Full Comment - A wine expert spills about the darker side of the vino world

00:00:00.000 wine and writing it's a beautiful pairing in my view one i appreciate a great deal but there can

00:00:11.240 be a dark side something our next guest knows a lot about and that she details in a fast-paced

00:00:16.720 moving tearful and funny memoir welcome to the full comment podcast my name is brian lily i'm

00:00:23.620 your host and before we get to our next guest i want to encourage you once again to hit the

00:00:28.080 subscribe button hit subscribe for this podcast whatever device or app you're listening on right

00:00:33.620 now apple spotify google alexa hit subscribe and leave us a review share it on social media even

00:00:40.000 help spread the word i'll be leaving a positive review of the book we're going to be talking

00:00:44.960 about for the next while it's called wine witch on fire rising from the ashes of divorce defamation

00:00:51.640 and drinking too much it comes from natalie mclean a woman i've interviewed many times in the past

00:00:57.340 without knowing her backstory a woman who built an enviable career and yet went through to me and

00:01:04.680 to others unseen personal trauma in the background and who while still being enthusiastic about writing

00:01:11.220 and wine does have some warnings for us natalie thanks for the time

00:01:16.020 oh so great to be back with you brian take me back to the beginning i got to hear about you because

00:01:27.280 i was hosting a radio show on 580 cfra in ottawa where you're based um where i used to be based and

00:01:34.620 and you were a regular in the bell media building you'd come in and you do ctv ottawa the the morning

00:01:39.340 show noon shows different things and and so if i wanted to talk to a wine expert it was easy well

00:01:45.820 natalie and she's in town and she knows what's at the lcbo she knows what's at the saq across the river

00:01:51.360 in quebec but this wasn't something that you trained for how did you get into this career before we get

00:01:57.620 into the bad stuff and the rising up out of the ashes how did you even get into this so while i

00:02:05.380 was working in high tech because as you know uh brian ottawa has a lot of uh a very vibrant high

00:02:11.320 tech community i grew to love wine the company i was actually working for was based in mountain

00:02:17.560 view california it's now the the headquarters of google google um so i spent several years

00:02:23.200 going back and forth and always heading up to wine country napa sonoma but at the same time i took the

00:02:29.140 sommelier certificate program courses at algonquin college in the evenings so i could graduate before

00:02:34.100 my son was born and that's how i then became curious about wine writing so while i was on maternity

00:02:42.380 leave i called the canadian author of many wine books and tech had taught me to be bold and call

00:02:49.900 high so why not ask advice from the most famous wine writer i could think of and he told me um just

00:02:57.600 don't expect to earn a living from it after we had spoken for a few minutes and he added treat it like

00:03:03.480 a weekend hobby sweetheart well we'll get into the we'll get into the sweetheart and the sexism

00:03:09.960 that you experienced in both high tech and wine in a bit sure um i'm not sure i would ever call a

00:03:16.700 woman that i didn't know well sweetheart and if i did it would be done in a very ironic way uh yeah

00:03:25.300 i should have said thank you honey bunch yeah that that's a bit of an an odd start to a conversation but

00:03:32.540 i mean you did pretty well and there were some incredible highs for you for for someone who didn't

00:03:38.680 come from a wine background who didn't come from a writing background you you were not a journalism

00:03:43.540 major in university you you didn't train in other than your your evening courses at algonquin which is

00:03:50.020 is great i know people have done that and done similar courses here in toronto um but i mean that's

00:03:55.880 different than that's your passion and that's what you've trained for as a career this did start as a

00:04:01.580 hobby and then became something that you got some big accolades from like becoming the i forget the

00:04:10.180 title it's a big award the drinks writer of the year it sounds like it straight out of europe uh that

00:04:16.020 that's how they describe things over there sounds like a drinking competition it was the world's best

00:04:20.160 drinks journalist it was based out of australia yeah it's a mouthful to say um but you know as a as a

00:04:27.520 child i was obsessively competitive because i went into competitive highland dancing and my mom took

00:04:33.000 me everywhere all around nova scotia over to scotland but then i just became competitively

00:04:38.660 obsessed no matter what it was like coloring competitions you know my secret weapon was glitter

00:04:43.500 glue so of course when i started wine writing i thought where's that competition let's enter a

00:04:48.140 competition so i just entered whatever i could and um yeah and it turns out i i did okay but um that's

00:04:55.400 kind of where that drive came from it's um interesting the different language just as an aside i'm you

00:05:03.340 know mainly a political writer uh in addition to the podcast but i uh i i will dabble in some travel

00:05:10.580 and some food and uh and and drinks writing and and so i've i've gotten on some email lists including for

00:05:18.100 the the whiskey association out of ireland and it's drinks ireland and when that shows up in your

00:05:22.740 you you see that across your email inbox it's what i'm gonna drink the whole country yes that's odd

00:05:29.180 yeah like drink canada dry you know as my relatives in scotland say that sounds like a challenge it does

00:05:37.060 the the hobby though did become a business it did so how long did that take well you know um one once i

00:05:46.800 was off on maternity leave i started cold calling pitching editors at different magazines and newspapers

00:05:53.660 i i didn't have any contacts as you said i didn't go to journalism school i wasn't in the industry my

00:05:58.860 husband was in high tech so in terms of the wine world i was a nobody from nowhere um who made a

00:06:05.840 career out of nothing and but tech gave me that confidence again to just cold call and cold call as high

00:06:12.180 as i could and so i started getting assignments like at the national post and other magazines and

00:06:18.360 and so on um and it just snowballed from there so that by the time my maternity leave was over of course

00:06:24.980 i had never taken vacation being an a type personality so i had built up months of vacation time

00:06:31.260 i decided not to go back i wanted to be at home with my son i loved writing never had the confidence to

00:06:38.220 think i could get paid for it wine was a calling card and for someone like me who is an extreme

00:06:44.400 introvert and shy it allowed me to get into people's lives and ask really nosy almost rude

00:06:52.220 questions that i would never bring up at a dinner party so it just all fit together and i thought this

00:06:56.680 is what i want to do it's amazing that you describe yourself as an introvert because um you know i've i've

00:07:04.100 watched you on tv that's hard to believe but i also say that as someone in the business who's been on

00:07:10.880 radio been on tv been in print for the last 20 plus years and um it's not uncommon to be an introvert

00:07:18.780 in this industry it isn't i think you know i use the two things to express myself that didn't require

00:07:25.940 me to speak up up until now with the tv and stuff writing and dancing and that was my way of creative

00:07:33.820 expression because i used to get teased as a child has the cat got your tongue they called me not the

00:07:38.700 cat because i wouldn't talk i was so shy and i hated that i mean they were trying to be fond and ribbing

00:07:45.960 or whatever but i just hated it and so i had to find ways to express myself where i didn't have to talk

00:07:51.160 um now over time i'm all grown up now and i've learned how to talk and speak but that confidence came

00:07:58.620 first from being an avid reader which led to the writing the dancing performance on stage and now

00:08:05.960 finally you know um i can bring these skills out even though i remain an introvert and a shy person

00:08:13.940 before we get to the messy part of your life which i'm sure you're looking forward to talking about yet

00:08:19.540 again uh do you remember who gave you your your first assignment who gave you your first break

00:08:24.400 well that was president's choice magazine at loblaws it's now different yeah the august um i hope i

00:08:33.980 didn't you know plow it under myself but at the time they had this gorgeous food magazine yeah and i was

00:08:40.660 flipping through it thinking where's the wine part of this and i couldn't find anything about wine so i

00:08:47.400 pitched the story was wine on the internet because i thought i i've just finished the sommelier program

00:08:52.900 i know tech so let's do it that was actually a topic back then um and she said sure but have you

00:09:02.000 been published before and i said yes thinking of my high school newspaper and praying she wouldn't ask

00:09:07.000 me for samples and that went on to become a regular column until the magazine died um but that too gave

00:09:14.940 me confidence to reach out to other publications i uh yeah i wrote for my school newspaper as well and

00:09:22.360 uh and i remember the people that gave me my first break that's why i asked and i i noticed in the

00:09:27.280 book that you you mentioned writing for the air canada on route magazine and that's one of the

00:09:32.380 things that i had hoped to do one day but those don't exist anymore you know i was on a flight recently

00:09:37.460 looking and thinking if you don't bring anything to read or something to watch you're staring at the

00:09:42.480 card that tells you how to evacuate for the next four hours so yeah and even the wine is decent so

00:09:48.020 what are you left to do that sounds desperate no no it's not i'm glad they chill a little bit to kill

00:09:54.300 off the taste um central theme running through your book so i it's about you being a wine writer it's

00:10:02.500 about your experience uh in the industry but a central theme running through the book because it

00:10:07.220 is a memoir is the breakup before marriage and the devastation that that caused and and how you

00:10:14.620 climb back up um probably half the people or close to half the people listening to this will have gone

00:10:21.480 through divorce as i have it's not fun it's not something you want to talk about but you were married

00:10:27.800 for 20 years and from my reading of what you put down in in wine which you just did not see this coming

00:10:35.300 no i didn't um and it sounds naive i mean in retrospect you can look back and see all the little

00:10:42.160 clues but at the time my assumption was that if you've been married for 20 years you settled into

00:10:49.140 some sort of contented companionship because we didn't have fights or you know that sort of thing

00:10:53.800 and 20 years is a long time to let down your guard and stop wondering is it going to work out because

00:10:59.200 obviously it has until it doesn't and you know my my marriage had great curb appeal i mean i was

00:11:05.960 achieving some success in wine writing he was a ceo of a high-tech company i mean it all just looked

00:11:12.900 perfect uh until until it doesn't um so you know it really did hit me i mean there were several weeks

00:11:20.700 of cold distance in january 2012 and i started by asking him because he had piles of financial papers

00:11:30.500 spread out over table like um you know have we what's wrong you know have we lost our retirement

00:11:36.420 savings and i had to go through 20 questions one of which was do you have prostate cancer i mean that

00:11:42.100 was how absolutely you know surprised i was i and and my my last question was do you want a divorce

00:11:51.040 and he said what if i did and i nearly like i sat down to sit on the bed and nearly fell off

00:11:57.860 um you know because i had been a bit smug i must say about outlasting my mother's marriage she was

00:12:04.260 married for two years you know i was 20 she was a grade school teacher had an undergraduate i went to

00:12:11.000 a fancy school got a graduate degree and you know had this writing career and so yeah it really just

00:12:17.560 knocked me back and i even asked my therapist why didn't i see this divorce coming why you know i'm so

00:12:24.260 naive and she said and my therapist is in throughout wine witch on fire so you get some free therapy with

00:12:31.180 this book too uh she said you're not you're not naive you're trusting and you can't imagine anyone

00:12:36.180 else doing what you're not capable of doing or thinking of yourself and it's a more optimistic way

00:12:41.180 to live so try not to to beat yourself up too much one of the things that i've learned through

00:12:47.780 ups and downs of personal experience is that even the most picture perfect family from the outside

00:12:54.140 though they've got problems it's behind closed doors you don't see it and we don't think of others

00:13:00.500 as having problems we look across the street and it's like oh they're perfect over there we don't

00:13:05.640 think that they've got the same problems where we just don't know that they do when all of this

00:13:12.220 happened i mean you you describe just anguish and breakdown and a loss of confidence both as a

00:13:19.440 you know not not just in in relationships which is understandable i think you said you never wanted

00:13:24.240 to trust another man again um as you were raising a little man um but you also lost confidence as a

00:13:31.500 writer as a wine expert as someone uh respected in your field talk a bit to us about what you lost

00:13:40.860 in those those days that you had to fight to get back hmm yeah well all of the things you've just

00:13:46.540 said brian i mean extreme failure made me face something i never want to return to um at the same

00:13:53.160 time it also gave me a taste of a full life i never want to lose so you know when that angry mob

00:13:59.100 online shoved me up against the wall i had to ask myself am i really this person am i who they say i am

00:14:05.380 and you know i think the answer is yes no and something more and so this experience shook loose

00:14:13.180 yeah my confidence in my writing ability in uh me as a person i mean you know these are pretty strong

00:14:20.760 accusations and i had to question everything we haven't even gotten into the accusations right

00:14:27.300 we'll get into that in a second but absolutely but i mean personally with the how did it hit you

00:14:33.020 professionally and personally that this truck coming down the road and hitting you if your

00:14:38.140 husband saying i want a divorce yeah um you know so so much of what we are what we do you can wrap

00:14:45.820 yourself up in um in your professional life but there's also a great deal of our identity that's

00:14:51.180 wrapped up in our our personal life yes who our family is who we're married to whether we're single

00:14:56.360 whether we have extended family mothers brothers all of that so how did that hit you well i felt i

00:15:05.160 failed the wife test um i felt naive i felt ashamed um a whole range of emotions just it kind of boils

00:15:17.940 you down to who am i if i'm not so-and-so's wife and you know why couldn't i keep the marriage

00:15:26.060 together i i thought of myself as an intelligent person you know couldn't have we worked this out

00:15:34.320 as professionals as you know intelligent people who could go to therapy and work it out and you know

00:15:41.900 i tried that um and on the third session our marriage counselor just turned to me again out of

00:15:48.260 the blue it seemed to me and said you need a lawyer and you wrote that that hurt because you thought

00:15:56.020 he was supposed to be on your side yes yeah and perhaps in telling you that you need a lawyer he

00:16:03.520 actually was yeah he was yeah i i it felt like a slap but in in the end it was the boot i needed to

00:16:11.820 to move on and even though it was so hard to move on mentally because i was still stuck in we can work

00:16:18.280 it out um i had to get on with my life or what i had left of it and take control you know i was a

00:16:27.060 control freak i had to take control of the tiny little piece of my relationship that i could still

00:16:32.860 control and that was our separation agreement which would lead to the divorce finalization that document

00:16:39.740 um that's what was left to me to to be able to do or to whatever uh and and to keep my son first and

00:16:49.700 foremost i had a 14 year we had a 14 year old son and um that was really important to me that our

00:16:57.060 breakup have the least impact possible on him that we could manage by staying amicable and working

00:17:05.840 things out i mean just you know breaking up a marriage especially one of 20 years is like a

00:17:11.280 can feel like a corporate divestiture when you're talking about you know a house and a car or two and

00:17:19.780 everything that you own everything represents something somebody gave this as a gift at christmas

00:17:25.040 i took this on vacation with us like anyway it's it's everything has an emotional import attached to it

00:17:33.080 and then children is just another level absolutely absolutely and he was 14 so raging hormones

00:17:40.940 teenagerdom yeah throw that into the mix why not um but he weathered it remarkably well and then

00:17:49.680 sometimes when he weathered it well i thought is he just keeping this all inside and one day it's all

00:17:53.760 going to explode um so you just never know and and and at the same time i had my elderly mother

00:17:59.860 who then was 71 and depended on me financially as did my son so my world was rocked right to the

00:18:10.180 core to the foundation with this so this is january 2012 that the in you know you find out from your

00:18:18.660 husband obviously it takes months to get to the point where the divorce is actually happening but

00:18:22.940 in less than a year you also face a professional attack as well claims that you are

00:18:30.180 i don't know how you would describe it uh shortchanging other writers some people claimed plagiarism some

00:18:37.360 people said you were like those are devastating claims in the writing world that can end careers

00:18:43.740 absolutely absolutely so it in your description of that early on in the book i the opening of the

00:18:51.720 book i uh you know first couple of chapters i'm thinking how does she survive um guess i must have

00:19:00.160 though i wrote the book but yeah yeah and it's a deck it's more than a decade later so congratulations

00:19:05.200 on that but what were the accusations against you sure and and then tell me about how you

00:19:13.860 you mentioned later on in the book this was my first mistake this was my second this was my third

00:19:20.280 yeah uh yeah you're kind of like plucking the the pedals off a daisy as you just went well here's how

00:19:27.480 i screwed up on this one and this is how it led to that so the professional attack hit you out of

00:19:32.400 nowhere and then you go back and you look and you say okay some of this is on me even if it's unfair

00:19:38.400 in how it's being characterized absolutely yeah so it was just before so the the divorce

00:19:44.200 discussion was in january of 2012 then i my terrible vintage was bookended with um at the end of 2012

00:19:53.580 it was just before christmas and i was checking my email one last time before heading up to bed

00:19:58.560 um and my family had already gone to sleep so a google alert popped up with the headline

00:20:04.600 natalie mcclain world's best wine writer or content thief and my heart started pounding and then it just

00:20:13.520 dropped into my stomach and the the text was blurring and merging together and i was thinking

00:20:18.560 what the hell and i clicked through to a large american wine and spirits website and there was a long

00:20:26.420 rant article with phrases that felt like they were burning into my retinas and this wasn't simply a

00:20:34.700 nasty post brian i was being accused of the one thing a writer dreads most so doctors lose their

00:20:40.600 license for malpractice lawyers get disbarred for misrepresentation writers get their careers

00:20:47.380 canceled for copyright issues and i should clarify the accusation was not about plagiarism but rather

00:20:54.320 about fair use in quoting another review to provide more context about a wine something like rotten

00:21:01.980 tomatoes does for a movie and many people get these concepts confused but there is a huge difference so

00:21:07.940 i was the first to comment on the blog post and i explained that i was already changing the way i quoted

00:21:13.500 other reviews as this wasn't something that was noted in the post nor did they contact me to ask about

00:21:19.060 it though they did contact a wide range of other wine writers for comment so i naively thought this

00:21:24.940 would answer their concerns and that would be that oh so wrong again uh their accusation ignited the

00:21:32.720 debate online but the bonfire really escalated when the trolls started focusing their attack on me as a

00:21:40.040 woman and it devolved into taking my body apart piece by piece in public that spread to other

00:21:47.320 websites and newspapers around the world and some then said and still say well just ignore it but when

00:21:55.120 you earn most of your living online you can no more turn it off than a surgeon can operate outside the

00:22:01.580 hospital and in hindsight i wonder you know should i have even posted a response and i think the answer

00:22:07.460 is yes and no again i answered their concerns however doing so added fuel to the fire and i posted

00:22:13.740 once more before i realized i could not say anything that would appease them and so the frenzy just carried

00:22:19.800 on yeah what what i've learned is that there are people you should respond to and people that you

00:22:27.840 shouldn't there are trolls who it doesn't matter what they're going to say and there are people that you can

00:22:32.380 have reasoned conversation with um and uh sometimes it's tough to tell them apart but so what were you

00:22:40.940 doing that as i say later in the book you describe you know mistake one mistake two mistake three

00:22:48.760 what did you start doing on your website that led to this this rotten tomatoes type thing where

00:22:56.640 you were posting other people's reviews you felt you were crediting them others felt you were stealing

00:23:04.160 work so another google alert a year earlier had popped up in my inbox and it was for one of my own

00:23:14.720 wine reviews but it was posted on another wine website and i thought that's interesting because this

00:23:21.380 website had approached me to be part of their site one of their many critics and i had declined

00:23:27.600 i had polite conversations with this site but in the end had said no and i so i started i looked

00:23:35.660 at their site and i realized they were quoting many of my reviews and i thought well where is this

00:23:42.580 why and then they were they were also quoting a lot of other writers reviews that did not belong to

00:23:47.680 their website and then i realized now i see what they're doing because i recognized the reviews

00:23:53.920 they were coming they were being reposted from the lcbo the liquor commission of ontario um the lcbo's

00:24:01.760 website so that's as we all know the government owns uh liquor store chain here in ontario and

00:24:09.980 they post reviews one of the biggest buyers of booze in the world exactly very powerful you're you're

00:24:16.140 you're not going to be overly upset if they're quoting you no exactly so i thought and here's

00:24:21.720 where my mistakes start to pile up i thought first of all oh it's already on the internet it must be in

00:24:27.960 the public domain wrong wish i had gone to journalism school but totally wrong um it's on the government

00:24:36.940 website so that must also reinforce that it's free and open you know to quote or use wrong again

00:24:44.120 other wine sites are quoting reviews not just the one i mentioned so it must be fine wrong again

00:24:50.160 um so anyway i started doing it being a glass kind of half full person rather than glass half empty and

00:24:58.280 i thought i'm not going to ask this site to take down my reviews i'm just going to do what they're

00:25:02.480 doing because it it totally makes sense like rotten tomatoes this was the heyday of aggregation back

00:25:08.140 then huffington post content aggregators so i thought well it makes sense to provide more context to each

00:25:15.860 wine than just my review so i'll do the same ah so anyway um so this went on for a while and um then

00:25:25.740 finally uh another writer contacted me because what i was doing was also um the way i had set up my site

00:25:34.700 from the beginning was i had an uh directory because there was so much information about each

00:25:40.560 wine from the alcohol level to drink by dates and all kinds of stuff and so i had a directory where i

00:25:46.720 had used a lot of acronyms like abv alcohol by volume all kinds of stuff that my readers were familiar

00:25:52.940 with and so with these quoted reviews i was also using acronyms the way the lcbo did in certain

00:26:01.740 publications print and online like rp would be robert parker and all of this was in my directory

00:26:07.900 which i linked to but this was what um the writer contacted me about about doing this so i at first

00:26:20.020 said leave it with me um you know being the editor of my site i will handle this not realizing that

00:26:27.920 you know this could cause issues um even though subsequently i got legal advice and what i was

00:26:34.940 doing was well within fair use anyway so this escalated he uh then emailed i think it was 31 editors

00:26:44.620 and writers around the world why writers and editors about this um i was already in the process of fixing

00:26:51.420 the reviews the way he had requested um but then this american blog post chose to write about it

00:26:59.760 and that's where the pylon started because then there was a central repository of where everyone could

00:27:05.220 comment and so you you're dealing with your divorce or you're trying to put that behind you you're trying

00:27:12.000 to move on and then you've got this professional attack on top of that um natalie this seems like an

00:27:19.300 appropriate point to take a break because when we come back i want to shift to a couple of things

00:27:25.140 one how you were able to piece everything back together humpty dumpty style uh but also

00:27:31.820 your warnings because you you've got some interesting warnings about the way that wine is marketed towards

00:27:38.080 women especially mommy wine yes oh my goodness mommy wine uh and i want to talk to you about that

00:27:45.360 when we come back did you lock the front door check close the garage door yep installed window

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00:29:44.360 winning winners find fabulous for less there's a sign that sits in my office um given to me by my sister

00:29:52.100 that says write drunk edit sober now taken at face value might imply writers are all booze hounds and

00:29:58.640 yeah there's some truth in that but it's actually a philosophical view about writing but there's also

00:30:04.660 a dark side to this business and um that's what i want to ask you about right now natalie uh you

00:30:09.420 experienced that dark side of the business um being a wine writer people would say that must that that

00:30:17.340 sounds fantastic at one point you described sampling 27 different bc red blends in a day

00:30:25.240 you're obviously spitting it out or at least most of it um but you obviously also when you as you write

00:30:34.320 about your your your trouble with drinking too much at a certain point as you're going through all this

00:30:38.760 personal trauma uh you must have realized hey wait a minute so how do you go from being the epitome of

00:30:45.460 what women are supposed to want today to realizing i'm indulging too much

00:30:50.380 um well i yeah i had easy access as do all wine writers um to alcohol you know bottles sat on my

00:31:01.220 desk free alcohol free alcohol yes though no one's sending us domain romani conti the coveted pinot noir

00:31:08.040 from burgundy we tend to get kind of mass commercial wines but in any case um bottles sat on my desk

00:31:14.880 to the left and right of my computer they filled the gaps in my bookshelves in the back of the

00:31:20.140 kitchen was a hallway that i called tasting alley and you know where there were hundreds of bottles

00:31:25.600 on counters and cupboards and three thousand more were under my feet in the basement and they still

00:31:30.400 are today cases of wine arrived you know every week um unopened boxes sat at the front door so

00:31:38.040 i was surrounded by wine and i lived in what an unophile would consider paradise

00:31:42.300 but the challenge is that well for me personally this year that that terrible vintage

00:31:49.340 while i never felt i had a drinking problem until then i started using wine as a crutch because it was

00:31:57.400 just you know one emotional devastation after another and i found it particularly challenging making it

00:32:05.580 through what i call the arsenic hour around 5 p.m when there's a natural dip in your serotonin

00:32:10.880 and that's the hormone that stabilizes our mood and our sense of well-being plus i had no commute to

00:32:16.540 separate home and work i mean i worked from home um so it was very challenging to convince myself slowly

00:32:26.120 through a lot of therapy that chemical relaxation wasn't natalie relaxation i had to

00:32:33.820 catch myself and think what was the thought

00:32:36.800 what was the thought before the thought i need a glass of wine and was it a crutch to reduce stress

00:32:46.860 or was it about the enjoyment and pleasure of wine and if it was about the first one

00:32:52.340 i had to over time discover new ways to deal with that and not through wine like go for a walk have

00:33:00.640 a bath watch a favorite show and um you know it's it's something we don't talk about in in our industry

00:33:09.060 a lot in in the wine world because there's it's drinking is either viewed as a professional duty

00:33:14.900 or there's shame in admitting you have a problem then you're not serious um but the u.s yeah the u.s

00:33:24.000 statistics show that the hospitality industry has the highest rate of substance abuse among all

00:33:31.640 professions and hospitality includes wineries and restaurants so it is an issue we're just not

00:33:36.780 talking about it much and so and when you'd be out at tasting events you know there's this spittoon

00:33:42.880 that everyone uses and you're supposed to use and you know i don't write about wine so i don't use it i

00:33:48.560 drink the wine but you know i'm guessing if you're doing a professional event and you're tasting wine

00:33:54.360 after wine after wine you'd use that but then you're out at events at night if you're on the road and

00:34:00.900 you're sitting around having dinner with colleagues you you're drinking the wine you're sitting at home

00:34:06.560 at 5 p.m you're drinking the wine yeah and you've got this um mantle of professional respectability

00:34:13.820 uh in the way that no other drug is socially sanctioned um can't imagine you know sitting

00:34:20.220 around even having a joint not the way wine is wine is sophisticated and you're supposed to drink and in

00:34:26.800 fact if you show up with friends with some friends and you're not drinking as a woman

00:34:32.320 they wonder are you pregnant are you sick do you have a problem is it religious because why wouldn't

00:34:40.200 you have a glass of wine but you know i i just think that in the industry we have to talk about

00:34:48.660 this more and i used to use my drinking habits and wink wink nod nod about overindulging as kind of

00:34:56.220 slapstick humor my first book was red white and drunk all over the second was unquenchable

00:35:01.000 but now i hope that they will fuel a discussion for over drinking and i'm i'm not here to be a

00:35:10.040 downer i still drink wine i still love it but i really had to examine the way i was using wine

00:35:17.640 in an unhealthy way to get back to that that ideal that once drew me to wine the pleasure of it the

00:35:25.020 companionship over a glass of wine with someone else i had to get back to those things that once drew

00:35:30.100 me to it in the first place the pleasure as opposed to the need exactly the the aesthetic not the

00:35:38.320 anesthetic if you will i like i like all kinds of bumper stickers oh yeah uh now earlier on i said

00:35:46.760 you were the epitome of what women want today and i chose those words on purpose because women like

00:35:54.360 wine that's true men like wine a lot but there's a lot of marketing aimed at women today when it comes

00:36:01.260 to wine and sometimes i look at it and i think that's funny sometimes i look at it and i think

00:36:07.880 oh come on we you know women are more than just

00:36:12.340 wine uh hounds i you know it's it seems over the top especially mommy wine culture

00:36:21.280 you're you're now critical of that why well you know i think the message on some bottle labels is

00:36:30.820 that women belong to a particular category so we're either vixens drawn to brands like little black

00:36:36.740 dress or stiletto you know labels feature short dresses high heels red lips or we're exhausted

00:36:42.560 mothers buying wines like mommy juice and mommy's time out to obliviate motherhood um and if we're if

00:36:49.860 we're not babes we're battle axes you know with labels like mad housewife um and the marketing

00:36:55.680 message i think is that women need to have a reason to drink whether it's girls night out a fancy

00:37:00.980 occasion or just getting through another day of exhaustion and i think there's a line called girls

00:37:05.840 night out isn't there yep there's a label called girls night out um and it's implied we need permission

00:37:11.740 to drink as we do to buy other things um there's even a wine for sneaky shopping called white lie

00:37:18.480 and little lines are stamped on the corks like this old thing or i got it on sale you know whereas

00:37:24.480 conversely i find wine is often marketed to men as sophisticated and artisanal no one asks a man

00:37:32.000 why he wants a drink he has one because he wants one usually and i have to say brian i was not a

00:37:38.040 bystander in this labeling game i was team captain so in my magazine articles i would describe my glass of

00:37:44.980 wine at 5 p.m as mommy's little helper it's how i marketed wine to myself it's how i fit in with the

00:37:51.580 other wine moms and it sounded light-hearted but it has the bitter edge of resentment and by the time

00:37:57.940 you know i hit the end of the day i was exhausted and no one was helping mommy so mommy helped herself

00:38:02.700 to another drink and you know i laughed off these narratives but you know eventually those jokes fall

00:38:10.040 flat and wine labels targeting women like this um proud i think profit from powerlessness so that is

00:38:20.120 why i'm talking about that kind of marketing now you return to the topic of sexism several times in

00:38:30.040 your book both in the wine industry and in high tech um i i gulped as i read your description of

00:38:38.640 being at a high tech conference event i think it was in california with people playing the uh um

00:38:46.360 basically body shots um were going on and how you felt at that because i can just imagine how

00:38:55.940 you're in a high pressure sales and marketing position dealing with that but what you just

00:39:01.700 described is also something that i think isn't talked about and it's that some of the sexism

00:39:08.020 that you're describing when it comes to wine uh the sexist messaging comes from women it comes

00:39:15.340 from women either pushing it for a sale or to justify why they feel they need to have another drink

00:39:23.240 um so i mean it's kind of a a weird situation you you've been subject to an awful lot of sexism

00:39:31.100 you detail that in the book and yet have taken part in it as well yeah yeah absolutely as i say

00:39:39.020 that's got to be an odd thing to wrap your head around it is it is but you know as i say i was team

00:39:44.680 captain i was playing off all those memes and jokes it was my shtick and you know i have to take

00:39:51.880 responsibility for that my part in many of these things many of these issues and you know i i talked

00:39:58.920 about you know women in the wine industry as though it was a big breakthrough to have women winemakers

00:40:05.360 when you know very few of them own their own wineries many were experiencing and still experience

00:40:13.740 workplace sexual harassment i mean my my culpability in those narratives has become clear to me now but back

00:40:21.460 then i i couldn't see that either you know it is hard to read a label from inside the bottle

00:40:26.420 that's an interesting description how did you um in terms of the consumption issue

00:40:36.540 how did you stay a wine writer stay someone that drinks wine and deal with the fact that you were

00:40:46.120 overindulging without joining aa and saying well i'm i'm gonna go sober and i'll i'll either find

00:40:52.620 something new to do or i'll just write about wine from a theoretical point of view right well i asked

00:40:58.320 my therapist that i said should i quit um and she said well i think that would be punitive although i

00:41:05.080 i have to add immediately it is the right thing for some people to do to quit it was the right thing for

00:41:11.560 my father who was an alcoholic and had devastating impact on my family but i explored that through

00:41:22.060 many sessions with my therapist you know do i quit or do i tried to develop techniques to pull back

00:41:29.420 and you know as we explored it for me fortunately i don't know if that's the right word my over

00:41:35.620 drinking was situational it was in response to a pretty traumatic year and as i resolved those

00:41:43.520 underlying issues and healed from them the need for the wine also diminished um but you know it took it

00:41:55.840 took a lot of work and it's not for everybody and but that that's how i moved through it

00:42:03.620 was therapy what got you through your your bad vintage your 2012 year and and helped you

00:42:12.340 climb back out because you you've definitely climbed back from that horrible vintage yeah therapy definitely

00:42:22.520 was right up there but along with the support of my family so you know my mother my son my new

00:42:30.500 partner at first i didn't want to tell any of them what was going on online you know i was in a new

00:42:37.540 relationship and i you know where it was the sort of honeymoon fairy tale part of it and i thought oh my

00:42:43.320 god what do i say welcome to my online world of hate um so that's my daily uh existence

00:42:51.620 in the online world that that's that's reality people will hate you yeah yeah um so i kept it all

00:43:01.820 bottled inside um thinking strength and independence for these people who depend on me

00:43:08.800 is keeping it in and dealing with it myself or maybe only through my therapist but you know and so for

00:43:17.260 it was a full week that i didn't tell them what was going on online and it was only when i had a

00:43:24.340 rape threat on twitter that i finally just broke down and i thought i can't i can't do this anymore

00:43:30.900 i have to i have to talk to them and i was terrified um of what my new partner would say what he just

00:43:42.420 saying i you know not going near this this dumpster fire but he was supportive thank god my mother was

00:43:49.720 understanding and although i didn't go into the level of detail that we're talking about now with

00:43:55.060 my son because he was just 14 i did tell him you know there's something going on online i'm you know

00:44:01.940 i'm dealing with it um fortunately he just was not interested back then in social media it was still

00:44:07.520 pretty new anyway and so he wasn't getting like google alerts himself about me but you know i had

00:44:14.100 to let them in and then i had to let friends in friends who thought you know i had the perfect

00:44:19.480 life and profession and you would have thought i learned from you know my marriage breaking down

00:44:25.840 to share but um i didn't but once i did brian i could not believe the stories that came back to me

00:44:34.020 other people started sharing their stories of private shame and it's what's happening now with

00:44:40.500 the book and early readers of the book i am getting so many messages back that are just they give me

00:44:46.420 goosebumps i i can't remember the the name of the author that you you cited on why you would share

00:44:55.460 information like this yeah um what but it it was that someone out there has a wound that looks like

00:45:06.080 what you've dealt with already exactly so there were two authors first was um memoirist glennon

00:45:11.660 doyle who wrote untamed and a lot of other books and she said don't write from an open wound right from

00:45:17.720 a scar so in other words do the healing first do the work and then my next thought was well why even

00:45:25.700 write about this you know vandalizing my own privacy for goodness sakes um but the poet sean daherty

00:45:33.240 said you know why bother because someone out there right now has a wound in the exact shape of your

00:45:42.640 words and so words were my sutures to stitch two two parts of my life that i thought were entirely

00:45:51.500 separate two open sides but they were the sides of the same wound and the the pattern they make

00:45:58.580 was stronger and more meaningful to me than the flesh was before the wound and it's those patterns

00:46:06.060 and reflections in the book that other people are resonating with now so they may not have gone

00:46:11.740 through a divorce although just statistically 50 percent have but you know they've i'm sure most

00:46:17.580 people have felt the longing for love the fear of rejection people may not have been attacked by an

00:46:23.360 online mob but they felt you know career disappointment or you know wondering about their goals in life or who

00:46:31.320 they are and so what a good memoir does is allow you to feel all those feelings but through somebody else's

00:46:37.900 story and and learn how they walked through the flames and came out on the other side you know stronger

00:46:44.160 and fiercer and and you've built back and you've discovered that yes you can trust men again

00:46:53.720 yes i can and um it's it was a shift in perspective because there have been many good good men in my life

00:47:06.400 from my son to my grandfather who really acted as my father um to my partner today you know there's been

00:47:16.300 many men who've disappointed me but that's life like we all have people men and women and others

00:47:22.220 um who are there for us and those who disappoint us and it's those who lift me up now i'm focused on

00:47:31.020 them i'm focused on them in my personal life in my professional life um and it's just again a shift

00:47:39.640 of orientation it's like when you go to the optometrist and you get the eye vision shift and

00:47:45.280 everything's blurry and then with one click of the lens you see clearly how you want your life to be

00:47:51.860 i want to spend the last couple of minutes talking about the type of wine writer you are because one of

00:47:58.940 the reasons that i've appreciated you over the years natalie is that um you're an approachable

00:48:05.540 wine writer and i am not a wine specialist uh i've actually got a friend who in his spare time did the

00:48:12.580 sommelier course himself but i tell him straight up you're a wine snob um and you know he's introduced

00:48:19.760 me to some great stuff but at the same time i it he approaches wine far differently than i do

00:48:26.300 and you approach things from um where the average person might be sitting and what will you enjoy

00:48:34.100 so i want to ask you a few questions about your wine writing um by the way you've also got a website

00:48:39.540 you've got an app um that the people can use for reviews and tracking things you've got all of that but

00:48:46.000 you don't write bad wine reviews or at least you didn't has that changed and and if not why don't you

00:48:53.740 write bad wine reviews well i used to think well you know i've got to point out all the the the poor

00:49:01.760 wines in the world but um i you know i recommend so many good and great wines that i don't feel the

00:49:11.440 need of to provide my readers a long list of wines they should remember not to buy you know call it wine

00:49:19.840 of the week like with an h i just i think wine is about attracting good energy celebrating the

00:49:26.320 pleasures in life i've never claimed to be a critic like robert parker is or even a you know a um

00:49:33.860 consumer investigator i leave that to other people i like to talk about the stories behind wines

00:49:41.180 and for me that's what makes wine memorable and so that's the focus in my wine or in my my reviews

00:49:50.740 and my wine writing and in fact i you know i was a writing snob not a wine snob at the beginning of

00:49:56.720 my career i didn't want to do wine reviews for the first three years all of these publications for

00:50:02.060 which i write i i wrote i would try to convince them just to let me do long form narrative not wine

00:50:08.300 reviews because i thought wine reviews are like reporting on house fires you know that might be

00:50:13.300 where you start but you know if you really want to byline big time you'll go to the op-ed page

00:50:18.060 but i realized that wine reviews are also a great service to people and i had not only

00:50:26.380 disrespected my own reviews and their value but others as well and that's part of taking responsibility

00:50:32.260 for what happened um so uh you know my approach it's always first person it's conversational

00:50:39.480 it's i have to write the way i talk like we're talking at the kitchen table i don't know any other

00:50:46.180 way you you mentioned robert parker he's someone that writes um a newsletter called the wine advocate

00:50:53.100 he's the type of person you'd go to if you've got a cellar that you want to fill right sure sure he's

00:50:59.360 backed off of uh wine reviewing i think he's maybe retired but yes his um publication exists today

00:51:05.620 many other writers um but but i mean that's yeah sure you're reviewing wines that i'm going to drink

00:51:11.980 tonight or exactly weekend exactly um someone like a robert parker is or before he retired was someone

00:51:19.480 that well i you know i want to fill my my cellar with wines that will you know uh be at their peak

00:51:26.360 in 10 years you know that sort of thing and that that's not you and that's part of what i appreciated

00:51:32.040 about you no thanks um and your writing over the years how do you find the balance between clickbait

00:51:39.300 and speaking to your audience giving them what they want because it's a fine line and and you talk about

00:51:46.620 that and and in the online world which everybody in the media is in right now if you're not meeting

00:51:54.260 what google wants you're not showing up in people's searches you're not showing up in their news

00:51:59.500 feeds you're not you you don't get the traffic that you would how do you find that line between

00:52:05.680 what you call in the book clickbait or i i think uh giving the next um uh food palette yeah become

00:52:12.900 google's content rat yes yeah uh where's the line for you well you know at first you know i push

00:52:21.600 myself harder and harder to create search engine friendly content but it didn't tap into my deepest

00:52:27.700 creative self that was something else i moved away from you know so just there was two parallel things

00:52:33.100 going on like i first loved wine just for the century pleasure and then it became more more more

00:52:39.220 more in a way of dealing with things writing when i first did it was just for the pleasure of the

00:52:46.940 words and the joy of putting together a good article but then it became more more more let's

00:52:53.660 get more people more eyeballs um you know doing things like 16 wines based on your myers-briggs

00:53:00.660 personality profile let's pair them up you know and you know it certainly got the clicks but it didn't

00:53:07.780 really it didn't really tap into my deepest creative self now there's always a business need to generate

00:53:14.060 traffic to your website but i think you have to keep it in balance with what gives you joy and you

00:53:19.800 know that's why that's part of why i wrote this book i mean one was to make sense of what happened but

00:53:24.900 another was to get back to that long-form narrative that i just love it's not efficient it doesn't pay

00:53:31.180 well it hardly pays at all but it's something that puts me into that joyous flow state of of

00:53:41.020 doing the best thing that i'm called to do the best contribution i can make while i'm still here on

00:53:49.580 this planet and you know i i always now have to keep that in mind you know stay in your place of joy

00:53:59.240 i um i have built my career doing daily journalism and um in daily journalism you don't have the option

00:54:10.800 to procrastinate because there is a deadline every 15 minutes and and as i've mentored people as i've

00:54:17.200 taught people and they've said to me well how can you write so quickly it takes me so long and i i will

00:54:22.860 tell them well you're trying to be too perfect and you you have a saying that shows up in the book that

00:54:28.060 i'll i'll end with this i want i want you to speak about this you say perfectionism

00:54:32.540 is a form of procrastination that's a luxury i've never had um but tell me what you mean by that

00:54:40.560 because for writers and aspiring writers listening um it might give them some insight into why they

00:54:47.300 can't finish something well i think perfectionism and competitiveness coil together like a cobra and

00:54:56.500 a boa constrictor so the first bites you with envy because you're not what what you want to be or

00:55:02.120 you're comparing yourself to somebody else the second squeezes the joy of life out of you

00:55:06.460 and to me they're the undisciplined pursuit of more so you know more glitter glue more wine more

00:55:14.880 content clicks but i think now i think it's the struggle that counts and um i've had to

00:55:24.600 kind of almost treat myself as

00:55:31.120 looking back at my younger self and saying hey younger you you were trying the best you could

00:55:39.340 at the time relax i've got you um and and relax now today as you don't need to be perfect and in fact

00:55:49.240 i think it's it's in our flawlessness our flawed tendencies our vulnerability

00:55:57.180 that we connect with others no one can connect with anyone who's perfect

00:56:02.180 you know it's just it's unreal it's unlikable

00:56:06.140 but we sure as heck can see each other or ourselves in another person's imperfections

00:56:13.040 and you know i i used to think wow i have to develop a tougher skin

00:56:18.840 or a thicker skin um but i'll i'll take what philip roth the novelist said when asked if he had

00:56:26.280 developed a thicker skin he said no he said every year my thin my skin becomes thinner and thinner

00:56:31.220 until if you hold me up to the light you can see through me and i want to stay i want my skin to

00:56:38.120 stay thin thin as possible like a pinot noir my favorite great because it's only through that

00:56:43.100 transparency and that vulnerability that love can come into you and yeah you're vulnerable to all

00:56:50.620 kinds of other crap but it's better than keeping everything out natalie thanks for the time of the

00:56:57.500 conversation and thanks for your book oh thank you brian i i really appreciate the time you've taken

00:57:02.980 to chat about this and to let me share this with your listeners and if they are interested i have

00:57:10.220 set up winewitchonfire.com where they can find the juicy bonuses that i put together for those who buy

00:57:17.000 the book including i will send you signed book plates as well as some private online tastings

00:57:22.400 and then winewitchonfire.com forward slash guide is a guide for book clubs and readers who want to get

00:57:29.460 more from the book all right thanks so much winewitch on fire rising from the ashes of divorce defamation

00:57:35.940 and drinking too much is coming out from dunder and press on may 9th my name is brian lily uh this has

00:57:43.560 been full comment for this week full comment is a post media podcast this episode was produced by

00:57:48.680 andre prue with theme music by bryce hall kevin liban is the executive producer again make sure you

00:57:54.780 subscribe on apple podcast google spotify amazon music you can listen through the app or your alexa

00:58:02.100 enabled devices and you can help us out by giving us a rating leaving a review and telling your friends

00:58:07.260 about us be nice tell your friends thanks for listening until next time i'm brian lily

00:58:12.380 bye

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Full Comment - May 08, 2023

A wine expert spills about the darker side of the vino world

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