After 16 years of writing about wine, columnist says farewell

Wine is connection. The liquid in our glass is not just fermented grape juice, it’s a time capsule of a vintage, linking us to the place where those grapes were grown and a vigneron crafted them into an elixir that can last for years. Wine carries history and culture. Most of all, it connects us to those with whom we share it.

For the past 16 years, wine has connected me to you, the readers, through this column. Together, we have traveled the world with a corkscrew as our passport, tracing the modern echoes of the vine’s migration from the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia and Armenia, through biblical Israel to Europe, and through the age of exploration to the New World. We’ve also felt the sting of self-awareness about how this historical, cultural wine journey doesn’t always resonate comfortably in today’s more inclusive world.

As I step away from this column, I’d like to reflect on how wine, and our perspective of it, have changed since I began as The Washington Post’s wine scribe in the fall of 2008 — a rough estimate puts that at approximately 750 columns and 4,000 wines recommended. (My liver is fine, according to my latest blood tests, thank you for asking.)

My early message was “drink local.” In 2008, it was difficult to find Virginia or Maryland wines on restaurant lists or retail shelves in Washington, D.C., despite the growing farm-to-table movement. By promoting “regional wine week” and cofounding an organization called Drink Local Wine, I put the spotlight on “wines from around here, wherever here happens to be.” I put wine professionals to the test, demonstrating that local wines can stand beside the best in the world. One winery that caught my eye was Old Westminster in Maryland, which is now a darling of the local wine and natural wine crowds. I wrote about the challenges extreme weather poses to wineries in the Finger Lakes, Ohio and Texas. In a four-part series, I chronicled a vintage, from pruning the vines in January to harvesting the grapes in September. And I covered the launch of RdV Vineyards, followed its efforts to prove world-class wine can be made in Virginia, and broke the story of RdV’s sale to the owners of Bordeaux’s Chateau Montrose — a major milestone for Virginia wine.

Today, wines from Virginia, Maryland, New York, Texas and Michigan are no longer novelties. The winemakers deserve credit for that, of course, but I hope I helped raise public awareness of their accomplishments.

In 2008, we were beginning to tire of the 15 percent alcohol fruit bombs that wowed so many critics in the ’90s and the aughts. Since then, balance replaced power, and a desire for “natural” wine placed more emphasis on the vineyard instead of manipulations in the winery. Today we favor lighter wines with lower alcohol — sometimes too light, and too low — in the search for an appropriate balance.

As we made more environmentally friendly choices in our lives, we looked increasingly for wines with a dizzying array of Earth-friendly certifications, including sustainable, organic and biodynamic as well as the new regenerative organic. Others, such as B Corp and 1 Percent for the Planet, emphasize social citizenship and employee welfare. We explored all of these in this column.

We also examined the effects of climate change, apparent on wine even before wildfires and increasingly severe weather made the challenge obvious for all of us. Bordeaux, Burgundy and Napa Valley have helped define our modern concept of wine, but now they face existential dilemmas of how to preserve their regional identities into the future.

Climate change forced the wine community to take a hard look inward. It discovered that the largest contributor to its carbon footprint is the manufacture and transport of glass bottles. Today, government monopolies in Canada and Scandinavia, as well as grocery chains in the U.K. and U.S., are requiring lighter bottles. Wineries and consumers are increasingly receptive to alternative packaging such as cans, boxes and kegs. A few years ago, I began listing bottle weights in my reviews. I was by no means the first to draw attention to the problem of heavy bottles, but I believe I’ve helped frame the debate.

Along with the Smithsonian’s American Food History Project at the National Museum of American History, we explored the story of modern American wine, including the famous Judgment of Paris and the success stories of Mexican vineyard workers who now run their own wineries. We also noted the passing of some of these iconic pioneers.

The wine community was not immune to the turmoil of the pandemic, the #MeToo movement, and the national reckoning with our racial and colonial past. We did not shy away from the painful questions these raised. But the wine community is also about helping others tell their stories and promoting diversity.

People were often surprised to learn this wasn’t my full-time job. I took that as a sign of the effort and quality I put into these columns. This is in effect a double retirement, as I retired at the end of December after 22 years with the federal government. It has been two tremendous honors to be in public service and to write for my hometown paper.

My columns have had some gratifying impacts. After I wrote about how D.C.-based importer Tom Natan’s wine journey in southern France led him to the daughter of Simone Demangel, a nurse who helped Tom’s father’s family escape the Vichy regime during World War II, he heard from French Holocaust historians who provided details that helped fill in his family’s story. My column was one of the first major news articles to connect Demangel to her Resistance code name of Pauline. Today, Natan and others are trying to gather sufficient information to nominate Simone Demangel, code name Pauline, to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Israel, for her work aiding Jewish refugees. If I accomplish nothing else in life, I will be happy to have played a small part in helping Demangel get the recognition she deserves for her heroism.

In a January 2020 letter that took two years to reach me through the pandemic, three Chicago high school students told me how they followed my articles for a class project on editorial writing and became fascinated by wine history and culture, as well as my somewhat fanciful descriptions of wine’s flavors. “Despite not knowing what a forest floor tastes like, we had many vivid images in our minds,” they wrote. For their class project, they staged a mock fancy-dress wine and cheese tasting. My belated efforts to contact them proved fruitless, but now that they have reached drinking age, I hope they are conjuring their own imaginative descriptions as they explore wine.

That sense of exploration animated me throughout the 16 years of writing this column. I introduced wines from next door and around the world, most of them from family-owned wineries. These often are the wines that make the most distinctive statements. And always with a focus on value, from “recession busters” during the global financial crisis of 2008 to our annual list of greatest values under $20.

As I say goodbye to this column, I hope you will continue to explore the world of wine with thirst, curiosity and a sense of adventure. And perhaps someday we can renew this connection over a nice glass of vino.

• Dave McIntyre is associate wine editor and columnist for SOMM Journal, and he blogs at dmwineline.com.