentic venue for all involved.

- We officially started our farmers' market season at the Del Rey Farmers' Market. We'll be weekly vendors there for most of the year. Please do stop by if you'd like proof of our physical existence.

- WE LAUNCHED OUR CSA! This is a big one. Our CSA is the heart of our business. What began as a COVID-19 pivot five seasons ago was so successful, we've continued it ever since. By offering year-round signups, weekly billing, and home delivery, we help folks without access to farmers' markets or food hubs participate directly in our local food economy.

It's hard work. It's also incredibly satisfying. You can sign up any time of year…another useful piece of info for you.

Most importantly, we remembered to rest more often, with better intent, and with greater presence.

Until next time,

Kelly & Andrew

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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/arnito/avant-la-pluie
License code: KPQ4PM51GSQ5YVDS

This episode is from our latest Substack post, The Caterpillar. It tells the story of a spur-of-the-moment project for our wine club. It’s also a thought experiment on what small businesses can do when the world around them is shifting in ways we could never expect.

It’s a story about how we heal each other, not as businesses and consumers, but as individuals in a global tribe.

There’s a little bit of humor, some bittersweet memories, and a hesitant sense of hope. I hope you enjoy it.

Click here to read the written version of the newsletter.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):

https://uppbeat.io/t/arnito/avant-la-pluie

License code: RWY4K9CQTBJGHC2K

The Sea of Brilliant Ideas

The beige enamel kettle whistles a thin jet of steam into the air. I pad over in my socked Birkenstocks and lift it off the stove. It’s late Monday evening. Andrew and I just returned from our last CSA deliveries of the week. I’m preparing tea for us both: my favorite end-of-day ritual.

As I pour hot water into a mug of dried ginger, a snicker bubbles up from the kitchen table. Glancing up, I see Andrew flopped into one of our high-top chairs, one hand obscuring a smile.

“What is it?” I ask, wandering over to the table.

“Look at this,” he says. He thumbs over the screen of his phone and turns it to me. It’s a product listing for a T-shirt with Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” centered on the chest. Stamped along its friendly, green body are the words “EAT THE RICH.”

I crack a smile. “We should do a collab,” I say.

Andrew nods in absent agreement, rubbing his eyes. Another brilliant idea in a sea of brilliant and unmarketable ideas. Good enough for a laugh.

We move on from the caterpillar to dinner and Spanish practice (another end-of-day ritual). Like mathematics and color theory, Andrew has a knack for languages. I, on the other hand, do not. You can imagine how this plays out.

We racket between English and Spanish, or at least, Andrew does. When I try to switch between the two, my brain gets confused and defaults to my high school French. The resulting language is Sprench or Franish, depending on how flustered I get.

After this bilingual thrashing, Andrew heads upstairs for some light cookbook reading. This is how foodies relax after they batter you with foreign languages.

I hang back in the kitchen. I’m still thinking about the caterpillar tee (and recovering my linguistic wits). Not the collab, per se, but the idea. If you can put laughter on a shirt, can you put it in a bottle? I shake my head to myself. Humor isn’t generally our aesthetic. But something else is. Something softer and gentler.

Laughter done right brings us back to the same place all pure things do: peace.

“How do I bottle peace?” I ask whatever muse happens to be on the overnight shift. The empty kitchen offers no answers. I close my eyes and inhale. When I let my breath out, I wait for the first thing that comes to mind when I think of peace.

Then, I go there.

I’m just outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, hiking the Aspen Vista trail. The trailhead starts at about 9,000 feet and meanders up and around the Sangre de Cristo range. Its mouth is a wide patch of dry, pale dirt and wind-worn rocks. At its peak, it’s little more than a deer trail, cutting through a saddle meadow. But I don’t know that yet.

The trailhead is always a bumble of hatchback caravaners, pausing for scenic photoshoots. I’m beyond that now, one crunching step after another up the steepening incline. This far along, the human population thins out. It’s just me and the aspens and my backpack full of water bottles. I’m hiking in shorts and a tank top: a bad choice when you’re this close to the sun. I can already feel my shoulders and thighs pinking from exposure. A maladapted creature in a heliotropic landscape.

Straight-backed aspens tower upwards on either side of me, heart-shaped leaves murmuring a checkered chorus. Their smooth bark is pure white in the piercing sun, and the reflected light turns the forest luminous. There is very little underbrush at this altitude, and I can see miles deep into the trees. Rails of white and green, eventually blurring into nothing.

Aridity means no insects. No insects means no birds. No chirps or whistles in the branches. Just a tonal, unceasing wind, keening over the peaks. And the raucous human noise of my clumsy passage.

The smell of piñon resin baking in the heat hangs in the air. Every time the wind blows, I lose it. When the wind stills, there it is again. The friendliest haunting in broad daylight.

The trees part at the neck of a switchback, and I scramble onto a boulder for a look at the city below. It’s a sprawl of cubic adobe homes, all tetrised together in a flat sheet. Santa Fe’s development ordinances prohibit buildings over a certain height and require that all construction mirror the color palette of the landscape. This keeps the city from visually marring the infinite expanse of beige and orange beyond.

A loan vulture wafts on a rising thermal in the indeterminate space between earth and sky. I’m wafting too, drunk on the bright sunlight and the thin air (and maybe dehydration). If I linger here long enough, I might just float away, like a scrap of paper caught in the breeze. This place is peaceful in a way that my suburban upbringing has never known.

“I could stay here forever”, I whisper to the aspens.

Part of me will.

I open my eyes.

I’m back in our farm kitchen. Everything is grainy and dim in the low light. I breathe in the last of the echoes of Santa Fe and hold it, just one moment more.

I know what we can make. I’ve found our caterpillar.

Very Hungry Indeed

Andrew pulls a steaming tray of raisin-studded cookies from the hot oven. He murmurs a joyous little jingle to himself as he slides them onto a cooling rack. There’s something about raisins and cookies and yum yum yum, but, just like Spanish, the nuances are above my pay grade. I’m beside him, taxiing botanical tincture jars from the kitchen (my impromptu development space) to the “production room,” where all finished things and raw materials live.

“Well!” He says, pulling off his oven mitts, “I guess it’s time to try one…”

No sooner does he reach for the cookies than I drop my jars with a clatter and lunge for his arm.

“No! Wait!” I yell, grabbing his elbow.

Andrew freezes in place. His eyes run from me, to the cookie inches from his fingers, and back to me again.

“I’d, uh, like to show you my latest wine concept…” I stutter. He stares at me over his glasses. “…and, you’ll ruin your palate.”

Andrew’s hand recoils from the cookie tray. Years removed from working in wine sales and retail, and we still keep to protocol. Sugar is the fastest way to ruin a tasting palate.

“Okay,” he sighs, glancing longingly at the steaming cookies. “Let’s have it.”

I vanish to the winery refrigerator and return with a jar of liquid amber. I pour a few ounces into a glass and hand it to Andrew. He takes a sip, swishes it around in his mouth, and swallows. He gives a pleased “Huh,” then asks, “What’s in it?”

It’s a surprisingly simple blend, mostly chamomile and pear with a few other minor additions around the edges. I give him the footnotes in brief.

“Yep,” he says, nodding. “You got it.”

“Wait, what?” I fumble. “Really? That’s it? It’s done?”

“Yep. It’s great.” he says, snagging a cookie from the cooling rack. He pops the cookie into his mouth and gives such a deep grown of contentment that I actually feel a prickle of jealousy.

I have the irksome suspicion that he’s giving me a free pass in exchange for cookies. As if reading my thoughts, he turns back to me, cookie in hand. “Do you want one?” he says through a mouth full of cookie.

I accept the offering and take a bite. It’s dense and sweet, heady with cinnamon and orange zest. Andrew soaked the raisins in spiced butter before adding them to the dough. They pop like little molten gems of ambrosia. Nice touch. Divinity aside, something is missing.

“There’s no oatmeal,” I say.

“I left it out,” he confirms.

“You can’t do that. Without oatmeal, they’re just raisin cookies.”

“Yes. I didn’t want the oatmeal. I wanted just raisin cookies.”

“No, that isn’t right. You can’t just do that.” My confusion gives way to subtle panic. “This just isn’t right.”

“I wanted cookies without oatmeal. That’s the point.” His eyes flash between bites of just raisin cookie.

“I can’t believe this,” I mutter, stunned.

Andrew shrugs. It’s one of his most defiant gestures. “I like raisins.” He extends his hand and motions for my half-eaten cookie. “You don’t have to finish that.”

I hand it back to him, mostly out of spite. If I’m being honest, it’s just not the same without the oatmeal. He consumes what remains of my just raisin cookie without mercy and makes his way up the stairs to our office.

Someday, I want to make aperitif based on whatever Andrew was feeling when he bit into that first cookie. Very hungry indeed.

Bottling Peace

Andrew cranks his standing desk up to its fullest height. He then spreads a sheet of paper over its surface and pins it in place with the palm of his hand. I peer over his shoulder to get a better look.

I’ve seen this before, half-formed on Andrew’s tablet screen. I’ve heard him tinkering with it late into the evening: just the soft quiet of nightfall and the tik-tik of a plastic stylus. It’s the other half of my caterpillar: the label.

Have I mentioned that Andrew does the artwork for our wine labels? Let me tell you again:

Each label is an image from our farm, drawn and painted digitally. It takes him weeks, sometimes months to complete a single work. Like my botanical wine, each draft goes through countless revisions.

This particular label is a happy one. Tiny white impressionist flowers fan out of the right corner. They crowd into the foreground in a dainty, optimistic fan. Behind them, a bright blue sky fades into a gently textured ombré. The foot of the label spells out just one word: Chamomile.

Andrew runs a pair of scissors along the edges of the print, cropping it into a rectangle. He wraps it around a 375mL Jersey bottle with the word SAMPLE stickered to its side. Our bottle distributor is always sending us new glass to play with. Very convenient in moments like this. I suppose that’s the point.

“Okay,” he says, using his fingers to pin the label in place, “What do you think about this?”

It’s my turn to stamp the seal of approval. “It’s perfect,” I say. “It feels peaceful. It’s exactly what I had in mind.”

Quiet Dissent

Chamomile is a tonic for the times. Sweet with local honey and infused with chamomile blossoms and pears, it’s the quietest dissent we can bottle.

Most of this vintage will go to our wine club: a twice-yearly drop of our botanical wines, bitters, and seasonal releases. It might just be the geekiest wine club in Virginia (maybe the nation?), an accolade we’re happy to hold.

In the case of Chamomile, we have a little extra to share. You can pre-order a bottle on our website, if you’d like.

That’s the story of our latest creation: two simple humans, trying to bring a little peace back into an unsettled world.

Until next time,

Kelly & Andrew

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The Pitch

Andrew and I are sitting in our second-floor cottage office. It’s a sun-drenched cacophony of books, paintings, printers, and errant receipts. Down coats and wool hats mass on the backs of chairs. It’s the warmest room in the house. There’s no need for winter layers up here.

Andrew’s desk is a neat patchwork of sticky notes and invoices. Meticulously organized files peek out from their respective cubbies. There’s a hand-written to-do list with concise black lines slashed through all its bullets. A tall cup of black coffee steams on a cork coaster.

My desk is a haphazard collection of winemaking textbooks, enological supply brochures, vintage-specific notebooks, and an antler I found in the forest with my grandfather when I was maybe eight. An oversized mug of green tea sits on a seed catalog.

Logical structure meets creative chaos: always a delightful balance.

It’s time for another weekly meeting: a day-long slog of debriefs, scheduling, CSA planning, and winery firefighting. Each week, we aspire to clip the meeting at four hours. Each week, we fail. But this week will be different…I almost believe it.

Andrew swivels around his white, ergonomic office chair to face me. I clunk around my pine wood chair to match.

“So, where would you like to begin?” Andrew asks, taking a long sip of coffee.

I clear my throat. “I’d like us to invest in some local staple goods for the CSA,” I begin, “I’m specifically thinking now would be a good time to expand our grain selection.”

Andrew bristles in the subtlest possible way. I swear that the tidy papers on his desk shiver in response. He manages a tired smile and nods, steepling his fingers. My sign to continue.

“I know they’re slow movers!” I hurry on, “But, I think they’re an important part of our food web. We have a strong CSA base now. I think there’s enough support to make it work.”

I prattle on about featuring grain recipes and producer origin stories in the CSA email, then cut myself off. I’m full-on blabbering (a nervous habit I picked up working in sales). The pause after my chatter hangs between us like an indrawn breath…which for me, it is.

We’ve had this conversation a few times and it’s always a dicey discourse. Flour doesn’t sell. Milled grains barely move. With the puzzling exception of regionally-grown rice, grains are a decidedly unsexy corner of our online CSA marketplace. Not without reason.

Local grain is expensive. Two pounds of conventional white flour averages around three dollars in our local grocery store. Two pounds of locally-grown and milled heirloom white flour costs $11.99 on our CSA marketplace, and that’s at a reduced markup. The standard retail markup on staple goods is closer to 2x or 3x.

Andrew has every reason to pause. Like all farmers, winter is our leanest season. Every dollar spent on CSA goods is a dollar less we have in spring.

“Do you have a producer in mind?” he asks.

I’m ready for this question. I tell him about the Common Grain Alliance, a grassroots consortium of mid-Atlantic farmers, millers, bakers, and grain artisans.

I glance down at their website on my phone. “…their mission is to build a vibrant, integrated, equitable, and regenerative grain economy.” I puff.

“Okay,” he says, checking the clock on his computer. We have a very full docket, and some battles just aren’t worth the airtime. “I’d say reach out and see what you can find. Let’s try it.”

So, I do just that. At the top of my list: Deep Roots Milling.

A Magical Moment

It’s 4:15 pm. The hushed lilac of a mid-winter sunset is just starting to dust the sky. I’m in our (very witchy) indoor production room, organizing jars of botanical tinctures in preparation for my next blending trial. Over the clink and clatter of glass, I hear a distant shuffling at the front door. It’s the sound of something heavy scooting about on the wooden boards. That, or it’s another lost raccoon padding at the welcome mat.

Andrew’s booted steps trundle down the stairs and the door opens with the antiqued creak only ancient Appalachian woodwork can made. Muffled voices trail through the living room and into the kitchen. More shuffling. Human footsteps, not pawing wildlife. Then, Andrew calls my name.

I shove the tincture jars onto the nearest shelf and pop my head around the corner.

“Kelly, this is Aaron,” Andrew says, motioning to a man next to him. He’s about thirty or forty, by my guess. “Aaron’s one of the millers at Deep Roots.”

I thrust my hand forward to shake his. “I’m the one you’ve been texting about our delivery ETA,” I say, like an idiot. He obviously has my information. I, on the other hand, never asked the name of the mystery man texting me about a grain delivery.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Aaron says, graciously.

His hair is the color of wheat. It peeks out from under a tan woolen beanie that looks like it might be older than he is. His cheeks are burnished from the cold, giving his entire complexion a wheaton quality. It’s somehow fitting, given that he’s a miller. He’s wearing a navy canvas work jacket, the sort that’s currently on trend, but looks like it actually sees legitimate labor.

I expect him to say his hellos and hurry back on the road, like so many people do. But, he doesn’t. He stays, asking about our CSA, about our wine, and about us. We have more in common than we realize.

Andrew and I make nocino from black walnuts. So does Aaron. We wildcraft herbs from the forest. So does Aaron. We’ve worked at wineries and vineyards. So has Aaron. He worked a full season at a small winery in Chianti.

“Do you speak Italian?” I ask, tickled by the idea (and definitely, most certainly, absolutely not at all intimidated.)

“Not really,” he says with a shrug, “But you don’t actually need to say much when everyone knows what they’re doing. The only other guy working in the cellar spoke a local dialect that I wouldn’t have understood even if I did speak Italian. But…he didn’t say much, so it didn’t really matter.”

I decide not to mention that I wouldn’t last a week in a winery if I couldn’t speak the language. What that says about me is better unpacked at a later time.

It’s our turn to ask questions. We ask about the mill, about his work, about selling heirloom grain in today’s market. Aaron answers us with dutiful patience.

Deep Roots operates out of the historic 1790s Woodson’s Mill in Nelson County. It’s one of the few remaining water-powered stone mills in modern-day operation. The mill stones were installed in the 1840s, and haven’t been changed since.

Aaron and the other two millers commute to the mill about once a month for what they call “milling sessions”. It’s an all-hands-on-deck intensive, during which they grind grain fresh to order. The mill is quite remote. Aaron and the other millers sleep at the mill through the duration of each session. Then, they commute home and wait for the next round.

Most of their sourced grain comes from independent Virginia growers. Some are single-origin millings, grown by just one dedicated farmer.

A water-powered mill in the age of cyber trucks and ChatGPT. Heirloom Appalachian grits in the world of Amazon Fresh. Listening to Aaron talk, I feel like we’ve gone back in time. A miller, a viticulturist, and a winemaker, talking ye-olde shoppe around the hearth. It’s an electric hearth, but our pots are still cast iron, and our spoons are still made of wood.

It feels real, honest, untarnished by efficiency. These are the moments I live for. Maybe, that we all live for, even if we don’t realize it. Utterly human. Wholly present. A tribe without pretense or expectation. Our fullest, artisan selves in complete, shared acceptance.

I pull a few bottles from the winery fridge and offer Aaron an impromptu botanical wine tasting. He’s especially interested in our Nocino, which gives me some pause. As I pour, I emphasize that it’s a Nocino Americano. That doesn’t just mean an American Nocino, but a vino amaro in the Americano style: pointedly bitter and herbal. There’s a cutting assertiveness behind the walnut, thanks to a heavy dose of chicory and rhubarb. Two percent of the base wine is wild-harvested American persimmon. It adds an aggressive, tannic bite, even at low concentrations.

Of everything he tries, the Nocino is his favorite. He buys a bottle, and I give him a bottle of our vermouth for free. It’s the least I can do after he lugged a heavy grain box out to our farm in the middle of nowhere.

“You should come visit the mill sometime,” Aaron suggests. It’s everything I can do not to blubber with excitement. Thankfully, Andrew steps in and smoothly accepts the invitation with all the grace of the southern gentleman he is.

Then, Aaron leaves. The front door clicks shut behind him, leaving the glimmers of his old-world mill magic clinging faintly to the corners of our kitchen. I want to stay in this space for just a little while longer before Tesla and Amazon take it over again. Glancing over at Andrew, I can see he feels the same. Couldn’t the evening just end here, with Aaron’s grits bubbling on the stove and our wine in the glass?

Maybe one day, but not this day. There’s plenty of work for the both of us before we tuck in. The magic will have to wait, for now.

Carrying the Lineage

It’s Friday morning. Pale winter light peels through our kitchen windows. Bags of Deep Roots grain stand at attention on the counter: wheat, rye, spelt, and oats. Andrew is at the sink, rinsing sand from a stalk of leeks. I’m beside him in an apron and mismatched oven mitts, pulling a springform pan from the oven. The air smells like a medieval kitchen, all baking spices and dried herbs and dark malt.

Every Friday begins the same way. We wake up and cook a few recipes together for the coming week’s CSA. It encourages our CSA members when the daunting task of eating seasonally comes to call. It also keeps us well-fed, which doesn’t hurt.

Andrew is piloting a savory oatmeal with soy sauce and leeks. A pot of rolled oats simmers in a mote of his homemade chicken broth. In the adjacent skillet, a brown sugar and soy sauce reduction glistens like lacquer.

I’m finishing up a spelt flour Torta De Pomi de’l Cavalier Biron, or “Lord Byron’s Apple Cake.” It’s an old Venetian recipe from the 1800s. The English poet Lord Byron fled England for Venice in the mid-1800s due to his unpaid debts and multiple sex scandals. It's said that this was his favorite Venetian dessert.

I have enough patience to wait about thirty minutes before I absolutely must cut into the cake. The first slice is a chaotic jumble of apples, plumped raisins, and chopped walnuts. It’s dense and inelegant. Eating it feels like falling into a soft feather bed at the end of a long day. Very much Byron’s style.

The cake is delicious, not just because the nonna behind it knew her stuff, but because of how the nutty-sweet flavor of the spelt shines through behind the apples. On the surface, it’s just a pretty good cake. Underneath, there’s something else, something older and purer. For thousands of years, individual farmers passed along their favorite stock grains, from generation to generation. Some, they kept for flavor, some for color, and some for pest resistance or climate hardiness. Grain moved from miller to baker to hearth to table, until by chance, some of them made their way to our kitchen.

That’s what this cake tastes like: the endless human journey that makes us what we are. One step, one grain, one bite at a time. Now, we’re passing that journey along to our CSA members…and to you. It’s your turn to pick up the story. Take it where you will.

Thanks for reading,

Kelly & Andrew

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A Bowl of Soup

Andrew is dicing celery at our butcher block kitchen counter. The slow chop chop chop of blade on wood clocks through the air like a metronome. His hands move with the rhythmic muscle memory built by years of practice. It’s like watching a pianist at the keys. Technique is an afterthought. Form is intuitive.

On the stovetop beside him, our enamel Dutch oven sputters, olive oil and minced onion crackling. He scoops up the celery with his blade and tosses it in. The pot hisses. Moving quickly now, he stirs it with an oiled, wooden spoon until the celery softens. In goes a split can of San Marzano tomatoes, pre-opened in Andrew’s neat mise en place. After this, homemade chicken stock and some pre-made tortellini.

This last addition is a major compromise. Andrew would like to spend hours (perhaps days), quietly folding and pinching hundreds of fresh tortellini himself, but there just isn’t time.

He’s making his Tortellini & Hearty Greens Soup. It’s possibly one of his best soups yet: soul-nourishing in the way that only rustic Italian cooking can be. The kitchen (no, the entire house) smells divine. It always does when Andrew cooks.

I bustle in and out, doing this and that, each time blasted anew with the tortuously enticing aroma of his cooking. The kitchen is a passthrough between our office and the winery. Too often, we forget that it’s also the heart of our house.

Something tugs at a primal part of my mind. It’s the old human smell of hearth and home. With each pass, I feel a beckoning to come, sit, rest.

Andrew remains where he is: stirring, chopping, watching, waiting, a quiet mote of gravity in a whirling world.

When he steps away from the stove, his body is changed. His shoulders are loose, his back straight, his eyes, bright and luminous. The tension that defines his posture evaporates. A simple pot of tortellini soup, and the world slows down to something breathable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this soup, not just because it was absolutely delicious, but because of how Andrew transformed as he made it. He went in off balance, and emerged solidified. There was something to be found in the time between chopping celery and turning off the stove. At first glance, it looks like pleasure, but that isn’t quite right. Pleasure is too fast and voracious, an analog of self-care tropes pitching face masks and pints of ice cream.

What Andrew found in that space was restorative at the spirit level. I’d call it a practice, one that Andrew is very good at. It’s the slow art of finding contentment in a pleasure-addicted world.

Searching for Contentment

Fast forward a few days. Andrew and I are driving home from a round of farm errands. My SUV is packed with local bread, cheese, and eggs: surplus goods to complement our vegetable CSA. The air is redolent with the toasted caramel of freshly browned sourdough, and my mind runs towards food. I’m still thinking about Andrew’s soup and the quiet sparkle it left over everything.

“What does contentment feel like to you?” I ask.

He shrugs. “It doesn’t feel like anything,” he says. Not brusque, just a matter of fact.

I scrunch up my face, turning his answer over, and try again. “How does it make you feel in your body?”

He thinks for a moment. “I feel a lightness in all the places I hold my stress: my shoulders, my back, my arms, my jaw…”

“That’s how you felt when you made the tortellini soup?”

“Yes,” he says.

I drum at the steering wheel with my fingertips. “Would you say that you felt more grounded after making the soup?”

Andrew gazes at the cars flying by beside us. I’m driving like a granny in the right lane, slowly puttering homeward. My unhurried driving normally tortures him, but today the pace feels right. There’s something about the suspended space inside a moving vehicle that encourages good conversation.

“Not necessarily. You can be grounded without being content, and you can be content without being grounded.”

“Can you?” I ask.

“I think so. Have you ever been content without being grounded?” Andrew counters.

I chew on this for a while. “When I think of contentment, I think of ease. It’s an open, breezy, feeling. Almost playful. But, I still feel grounded, as if there’s very little risk to be had. I don’t know if I could find ease in the presence of too much risk.”

Andrew points out that this is because I’m a Capricorn sun with an Aries rising, and we digress into a convoluted discourse about astrology. Andrew is a Gemini sun and Capricorn rising, which means he can somehow make many conflicting but logical arguments simultaneously. Maybe it’s my Aries bit, but I can’t swallow astrology’s patent twists and turns. Gemini Andrew can always find an explanation for everything, way up in the stars.

“Does contentment come, in part then, from a sense of safety?” I ask, yanking the reins back to the topic at hand, “Even if there’s a lack of grounding?”

“Sometimes,” he answers. “I think it depends. If the stakes are high, it’s harder to engage deeply. If the stakes are low, if there is ample time and resources for whatever I’m engaging with, then I can feel content.”

“So, when we’re talking about pleasure in a fast-burn sense rather than contentment, is a sense of risk embedded? Are pleasure and contentment incompatible?” My mind tracks to my past life in wine sales, where I bumped shoulders with chefs and sommeliers. If there was ever a world defined by pleasure, it was that.

“I don’t think so,” Andrew says, catching my thoughts, “But, I think it’s difficult in our industries, in food and wine, to differentiate between contentment and pleasure. When pleasure is so easily accessible, the opportunity to overindulge is harder to ignore. I think our industries attract individuals who are drawn to overindulgence.”

“It’s easy to lean into that quick dopamine hit of hedonic indulgence when things feel scarce,” I suggest. The nagging itch to check my phone bubbles up, as if on cue.

“Right, but I think you have the answer already. It’s all about how you’re coming to the topic. It’s about intention.” He’s citing the long, tangling tendrils of our past conversations. Mindfulness in food and drink is a recurring theme. You can read more about that in November’s Newsletter.

“So, what questions should we be asking people when it comes to helping them find contentment?” Another unspoken but ongoing point of conversation. I’m thinking about the newsletter that I’m writing now. It’s a real octopus of a topic, and I can’t get my thumb on it. In moments like this, Andrew is my sounding board. “Should we ask them to think of places that made them feel peaceful? Activities that leave them relaxed? It all feels a bit…trite.”

Andrew shakes his head. “I don’t think you have to ask them anything. I think raising the topic and sharing examples from our lives is enough. Let them look for the rest on their own.”

“Like your soup.” It’s a realization rather than a question.

Andrew nods. “And something from your life as well.”

Acing the Exam

I’m standing at our bar counter, adjacent to the kitchen. It’s a backlit wooden slab, lined with spirits bottles and amari. It’s also (at the moment) littered with mason jars. Each has a name scrawled in masking tape over its lid: cardoon, artichoke, blessed thistle, lemon verbena…there must be twenty or so, all crowded together at my elbows.

The jars are a small part of my botanical library, a collection of about two hundred tinctures (depending on the day), in high-proof brandy. I make them all myself. A good number are infusions of our own crops, truly farm-to-bottle.

Amidst the mess of glass is a single open jar, half full of what looks like liquid amber. This is Thistle, my darling favorite child. It’s a cardoon aperitif, taking obvious inspiration from the better-known Cardamaro. We make it with our own, farm-grown thistles. Thus the name.

Using a glass pipette, I dot a single drop of cardoon tincture into the open jar. I follow with a drop of pecan wood. Then, chamomile. I lift it to my nostrils and inhale at different levels and angles, catching as many volatile aromas as my plain human nose can handle. Dipping a bar spoon into the jar, I run as little as possible of it over my tongue. I’ve learned, too many times now, how much stronger amari is compared to table wine. Overindulgence comes quickly. I drink as little as I can when I work.

I spit what I can into a discard jar (I loathe the industry phrases “spit bucket” and “spit cup.”) I’m not a camel, thank you very much.

Flavor erupts over my tongue. Layers of thistles and flowers break like the gentlest seaside eddies. There’s a swell of round bitterness at the center, followed by something almost alpine: like the taste of mountain air combing over a spring meadow.

My body stills and I stare at the jar for a long while. My chest feels light. My feet, suddenly eager to move. I grab the jar and, like an impulsive child, race upstairs to the office where Andrew is typing away at his computer. Cells of spreadsheets reflect in the lenses of his glasses. He doesn’t realize I’m there until I’m shoving the jar in front of his face.

“Try this,” I say.

He spins away from his screens, eyeing me with a bemused (and, do I detect, exhausted?) smile. Taking the jar from my hand, he sips.

Andrew normally asks for a discard jar in moments like these. We’re both wine people by trade, but we’re also lightweights. Too much midday alcohol is ruinous to us both.

He rolls the wine along his tongue, staring at the jar with sudden, sharp attention. Then, he swallows, no mention of a “spit bucket.” After a pause, he looks up at me.

“It’s perfect,” he says. “You’re done.”

At his words, I feel something shedding from my spirit. A nameless weight, sliding off like a heavy cloak. My body is airy and weightless. I bow my head with joy, as if I’ve just aced a troubling exam.

Maybe, I have. Getting this far was a rocky road. Later, I’ll remember the gesture as absurdly formal, but in the moment, all I can feel is pure, levitating gratitude. “Thank you,” I murmur, taking back the jar.

He stares at an empty point of space just before his eyes, seeing thoughts that I can’t. “Yeah,” he whispers with a slow nod of his head, “It’s perfect.”

Just a Mirror

If, by chance, you’ve interacted with the news or its social media proxies at any point since January, you might be at a serious pleasure deficit right now. We can relate. That’s why we’re sharing these snippets of our lives with you. The purpose of this newsletter is to act as a mirror. No prompts. No philosophy. Just a hanging suggestion of where to go in discontent times.

Contentment and pleasure can look very similar. Which of the two offers you the right sort of solace is yours to discover. Whatever it is, it shouldn’t leave you wanting more. It should be just satisfying enough. Maybe grounded, too (or not?)

Until next time,

Andrew & Kelly

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Hello!

Hey folks, it’s Kelly here. This newsletter has been an evolving creature, which is good because honestly, it started off a little stiff. I’ve never enjoyed the professional tenor.

We’ve been writing this newsletter in the first person plural, but today, I’ll be in the singular. Less stuffy, more human. I hope you enjoy it.

The Bookish Kitchen

“How do you come up with the recipes for your CSA?”

We get this question a lot, which is always flattering because I assume it means we look like we know what we’re doing.

The answer is simple: we read. A lot.

We have an entire bookshelf in our cottage dedicated to cookbooks. There’s additional book spillage beyond the balance of the shelves that’s slowly making its way across the living room. Those volumes are usually our most-loved, living on end tables and armchairs, always ready to be picked up and enjoyed.

We have books on food and culture, food and philosophy, food and politics, food and…you name it. There are multiple digital cooking subscriptions (because the poor shelves can’t possibly accommodate an influx of magazines) and don’t even get us started on our podcast and social media followings.

Spoiler: they’re all food.

When we need a recipe, we summon up this exploding culinary library and sift through it until inspiration strikes. Then, we take what we find and make it our own.

This winter, we unknowingly entered peak cookbook season. Andrew and I have reached a point where if no one knows what to gift us for the holidays, they default to some sort of food content. Even between us, this is true.

Andrew and I have fallen into a sort of benign deception when it comes to holiday gifting. Each year, we proclaim no gifts! Yet, as if by magic, gifts continue to appear.

This year, we celebrated the holidays early, just the two of us. There were gifts.

Andrew gave me Derek Brown’s Mindful Mixology. Despite making vino amaro for a living, I’m a complete lightweight when it comes to drinking. For this reason, I’m very much into low/no-ABV cocktails. I also have a decent palate, which means whenever I encounter a bittered lemonade or Shirley Temple, my faith in humanity dies a little. This is when a good book (like Brown’s) comes in handy.

I gave Andrew a copy of Micah Mahon’s Ounces, Drops, & Dashes. Micah is the bar manager at Charlottesville’s The Alley Light. He first published the book under a different title years ago, and it quickly sold out. For whatever reason, the publisher chose not to print another run. It took Micah four years and lots of legal footwork to regain the rights to his book. He recently republished it through Amazon.

Shortly after this pre-holiday definitely-not-a-gift-exchange, we packed up our cars and drove thirteen hours north to Portland, Maine for a long overdue visit with family. It was also a time for us to have some rest after what has been an awfully long year.

As you might imagine, we filled this open time with food and drink. And books.

Down East

We pulled into Portland around 7:30 pm. By 8:00 pm, we’d unpacked into our cozy loft Airbnb, with parking pass in hand. We were ravenously hungry after hours of car snacks. The only open restaurant on our hit list was Friends & Family. So, there we went.

Imagine a cozy nighttime pizzeria, boutique wine shop, and cocktail bar all seamlessly smashed together. This is Friends & Family. As we sidled up to the bar to place our order, I noticed a miniature crockpot simmering away beside the checkout. Shouldering the pot was a tiny chalkboard sign encouraging customers to “warm up with a glass of amaro hot chocolate.” This is when I knew I would love the place.

We split the honeynut squash and pepita pizza and a side mysteriously named “Beans.” The latter ended up being a fabulously simple bowl of Rancho Gordo Royal Corona beans. For the uninitiated, Royal Corona beans are massive, white runner beans that, when cooked, are over an inch long. They are so large, that one is forced to eat them bean-by-bean. They’re also extraordinarily delicious. This may or may not appear in our CSA recipe lineup later this winter.

To drink, I got a tannic Lambrusco and Andrew got an Alsatian white blend. We spent the evening taking notes on the layout of the joint: preparation for our one-day-someday tasting room. Some couples plan out nurseries. We sketch out bar schematics.

The following morning, we stopped at Nom Café for breakfast. Their heating system was on the fritz and the latte machine (no frother in sight) was completely broken. In apology, they offered us a free round of Turkish cheese donuts, steaming hot from the fryer. We devoured them instantly because it was fifteen degrees outside (making it maybe fifty degrees inside) and we were both freezing.

To further self-soothe from the refrigerated breakfast experience, we shopped. First stop: books.

We ducked into Longfellow Books for a quick thaw. I spent most of my time drooling over Clarice Lam’s Breaking Bao book, eventually accepting that it was over my head. Maybe I’ll come back to it.

After we were sufficiently reheated, we continued our journey, stopping by Maine & Loire (Maine’s starlet wine shop), Sissle & Daughters (a small cheese monger and gourmet shop), Strata (knife-sharpener and purveyor of high-end kitchenware), and Onggi (fermentation market and café.)

Our spoils included numerous bottles of wine, delightful snacks, a very nice pair of culinary tweezers, and, of course, books. For me, Tiki: Modern Tropical Cocktails, by Shannon Mustipher. For Andrew, Fadi Kattan’s Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food.

By then, we were hungry again, so we stopped by Bar Futo for something called Tanuki Hour. Tanuki refers to the Japanese raccoon dog, which in lore is sometimes depicted as a playful trickster and shapeshifter. The most Tanuki action we saw were some reasonably priced bar snacks and drinks.

Andrew got the fluke and Asian pear crudo. I got the chilled tofu with almond chili crisp and spiced schmaltz. We took notes on plate composition: color, contrast, and texture. To learn, we had to eat.

We spent the holidays first with my family and then with Andrew’s. During this time, more books made themselves known.

We received, in no particular order:

• The Noma Guide to Fermentation: a modern bible of recipes and techniques from Denmark’s Noma “fermentation lab.” I’m pretty sure I have one of those in my laundry room.

• Maydān: Recipes from Lebanon and Beyond: a collection of recipes by Rose Previte, creator of D.C.’s Maydān and Compass Rose. Before becoming a restaurateur, Previte traveled along old global spice trade routes, learning authentic recipes and techniques from home cooks. This is what she brought back to the capitol and to her cookbook.

• Venice: Four Seasons of Home Cooking: authored by the late British restaurateur and chef, Russell Norman. Norman co-founded Polpo, a Venetian-style tapas restaurant in London, as well as authoring a book by the same name.

• Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: a collection of stories and recipes interwoven by author and Kentucky Poet Laureate Crystal Wilkinson. A tale of Appalachian black identity as felt through food.

We now have so many new cookbooks that we’re going to need another dedicated cookbook shelf. We were already planning on getting one because the inevitable was obvious. We are addicts.

I should add, for good measure, that my birthday falls squarely between Christmas and New Year’s. My adult experience of this situation is one long celebratory haze of indulgent food and drink.

In an eleventh-hour effort to culturally fortify ourselves before returning to the mountains, we had a birthday intermezzo at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, followed by dinner at Gypsy Kitchen.

We shared the crispy cauliflower with lemon tahina and dried fruit relish, the cobia crudo (we really like crudo) with sweet potato and grapes, and the honeynut squash with salsa verde and urfa vinaigrette. To drink, I had a Greek Assyrtiko and Andrew had a Lebanese Garnacha.

More notetaking: garnishes, flavor pairing, approachability. A crudo recipe isn’t something I would throw at most of our CSA members, but it’s always good to have a curveball up your sleeve.

Over dinner, we talked about business, which for us means we talked about food and drink and culture, and all the things wrong with our society and how, according to us, most of them can be fixed with a well-laid table.

We were, in many ways, recovered from the hardships of this past year. It was medicine in three plates and two glasses.

This sense of recovery, of deep nourishment, is what we’re looking for when we cook for our CSA. We seek out beauty. When we find it, we try to make it approachable for the weekday kitchen. I like to think of us as the neighborhood recipe curators. Daytime rough-and-tumble farmers, nighttime closet gourmands. Our CSA gets the best of both.

That’s the long and short of it, folks. Stories, travel, life. That’s where recipes come from.

Did I mention that our winter CSA is up and running? You can sign up anytime from now until spring. Maybe we’ll see you there. If not, we’ll write again soon.

Till next time,

Kelly & Andrew

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Uncertainty

Artemisia is unquestionably a values-driven business.

We’re a two-person, sustainable micro-farm and (even-more-micro) winery specializing in, of all things, vermouth. We grow things. We cook. We bottle some wine now and again. It’s honest work, work that feels like it gives some bit of good back to the world.

We started out with the post-pandemic wind at our backs. The great resignation was in full swing, and society was second-guessing the suburban nine-to-five dream. Folks were baking their own sourdough, starting their first gardens, and questioning (some, for the first time) what mattered most in life.

People wanted change. They wanted a break from hustle culture and mass-production; and a return to a slower, more idealized lifeway. We met them there, with vegetables and wine, recipes and stories. We bundled it all into a delivery CSA and it took off like a shot. An alternative lifeway, made accessibly modern.

Our messaging these past few years has remained steady. Our work is grounded in both tradition and science, open to historical heirlooms and new hybrids, established cultural practices and alternative approaches. Our planet is warming. Solutions in agriculture and beyond will be inclusive, ecologically and socially.

Post-election, we’re feeling less sure of how tenable those solutions will be. The values of the incoming administration are in deep conflict with our own. The fundamentals of our work are under active threat, ideologically and directly, as government bodies face funding cuts and questionable restaffing.

We find ourselves wondering what our work will look like under this new cultural baseline. Uncertainty is an entrepreneurial norm, but this feels different. The future itself is uncertain in a way no business plan could have predicted.

A Single Thread

After the close of the election, we spent some time revisiting our values as a business. Our original plan for this newsletter was to reassert the importance of those values. At the time, it felt needed: a declaration of support for everyone feeling what we were feeling. After some discussion, we settled on three core tenets: sustainability, diversity, and mindfulness.

The question was simple: how to move forward in a world sharply departed from those values?

We made an outline with bullets with examples and hyperlinks. We spent hours hashing out the details by phone as we delivered our CSA shares. The more we tried to parse out the words, the more redundant they began to feel. There was nothing on offer. Nothing new that we hadn’t already spoken to.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you know what we do. You likely appreciate the planet on some level, and by proxy, the diversity and beauty that nature inspires. You probably enjoy food and quite possibly a good drink. You don’t need a recap. You’re there already.

We were driving home from yet another farmers market when we picked up the conversation one last time. It was early November at that point, and the sun was already beginning to set. The sky was a blaze of clouds and light. The question hung as we drove into the sunset like a spell about to be spoken. What was the thread tying everything together? What value underpinned it all?

The low sun blazed. The cars around us were speeding blurs on an asphalt track. Windblown clouds twisted like banners, lavender in the catching light. We both remarked on the beauty of the sky. Then, quite simply, we had it.

There is only one core value driving our business: mindfulness.

Distant Ramifications

We’re not in a particularly mindful culture. In fact, the underpinnings of our society largely depend upon a lack of mindfulness. The way we consume resources and information: quickly, superficially, and abundantly…calls for little restraint. The ramifications are distant: cropped rainforests, mountains of trashed clothing and plastic, fossil fuel decline, and by proxy, a quickly warming planet.

We are in an epidemic of social isolation despite a myriad of “social” platforms. Wealth gaps continue to gape wider in countries the world over. In the United States, young people are in a collective mental health crisis, with staggering rates of depression, violence, and substance abuse.

Our culture no longer serves us. It isn’t designed to. This year’s election cycle made that especially clear.

Up to the election, the fallout of insults, lies, and incoherent rage where there should have been discourse left us both stunned. We define leadership to be respectful, controlled, and compassionate. Our reality was and is, clearly, very different.

The proposed restructuring of our government has all the trappings of an oligarchy. The powerful protect themselves, while the common people are left in disarray. We aren’t here to point fingers or cast blame. Only to spotlight a culture that, fueled by its insatiable consumptive apparatus, left its people behind.

It doesn’t need to be like this. We don’t need to be like this. We can choose a different way to live. Mindfulness is a skill. It can be taught and practiced.

No Barbs, No Injuries

Mindfulness changes the way we look at the world.

When we’re mindful, the essential nature of sustainability and diversity are already top of mind. We see clearly the fragile checks and balances of the environment. We look backwards and forwards at humanity’s thumb on the ecological scale. In turn, we produce and consume responsibly, working within the limits of what we can restore.

When we’re mindful and awake, we become stewards of the world around us. We care for each other (human, plant, and animal) and we are cared for in return. It doesn’t matter what gender or color we are, nor our place of origin or belief system. We recognize that we’re all part of the same unified nature. Harm done to another is harm done to ourselves.

Becoming Our Best Selves

When we’re mindful, power and recognition are distractions from the higher good. We’re no longer driven by ego. We don’t react to barbs and insults, nor do we feel the need to use them. There’s no need to cause injury when things don’t go our way.

Mindfulness radically unveils the fleeting nature of life at hand, our own included. All life is temporary. All momentary, and thus all very important.

Mindfulness helps us to become our best selves by rooting us in compassion for the finite nature of the lives around us. From that place, we can see clearly. Our intention always moves towards the longevity of our planet and the individual wellness of its beings. Waking up to the smallness of our existence is essential is unpacking our cultural toxicities. Only in a world that fundamentally devalues life can we deal such injury to others, directly or indirectly. This is a path without any continuity.

In short, mindfulness is everything.

The Open Table

We’re a very small business. That comes with a certain level of understanding about what we can and cannot achieve. We’ll never change the world at scale, and that’s okay.

The point is to do good work, relentlessly, unapologetically, and kindly, for as long as we’re able to, with the tools that we have.

This is where we ground ourselves as we head towards January. We continue with hearth, home, and drink, sharing the harvest, cooking with our CSA members, and capturing little bits of awe in our botanical wines and bitters. Our hope is that our work reminds you to slow down, to wake up to the beauty and richness of the world around you, and to the absolute scarcity of that world.

Everything in nature and in this strange human species is worthy of our care. All life is precious. Let’s take care of each other and keep the table open.

Until next time,

Andrew & Kelly

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We’re Back

Hey there. It’s been a while since we’ve written. A lot has happened since our last newsletter, both good and bad.

The long and short of it is: we’re back, and we have something exciting to share.

From Tropical Storm to Grape Crush

It’s been a few months since tropical storm Debby tore through our farm. It destroyed both of our vehicles (one of which was brand new) as well as a large swath of our gardens. At the same time, Kelly suffered an acute health crisis, the cause of which remains unknown.

It’s been a rocky road.

More than a few have suggested that perhaps we’ve been cursed. Neither of us are much for the occult. Nevertheless, we find ourselves asking: who the hell did we piss off?

We’re rebuilding, physically and mentally. Our grape harvest is over. We’re through the crush. It’s our most ambitious vintage yet: 3.95 tons of grapes and 500 pounds of heirloom plums. All crushed and pressed by hand.

Just two and a half months remain in our main season CSA. We have three vintages of wine to bottle, and plenty of bitters to brew. It’s the home stretch of the year, and we’re bouncing back just in time.

These past weeks have us thinking, how can we do things differently?

We have an idea. We’re calling it Bo. Bo. Shipper.

The Big Idea

Bo.Bo. stands for Botanical Bottles. It’s our direct shipping bottle club for bitter botanical aficionados. If you’re reading this newsletter, that might be you.

Twice a year, Bo.Bo. members receive a box containing our latest bitter creations. Each shipment comes with production information for every bottle, as well as recipe postcards created by yours truly.

The selections change annually, but include our core botanical wines, artisan bitters, and a special seasonal project (sparkling dandelion wine, for example). Some of our most limited creations will only be available to Bo. Bo. members.

Along with the Shipper, we’re also launching general shipping. We’re now able to ship to just about everywhere. If Bo. Bo. isn’t for you but you’d like to enjoy our work now and again, you can buy our bottles wherever, whenever.

We have big ideas on how we see our business moving forward. Bo. Bo. Shipper is just the start.

A Long Game

Everything in agriculture is a long game. Big ideas take time. We have big plans. The bigger the dream, the longer the game.

For now, we’re just a pair of Bo. Bo.s, sending our weird wines in your direction.

Want to be a Bo. Bo.? Read about it and sign up on our website. Check it out.

Until our next writing,

Kelly & Andrew

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Stormy Weather

This is supposed to be a wine release announcement.

Two weeks ago, Andrew’s car was rear-ended while stopped at a stoplight. The vehicle was totaled.

He managed to find a replacement.

The following day, topical storm Debby snapped the old walnut tree beside our home in half. It crushed Andrew’s new vehicle. Kelly’s was damaged as well.

This farm is a lean operation. We deliver all of our CSA shares with our personal vehicles. Dedicated delivery trucks just aren’t on the table yet.

Damage to our vehicles is critically threatening to our lifeway.

Through all of this, Kelly has been navigating difficult autoimmune issues. Her capacity to sell at farmers’ markets is limited.

We’re ready to share our first wines of the year with you. But, we have no release party. No festive tasting. No public class.

All we have are our bottles and our CSA, and we could use your support.

You can find the 2023 vintages of Mentha and Solstice Vermouth on our website. Our CSA is ongoing. Consider buying a bottle for yourself or a friend, or sharing our CSA with someone who’d appreciate it.

Your financial support keeps our artisanship alive.

Thank you.

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A Little Elbow Grease

Our next botanical wine release is just around the corner.  That’s been the record on play for a bit. As is now (apparently) usual, we’re running late.  

This year’s bottling begins with Mentha (mint aperitif) and Solstice (plum vermouth).  Technically, they should be going into bottles right about…now.  As with all good things in food and drink, they’re taking some time. More about that next month.

We do have some of our previous vintage bottlings in stock.  Specifically, Thistle (artichoke aperitif), Nocino Americano (Black Walnut), and Equinox Gentiane (sweet potato.) Awfully out of season…or so it would seem.

Don’t let a simple failure of creativity bog down your summer cocktail lineup.  Nothing is out of season to the inspired palette.  With a good shaker and a little elbow grease, we can make summer out of just about anything.  

That brings us to the theme of the hour.  This month’s newsletter is the cocktail edit, or in the case of the soon-to-be-bottled, the pre-cocktail edit. 

The Summer Formula

Nothing is off limits on the summer bar.  The trick here is three-fold: consider the driving flavors of your problem child in question, a correlating spirit profile, and the appropriate bridge between the two.  The bridge could be anything: citrus juice, sherry, a flavored (or not) syrup, but it must accomplish one thing: it must bear likeness to both the aperitif and the spirit.   

That’s our formula: problem + spirit + bridge = summer.

Let’s set aside our overdue vintage and start with what we do have on hand:   

Thistle

Thistle is our most versatile bottling for summer cocktails.  It’s inspired by the Italian tradition of infusing amaro with edible thistles (thus the name), putting it in the same camp as Cardamaro and Cynar.  

There’s a large sprawl of rocky turf on our farm.  Nothing much will grow there, but thistles seem to like it just fine.  Our products are all about showcasing native and climatically-appropriate flora.  Artichokes and their kin are certainly appropriate for that otherwise useless spot, so they fit the bill.   

Thistle is light, honeyed, herbal, and subtly bitter.  It’s the most demure of our lineup, but by no means lacking for it.  

Let’s start off with something easy.  A Thistle Sour covers all of your summery sweet-tart needs, and then some.  We like to add a little Hickory Bark Syrup from Falling Bark Farm in Clark Country (that’s Virginia, for all you out-of-staters).  

For a lower-ABV option, try this almost 50/50 blend of Thistle and Limoncello in a Pomeriggio.  Pomeriggio is Italian for “afternoon,” which is to say, “drink this on a nice summer afternoon.”

If you’re feeling especially lazy but still want to drink something classy, make yourself a Gin Thistle.  It’s like a martini, but better.  It’s also very, very easy. 

Nocino Americano

In the case of our Nocino, we’re not exactly helped by the Italian tradition of enjoying theirs as a winter holiday tipple.  It does have a certain coziness on the palette…but we’re going to ignore that.  Our Nocino isn’t just stodgy, it also has a good amount of tannin and perfume, thanks to extensive aging with cherry wood and a few complementary botanicals (elderflower, in particular).  It’s dense, powerful, and noticeably bitter.  These are our working points.  

We need a spirit that is either powerful or floral, and a summery bridge that both softens and lifts.  

Take this Smokeberry cocktail, for example.  It’s a 50/50 split between Mezcal and Nocino, with a touch of blackberry syrup between the two.  Perhaps not the best poolside frosé option, but a knockout on a sultry summer’s evening.  

Option 2: terrify your cookout guests by making them a round of Mitlas. We designed the Mitla Cocktail as a part of a CSA deep dive into Oaxacan cuisine. It takes its name from an ancient collection of archeological ruins in central Oaxaca. Mitla is derived from the Nahuatl name Mictlán, meaning the "place of the dead" or "underworld."

Don’t let it’s name fool you. It’s just the thing on a hot day.

Equinox Sweet Potato Gentiane

Sweet potatoes for summer?  Challenge accepted.  Let’s start by breaking down Equinox to its basics:  bitter, smoky, yes…sweet-potatoey, but also drying, dusty, and a little fruity.  

Our first question was “which summer fruit likes a little time on the grill?”  We both said the same thing: peaches.  A Peach Bonfire takes the idea and runs with it.  Oloroso, Equinox, and a touch of rum and peach syrup all land a great drink for cookouts, bonfires, and any other summer gatherings involving open flames.  Just keep them away from your glass.  

Equinox also makes a great Margarita.  Our uncreatively (but straightforwardly!) named Sweet Potato-Grapefruit Margarita does just that.  Grapefruit juice and tequila ping on Equinox’s sunnier side, while the California-based Mommenpop’s Makrut Limepop levies some structure.  Salted rim, naturally. 

Up and Coming

What about Mentha and Solstice?   This season’s iterations are a little different from last year’s: a touch less sweet, a tad more bitter.  They’re functionally the same, and we have a few teasers to share.  

Mentha

The thing about Mentha is that it’s minty.   Maybe that doesn’t sound like a problem, but it can wreak havoc when spirits are at play.  The pungent oils in mint leaves affect the way alcohol, acid, and bitterness are perceived on the palate.  When mixing with Mentha, the goal is always to maintain a happy mint balance.  

Starting with the classics is a good direction.  Say, a Mentha Mojito?  Sub in Mentha for the muddled mint and lime juice.  When we made this recipe, our Mentha was a bit more pinky in the glass  (more rhubarb, less mint) and it shows in the recipe.  Today’s Mentha is more golden (more mint, less rhubarb).  Deal with it.  

Another way to ensure a good match in the shaker?  Match your botanicals.  Our Loudoun county neighbor, Clever Beast, makes a stellar lineup of vermouths and aperitifs.  Much like us, they use botanicals native to the Mid-Atlantic. 

We find their clean, refined aesthetic to be an ideal counterpoint to our own.   Exhibit A: Tomato-Mint Spritz.  We combine our Mentha with their Tomato Vine Spritz and a little Spanish white vermouth.  A touch of rosewater and our own Sumac Bitters add just the right stuff on the nose.  

Solstice Vermouth

Solstice is an atypical vermouth.  Not only is it infused with local plums, it’s also highly textured and acidic.  We ferment the base wine with full skin contact and partial stem inclusion.  That gives us a lot of personality to work with, for better or worse. 

Not quite French in style, not quite Italian, not really Spanish…it’s a uniquely Appalachian take on the genre.  

When working with Solstice, your focus is acidity.  A Negroni is a good place to start.  We used Charlottesville-local Vitae Spirits’ Gin in ours, as well as a little Antica Torino Rosso Vermouth.  Antica Torino is the long-time project of a dear friend of ours, Vito, who was kind enough to give us pointers in our early vermouthing days. 

Solstice’s secondary characteristic is its fruit.  Take it in a softer direction with D.C.-based Ciccio e Figli’s Cerasum Aperitivo.  This aptly-named Cereza cocktail does just that, plus a little mezcal.  House-brandied cherry, for good measure.   

Summer, Served

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.  Remember, with a little ingenuity and a lot of desperation, you can craft a summer cocktail from just about anything.  If at first you don’t succeed, try again…or visit our Cocktail Archive for some proper direction. 

Did we mention that we deliver?  If you’re lucky enough to live in NoVA or D.C., you can order our botanical wines (and bitters) online for home delivery.  If you’re home at the time, you’ll likely have the pleasure of meeting one of us at your doorstep.  We’re a team of two, and that means we’re our own delivery drivers. 

We Want Your Recipes

Are you a fan of our botanical wines and bitters?  We’d love to see what you’re mixing up.  Share your recipes with us and we’ll share them with our audience.  You can shoot us a message on your favorite social media platform or send us an email: contact@artemisia.farm.  

Cheers!

Feedback

Community is built when we are in conversation with each other. Was there something you loved in this month’s newsletter? Or hated? Do you have a question about something we said, or a response to us?

We want to hear from you! Comment using the button below or email us at contact@artemisia.farm.

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There’s an audio version of our newsletter. Hear us reading it now using the voiceover playback above.

We’re lucky enough to have some very dedicated CSA members.  Most signed up when we launched in 2020, and the vast majority stick with us, year after year.  Our members very rarely cancel their subscriptions.  But, every once in a while, it happens.  

The vast majority of CSA cancellations are due to relocation.  The D.C. metro region is a hyper-transient sleeper community for government climbers and white collar career hoppers.  Apologetic emails from recently promoted and soon to rehouse members are perennial inbox features.  Completely understandable. 

About once a year, someone cancels on the grounds of the volume of their share not matching the price tag.  Naturally, this is the kind of thing we try to avoid. 

This month’s newsletter isn’t a pity party.  It’s a spotlight on a very important issue in food and drink: cost. 

When a CSA member cancels on the grounds of cost, it’s usually in reference to one of two baselines: standard market value or farmers’ market value.  

The issue with the former is self-evident:  grocery store produce comes from a system based on abusive, underpaid labor, massive, chemical-driven monocrops, and questionable government subsidies.   By design, this is a system that generates massive volumes of cheap, available, highly diversified food goods.  It is sustainable only to itself, at the expense of both planet and people.  

The latter is more nuanced.  The produce in our shares is actually priced below our average farmers’ market pricing.  It’s cheaper than most options. Take a gander around your local Whole Foods, and you’ll find that we’re the cheaper option 90% of the time.  We regularly keep pace with conventionally-priced produce, at twice the value.  On the grounds of veggies alone, we’re cheaper than most options on the market.

What doesn’t enter the equation are the unpriced goods and services built into the model.  Free home delivery is the most obvious.  There’s also delivery packaging, an instantaneous chat function linked directly to our phones, an online recipe box and marketplace coded, photographed, and (in the case of the recipes) created by us, as well as the management of the CSA subscription software itself.    

There’s also our salaries.  Like most farmers in our circle, we work seven days a week, averaging between ten and fourteen hours per day.  That cost, too, is undervalued in the price of our CSA.  

These costs equalize to some degree at industrial scale production, but that defeats the point.  A small farm is an artisan farm.  The value comes not just from the product yielded, but from the civic enrichment that entity provides.  We have a cultural lineage of valuing the artisan, but we’ve lost interest in paying for it.  

Our story is just an example of where things go wrong.  Financial strain is real, but personal budgeting challenges aren’t synonymous with overinflated value.  Blame our defunct food system and its exploitation of people and resources.  Blame a culture that equates the capacity for unchecked accumulation with self-worth.  Blame an educational system wholly deficient in socio-emotional training. 

Our values are out of sync.  It’s time to start valuing our shared humanity instead of individual gain.  

That’s our soapbox for the month.

Free Stuff

The recipes are free, folks. For a taste of what our CSA looks like beyond the veggies, check out this weekly CSA recipe spread: Hot, Fast, and Spicy. It’s loosely Korean-inspired, amping up the spring harvest with pops of bright of flavor.

Our recipes are a central part of our CSA experience. The vast majority of our member feedback is that they don’t know how to prepare the veggies in their shares. Our members-only, online recipe box (included at no charge!) is designed to make eating seasonally less intimidating. Maybe even a little fun!

Check out the lineup.

Feedback

Community is built when we are in conversation with each other. Was there something you loved in this month’s newsletter? Or hated? Do you have a question about something we said, or a response to us?

We want to hear from you! Comment using the button below or email us at contact@artemisia.farm.

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