Parissa, A nomad female winemaker.

We meet Parissa, a nomad female winemaker. She is based in Frome in Somerset where she runs the Rye Wine Bar with her partner, Jack Lewens. You'll find them at The Station in Frome in the South West of England. if you find yourself there, go and say hi and try her delicious wine made under the label 'From Paris' and distributed by the marvellous team at Wines under The Bonnet. 

Parissa shares with us the challenges of being a winemaker in the UK with the changing climate and her journey into working in the wine industry. It's a fascinating story and one to be enjoyed with a glass of something cool and delicious, hopefully a glass of Parissa's Pinot Noir, 'From Paris'.

A head's up- she shares about her own personal health diagnosis of BRCA 1 (26 minutes in). I give a reminder just before it comes in. If this is a personal issue for you, please take care and feel free to skip ahead to 28 minutes 45 seconds in where she shares something that is so uplifting and inspiring.

Parissa is my very first guest on this podcast which is all about wine, the people behind the scenes who work with passion and tenacity or sheer madness, to bring us the most delicious drink in the world (sorry beer and cider lovers out there!) and how the changing climate is impacting the wine industry. I also have a background in Occupational Psychology and weave in elements of this fascinating topic to diver deeper into the complexities surrounding the grief people are experiencing right now with climate change. 

Parissa touches on her own dyslexia and I share a bit about my own AuDHD (Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Not liking that word- disorder; we both individually share how it's actually a strength and not a deficit. This is a personal story and represents our individual opinions only. Everyone is different and if this topic is personal to you, please take care and refer to the links in the show notes below.

I've added links for you to find out more; especially if you have been affected by any of the sensitive topics that we touch upon in this episode.

You can follow and find me on;

Victoria Vine Secrets on instagram or leave a comment on the episode.

https://www.winesutb.com/blog/2026/3/17/introducing-paris-barghchi

https://www.rye-bakery.com/new-page

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/genetics/brca-fact-sheet

https://ovarian.org.uk/hereditary-cancer-and-risk/i-have-a-genetic-mutation/what-are-my-options-cancer-prevention/genetic-mutation-options/

https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/

https://autisticgirlsnetwork.org/knowledge_base/audhd/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

This is a podcast about how climate and wine are interlinked. We explore the people behind the scenes from winemakers to the vines and the people behind the much-loved indie shops braving the high streets to deliver wines that might inspire you to think about what's in your glass and where it's come from. So if you love all things wine and are a climate enthusiast, then this is the podcast for you. So sit back and grab yourself a glass of something delicious and let's get amongst the wild vines. I'm your host, Victoria Wilkin. A little bit about me. I have a passion for wine, psychology, and the climate. I remember being overly interested in a glass of Beaujolais in my 20s and not knowing why. I wanted to talk about it more with my family and friends, but quickly came to realise that I was alone in my interest. Ten years later, I quit teaching and moved to Queensland, Australia. There I talked my way into a job as a wine taster at a satellite tasting room in Mount Tambourin on the Gold Coast. I had no idea what Atai was doing, but I knew one thing. If people know about wine, they will tell you, and that's exactly what happened. I didn't need to be an expert or know much about wine to talk through a tasting of six wines back then. I knew I was hooked though, and this deepened further after a tasting of Semion from the Hunter Valley. It was straw-coloured and so full of personality. I needed to know more and work out why I could suddenly switch camp from loving Australian Shiraz to now loving Semillon. Meanwhile, I was still very alone in my quest for the answers. More to come about my own journey into wine and why I had to start making a podcast about wine, psychology, and the changing climate and how it's impacting the world of wine. Let's turn our attention to my guest today, Parissa Barci, a female winemaker based in Froome, Somerset. I wanted to interview Parissa because of her approach to winemaking, which she will expand upon in her own words. I was particularly struck by her own journey into becoming a winemaker, in spite of not coming from a family with connections to the wine industry. What comes through is her tenacity for breaking through the glass ceilings that can often hold females back from carving out a career for themselves in places that are often male-dominated. Prissa is an example of someone who has not had a linear career path. I love this because, in spite of the challenges she's faced, she found a way through. This is an inspiration for those of you that are thinking about a career in wine and maybe don't come from this background. She also speaks about her dyslexia and how this is a strength that helps her to see the world through a different lens. I won't reveal too much of her story. Let's hear instead from Parissa in her own words.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

My name is Paris Alberti. Many people know me as Paris. I'm a winemaker, sommelier, and hospitality professional, and I live in Froome, Somerset, where I run a wine bar with my partner Jack Lewins. And for the first time, realizing that there's so much more in this glass than just a delicious beverage that makes you feel pretty fuzzy and happy. It was the first time I really thought about the story behind what's in my glass and the people that had gone into making it. And I remember it so clearly. I remember what the wine tasted like. I remember the like precision of the acidity, you know, that really vibrant, that malic acid still being present. I remember salivating, I remember the grapey notes. I don't know how many people have drunk Canadian Riesling. Um, it's got quite a specific characteristic to it. Of course, with climate change, you know, those things have changed now. I'm talking about 2011, 2012, and the Canadian wine industry has completely expanded, grown, um, and that growth has been not just in regards to climate change, but the intelligence that's um happening in that part of the world, people being experimental with different grape varieties, grape species, but that's another story.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

So I asked Parissa how would you describe what you do and why it's important to you, and also what project are you currently working on that you're excited about?

SPEAKER_01 5:25

I'm a nomad winemaker, and what that means is I don't have a permanent home. Um, I make wine in the UK and um I'm planning to do for the foreseeable future. Um, but at the moment I've been very lucky to be given the opportunity to work in my friend's cellars and work with fruit that my friend Matt Gregory has grown, and so far I've done two vintages under my own label. The first vintage in 2024, which was Pinot Noir, um, a German clone of Pinot Noir from Matt Gregory's top blog, fruit that I'd worked with previously through other winemakers, and also I've drunk a lot of his wines. Um, this was um or is uh a rose that um came out with uh 8.5% alcohol. Um it's got quite high acid, but it's softened over the course of its maturation, and specifically at the moment, I feel is um tasting quite bright with fruit forward character. Um like I said, it's the first wine I've released. I'm really happy with it, and it's been so well received by friends, supporters, people I've never met. Um, it's distributed through Wines Under the Bonnet, um, who are very good friends of mine and have been continuously supportive and encouraging and um amazing friends and always given wonderful guidance. Um and um they they sold out in uh in a month's time. Um, so the wine landed with them, and then within the month it had sold out off to venues all over the UK. Um currently I'm only distributing in the United Kingdom because I'm making such a small amount of wine. One of the wonderful things about working in other people's cellars is you learn so much and you're given quite strict constraints. You know, there's not the freedom to do exactly what you want. You have to work to their rhythms and you have to work with the equipment that's um available to you. I think that it keeps me creative, it also keeps me focused, um, it brings in a boundary, and perhaps um it helps me to keep things simple. Um it helps me make decisions. I think that, you know, also working with winemakers and having many conversations with winemakers, it can be very hard to commit to a decision in your winemaking. Um and uh and yeah, I feel like this is something that I'm learning each year, how to make decisions and and how to be confident in them.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Many winemakers face lots of challenges in this country with climate change and the impact that that's having on the vine cycle, and in particular, England is a really it's a such an interesting place to um grow vines and make wine because it's a cool climate, and that's why England is becoming popular amongst the champagne growers, and they're they're already here, so in terms of champagne houses, it's like Tattinger and Pomerie are already in the UK because the UK has enough sunshine hours to grow and ripen Chardonnay Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, the holy trinity of the champagne grapes, but also because it's cool enough, it's a cool enough climate that you get a nice slow growing season. But of course, with climate change, temperatures are changing, and we've had some very mixed weather, and recently there has been some late frost, and so that can be devastating to the vines.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

So right now I am living in Frum in Somerset and uh looking to make wine again this year. I'm looking for uh a space to do this. I've been talking to my very good friends uh Coe's Farm, and there's a possibility that I will be taking up uh residence in their cellar this year to make a small amount of wine and also be with them for harvest. Matt Gregory and I are also talking about doing harvest together and me making a small amount of Pinot Noir to refill the barrel that I will be bottling uh in a couple of months' time. So the idea of having three vintages under my belt is incredibly exciting, um, but also, you know, makes things feel a little bit more serious, um, makes me realize that I need to start buying my own equipment, tanks, barrels, um, and you know, thinking a little bit more to the future. Am I going to commit to making wine in the United Kingdom? Is this really where I want to be? It is my home and has been my home for most of my life. Um and so I feel an identity here. And one of the wonderful things about building my wine brand and my my label, deciding to call it From Paris, the name by which most people know me, gave me uh a freedom to reclaim my personal identity away from my career, uh, away from what I do for a living, away from one of my great loves, passions, and and um focuses. So with my wine brand being called Paris, I've brought my my full Persian name and identity back into the reality of my existence. My name is Padissa, um and um it feels nice to be able to kind of have that separation now without losing all of the work that I and the reputation that I built under the name Paris. Um and that sort of happened very organically and has been quite synonymous. So I've learned a lot about identity, about myself, about what I'm looking to be and looking to become. Um and I think that all of these small life lessons influence your approach to the natural world, the world around you, the people around you. And and those things are the things that we use to inspire us to to make wine. Um so they're all connected. So my project right now is um sustaining making wine in a country that continuously throws challenges. Um we have been hit really hard with frost in this country just this last two weeks. A lot of people have seen severe frost damage, um, which is you know always very difficult because everyone puts their life and soul into the plants that they're growing, and it's quite devastating, particularly, to see frost damage. You see the vulnerability of these vines, um, but you never really know the full extent of frost damage until you're about a month in. Um it's a tricky time, you know. We are in the middle of May. Um, and so some vines and some vineyards will be slightly further ahead. They might f they might be able to bring themselves back. There might have been less damage um to inflorescences, uh, it might be just leaf damage, there might be enough strength, there might not have been as as intense cell damage to s to the to the new shoots at the base. So, you know, we're looking at kind of the tips and the leaf. So they might be able to regrow and spring back. Um we might see that in vines that were not so far developed, that um secondary buds begin to come through. Secondary buds are more vulnerable because they only produce one shoot. So, you know, we're not through it yet, but the important thing is to to not give up hope, but also manage your own expectations. So we're kind of in this seesaw motion of trying to not completely give up, um, trying to stay positive but not overpromise yourself, um, and therefore overpromise anyone else. I guess we have to do that in life, in every part of life. So, as much as I want to make wine this year, I am realistic that because I don't have my own vineyards and I'm not growing my own fruit, um, I'm kind of last on the pecking order. I'm also never going to be interested in buying large quantities because I'm so small and and I'm can only work on a small scale at the moment. I'm still learning. I don't want to start producing large quantities until I feel like I've got more of a rhythm, until I've seen a few more vintages and possibly done some other vintages elsewhere in the world. I had a great experience working with Tenuta de Callioni in Rada, in Chianti Classico last year in uh 2025, um, and there's a possibility of going out to them again this year. So at this point in the year, mid-May, there's many questions, um, and I think that the important thing is about um knowing that I'm definitely going to be doing a vintage this year, um, that I will do everything I can to make some wine, that I will be spending time with my friends um at Co's and with Matt Gregory up in Burton on the Worlds. And um the rest will sort of slot itself in. Um always trying to find fruit that's affordable in the United Kingdom is difficult. I'm committed to working with organically grown fruit um and the price point of that is in comparison to other parts of the world, very expensive. For example, you know, organic and biodynamic fruit in the United Kingdom can go for between 3,000 and 3,500 per tonne. And that is um uh very expensive if you compare what you would be paying for fruit grown organically in the Loire, probably from vines you know twice the age grown by people with twice the decades of experience. Um when I've spoken to friends, they've been astounded at the the price of fruit in the United Kingdom. So these are all challenges, um, but they don't dissuade me. They just kick in my brain, my problem-solving brain. And as a a dyslexic and somebody who has always worked with a more artistic picture thinking mind, I don't really see the sort of linear, I don't see I don't see the hurdles, I just see the bubbles of difference. So I could do this and I could do this and I might do that, and oh, that could work. I don't necessarily always worry about connecting them together. And just like clouds, at some point they sort of float into each other. Sometimes they merge and become one. And sometimes I have to make um a cold, hard decision. And like I said, sometimes that can be the the hardest thing to do. And um learning to be patient, always patience, is I think the winner of this game. Patience in the year that you're working in, patience in the growing season, patience in the next three years, patience in the next five years, patience to understand that I'm only 35 and um I can still be making wine at 70. So I've got decades ahead of me. There's no hurry for me to build a big business now. Now is the moment for learning, now is the moment to have the time to learn. This is my opinion and my my approach.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

There are lots of winemakers that are making small batch wines and they are growing the fruit organically, and why this matters for climate change, it's mitigating against the impact that chemicals, pesticides can damage the soil, and so by having organically grown fruit, that's enhancing the soil health, and so these organic farm practices, uh whether using these natural fertilizers and then avoiding the synthetic pesticides are helping to lower the pollution levels and hopefully contributing towards a more resilient agricultural ecosystem that is better for everybody. So now we're going to have a little bit more of a deep dive into Parissa's journey interwine. My background is psychology. I studied psychology and occupational psychology. I was fascinated in the people behind the scenes and the stories and that the decisions we take that shapes who we are and what we do. Part of my psychology training is psychometrics, which is looking at personality. And I've worked as a psychology coach for the last 15 years, um, as well as being a teacher, and what I've learned from that is how much people bring of themselves into what they do, and I can see the passion and the tenacity, especially I think in people that are neurodivergent. I'm neurodivergent myself, I'm late-diagnosed or DHD, and what that means is I have a very heightened awareness of sensory information and how I perceive the world, and that's actually an advantage for me because I've used the extra sense of taste and smell in my love of wine, and so I very much see the world through smell and taste, and being somebody that is all DHD, it means that I haven't had a linear career path myself. I can get very passionate and hyper-focused on particular topics, and luckily for me, um, I'm not necessarily the train spotting type. My special attention has gone into wine, um, and that's how I've harnessed my strengths. I'm fascinated with the reasons that people find themselves in these particular careers that are very left of centre. Um, they're not your typical careers, it really takes quite an individual uh maverick. To become a winemaker. And so let's have a little bit of a listen to Parissa and how she became a winemaker.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Like all great stories, my journey into wine was not an easy path, or I should say maybe not a direct path. I actually started off working as an actor. My dream as a child and a young person was to be a performer. I simply loved telling stories. And after my parents divorced, my mother's approach to helping us cope was for us to learn how to express ourselves. She was an excellent storyteller. My favourite memories as a child. I was sitting in chairs and around fires in the Orkney Islands with blustery weather around us, reading stories about adventures. Storytelling has always been at my core wanting to connect with people. Bought a plane ticket, got a visa, turned up at the bar that have said they'd give me a job if I was there on the 1st of September, and there I was. So I ended up in Toronto working at this underground basement beer bar. This is where I learned how to talk to people about flavour. At the time had the largest selection of Kraft Beer on Tap in Toronto. So, due to visa complications, um I came back to the UK and was inspired to continue a professional career in hospitality. I did short courses, really doing my own home study in wine. My mother was a single mother, and I grew up on a council estate, so there was never any money to fund education. And then I found myself working for the Clove Club in London, and this is where other people encouraged me, and I had something when it came to understanding wine, or I had an excitement. Taking a bottle of uh, you know, Australian Shiraz, probably yellowtail or something like that, and all my friends laughing at me because um old people drink red wine. I I started working very seriously in high-end restaurants and really wanted to go down the Somelia route, but it didn't feel accessible at all. Um even at that point, which isn't very long ago, there were very few female Somelias in my field who I had access to to talk to. So at this point I felt alienated from a career option. I didn't want to force it. And if there's anything I've learned, you can push your way through, you can force your hand, but actually all that does is leave you feeling more exhausted. And I felt like I had to save my energy for something.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

We're coming up to the section where Parissa speaks about her BRACA1 gene mutation health condition. So if this is a personal issue for you, you may want to skip ahead the next few minutes.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Many people will probably think of Angelina Jolie when they hear BRACA1. So BRCA1 is a something, it's a genetic condition uh passed on from a family member, and it affects your risk of um for BRAC a one, specifically breast and ovarian cancer. So for breast cancer, it increases your risk um to as much as 80% plus, depending on your specific family genetics, and for ovarian cancer, we're in the 44%, 45%, something like this. Now, of course, these are just blanket statistics, um, and there's a lot more information in that. But my sister had had been diagnosed with cancer, and my mum um had had cancer several times in her life. So the medical advice was for me to have a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery basically as soon as possible in order to um save my life, and definitely save me from my very high risk of breast cancer. So I had that operation in 2018. So I had my double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. This was a six-hour operation for me, and my poor partner at the time sitting waiting, the operation took longer. It's a life-changing experience not only to learn that you have a genetic mutation that um could negatively influence your life and force you to make certain decisions, but also for a woman in her mid-twenties to lose her breasts is a big deal. So, in my true form, I didn't let that stop me, and a year later I ran the London Marathon to raise money for Macmillan cancer support. And I just decided that it was now the time if I wanted to really get into the wine industry. I needed to start moving because who knows what's on the horizon. I'd always really been in the kind of left field wing of the wine industry. I mean, I the Clove Club, we had a lot of very classic wines on our list, but we also had some really interesting, unique, natural wine producers. So working for the Oxford Wine Company was a really um important step for me. It was tactical. I wanted to have an understanding of what it was like to be in that side of the industry. So then in 2020, I moved to East Sussex and got a job working for Tillingham Wines, and this was the beginning of stepping from wine sales, working as a sommelier, into learning about, really properly learning about wine production. I knew, and all my great mentors had told me, that if you really want to know what's going on, you really have to be in the thick of it. It can be really challenging to find your access point in the wine industry. Whether that's trying to get into the world of working as a sommelier or as a young single woman with um no family connections to farming or viticulture or winemaking, convincing someone that you've got the physical strength, the stamina to really be a support and help and um a positive impact on their vintage. When when I first started working at Tillingham, I remember speaking to Ben Walgate and convincing him, well working very hard to convince him that I was really strong, that I could lift, you know, 20 kilos, that um I could do that repeatedly. And in my mind, this was the most important thing because that had been a big part of my pushback, reaching out to other people. I had emailed a few people in France and I'd spoken to other other people, and the the concern was, well, you're a woman, you're just not going to be strong enough. I mean, I think about my community of winemakers now, and that would just never happen. So maybe I was trying to speak to the wrong people because so many of the winemakers in the companies that we buy wine from, or trust Venos wines under the bonnet, would be thrilled to have anyone, and they definitely wouldn't be asking questions or making decisions based on whether you're male or female. Anyway, that was my experience at that point. Um, and I think because of the operation, I was so sensitive to the fact that I had lost my strength for for a year or so. So this was really important to me. It was important to me that I could prove to myself and to other people that I was, that I am a very strong independent woman. Um, and I did that. Uh, and I learned a lot at Tillingham. Um, and I met some amazing people who to this day still send me words, voice notes, um all the encouragement. My friend Sebastian O'Callaghan, who makes Cider now, uh, although we keep plotting to make a wine together. Um, my friend Victoria Mason, who got her MW recently after years of um insane hard work and commitment, who every now and again sends me words of encouragement, and likewise I do for my gorgeous friends as well. And so the the challenges during 2020, as we all know, you know, within within a world that was talking a lot about fear, if anything, it just encouraged me more to really commit to something. So I sort of made this internal decision at that point, and you know, I reflect on it now, maybe it was a little bit subconscious. But when I look back that that summer in 2020, I knew there and then, I'm sure of it, that this was going to be my life and that I would make it happen somehow. So I ended up back in London, started working for We Are Noble, supported them reopening post-COVID. I landed so well with this company. And then, you know, there were some roller coasters along the way. My life sort of fell apart when my partner of nine years left me. Um, we separated um completely out of the blue. I had been working um vintages and doing various bits of um volunteer work throughout the season for Offbeat Wines and Domain Hugo. Um, and so when it felt like all the carpets had been pulled out from under my feet, I I turned to my friends um and asked for their advice. You know, what do I do now? And and so many of my friends said, Well, maybe this is the moment you sidestep into winemaking. Um, offbeat and domain Hugo had um always said there would be a place for me working with them. And one late night uh outside um a bar with shapes for a name, Laurence Sayard and I talked about how difficult it is to make decisions when you feel like you have to do multiple things all at once, but you can only really take life one step at a time. And he shared some of his experiences and said, Parasar, I think you should be a winemaker. You have the mentality, and that's the most important part. Um and to hear that from a winemaker I really respect, who produces these incredibly delicious wines, who also comes from a restaurant background. I just thought, well, if he thinks I can do it, then maybe I can. I started working full-time for Domain Hugo and uh supporting off-beat wines in their cellar as well. This movement from a life surrounded by people, and also I'd been in a relationship for nine years, so I'd I'd really never been alone. And during 2024, I working in the vineyard, would spend sometimes a whole week where I might say hello to one or two of the people as they walked past. There were some periods of where I just wouldn't see anyone, and actually some friends of mine really were really worried. They were like, Paris, we don't know if you're gonna if this is gonna be possible, you know, you're going to be so isolated, you're on a farm, you know, two miles up a track, you don't drive. And I was like, well, I've I've lived rurally before, and I managed then. So I got my bike back on the road. I cycled everywhere. At one point I was cycling 20 miles a day to and from work, and I loved it. Don't get me wrong, there were moments during those lonely hours and periods that I thought, you know, that my mood was incredibly low. And I thought, well, maybe this is it, maybe I'm going to become a spinster and I'm just gonna marry myself to the land, and my children will be my vines. Um there were moments of complete elation when I started to realize that the world around me was so much a part of me, and that if you are quietly, respectfully present within the land that you live on, work on, you'll find that you're very much welcomed and invited in. And I started to have relationships with you know, pheasants and their babies who would follow me around the vineyard. The hares stopped running away from me and would sit quietly in the rows as I moved down, either leaf stripping or um tucking in, um working in the vineyard in the the dead of winter when it's so icy, and you wake up in the morning and your fingers are frozen and your toes are frozen, and the last thing you want to do is walk out into the icy air, and then the sun breaks through the clouds, and it's the most beautiful moment, and you feel alive and you feel weightless. So I learned how to be myself, I learned how to be at peace with myself. That involved a lot of talking to myself, um, and you know, having to really look look in on the the things that you the decisions that you've made and where you are and you know perhaps the things you've done wrong in your life, um and um and reconcile those. So yeah, working on a vineyard is is not just um picking grapes. It's uh it's learning how to be in your own company very much, and I'm I'm sure I'm sure a lot of uh viticulturalists and growers and winemakers would agree with that. But the world is still, but I am moving, the leaves are ever changing. Is this where I belong? Now the vine fruits are gone, and the skies are sobered with sun, the air sweet and savoury, the blankets in every shade of bronze, the majestic skeletons adorned with jewels, the roaring rivers given life, a cold nose, a warm heart, an autumn romance about to start.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

I hope you enjoyed listening to Carissa's story and her journey into wine and some of the challenges that she overcome with that uh incredible and positive way of looking at the world, and whether that is her dyslexic lens that she has through not seeing the problems as such, but looking at the solutions, and it might have left you perhaps with questions. And some of the questions that came to my mind are as wine drinkers, are we connecting with what's in our glass to how it was made and how how it arrives in the shops? Have we made that connection between what we buy, where we buy it, and where it's from, and how it's impacting the world around us and climate? And these are the reasons that I wanted to do this podcast. I think the psychology comes into it with do we feel that sometimes climate change is such a big uh hyper problem, too big for us to even think about, that we're actually maybe not thinking about it. Have we got some climate anxiety? Have we got some climate grief? And then what are we doing with those emotions? There's something called the zygarnic effect, which is this idea that we can sometimes worry about big problems in the world, and it can add to mental clutter. That mental clutter is the zygaric effect. Often, when we're neurodiverse, we can ruminate about these problems because we care deeply, we have a lot of empathy, we have we're very justice-driven, we are um there tends to be a lot of neurodiverse thinkers that are working in the space of sustainability and climate change and are also activists. And in a way, I think that by asking questions, leaning into it rather than leaning out of it, is it's quite an empowering way of managing those really strong emotions that we can feel about this huge issue that we're all facing together, that the climate is changing, and that that is impacting the vine cycle, and that is going to then impact the uh wine that we drink and the grapes that are grown. So, all of these things they are so interlinked, and what I loved about Parissa's story was the passion for working with organic fruit and working with Fruit growers that also care passionately about the soil and the ecosystem. If you are looking for wine that is made by somebody that cares about the planet, then just pop into your local independent wine shop. I will be giving a shout out to wine shops up and down the country, and I think it's really important to go in and give them a try because if we don't support them, they won't be here. You're in for a treat now because she's going to share with you what wine she would pull off the shelf and enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

Okay, I'm sitting down with friends. What wine would I drink? What would I pull off the shelf or out of the fridge? Well, I mean um it depends who I'm with and what time of day it is and what we're eating. Um I mean there are so many wines that I I want to try. Wines produced in America and Canada, you know, there are vineyards in Okanagan. I love Scout Vineyard, for example, I love their wines, and we don't get to drink them here. I'm always desperate to taste what's coming out of the cellar at La Garagista. Deirdre Hiken and her husband Caleb and the team there. I think that these are wines that always bring inspiration for me, always full of personality and character. Um, I find them inspiring every time I drink them. Um I'm really enjoying drinking Ferment at the moment, um, spending some time working for Roland Wines and spending some time with my good friend Roland in Hungary, visiting Ben Spurtock. Istvan is one of my favourite winemakers. I think that he has um an excellent intuition, and his wines are powerful and sensitive all at the same time. I just bought a bottle of his Shannon Blanc, which I'm going to put on my wine rack and open at an exciting moment. I feel like I've spent quite a lot of time in the last few months drinking more English wines. One of mine and Jack's favourite things to do on a Sunday is finish work, come home and cook a delicious dinner for ourselves. I think that this Sunday it might be um slow-cooked beef regoux made by Owen Barrett, which we have with um some delicious pasta and some posh parmigiana. So what would we drink with that? It's probably going to be chianti. I mean it just makes sense. Perhaps a Chianti Classico from Tenuto de Callioni 2023. This is the vintage we have currently, and it's got excellent tension, beautiful fruit. It's a wine that really is perfect for every occasion. It's a wine that I started drinking really early on in my one journey when I was working at the Clove Club, uh, before I met Sean, before I became best friends with his son. So let's say Tenuta de Calione, Chiante Classico 2023. The walls are closing in, the world outside is running, the wine prickles my lips, telling myself, I'm winning. So much change, so little certainty. Roots grow slowly. A humble life brings gravity. I feel your love, I follow your energy, sharing skies and song, a print on my memory.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

You've been listening to Wild Vines, Climate Wine, and Everything Between. I'm your host, Victoria Wilkin. I'd like to give a shout out to Parissa and Jack Lewins, who run the Rye Wine Bar and Bakery at the station in Froome Somerset in the Southwest. So if you are down there, do pop in and say hi to both Parissa and Jack. They'll be thrilled to talk to you, and perhaps you'll be able to try some of her wine from Paris. Thanks so much for listening. Next episode we have Rachel, a winemaker based in Norfolk, who is going to talk about something that she's passionate about, which is how do we attract the younger generation into thinking about working in the wine industry as a serious career choice. And this is something that I've been thinking about for a while with my background in education: is how do we navigate the tricky and realistic aspect that younger generations are not showing as much interest in the wine industry and the impact this is actually having on wine sales. So we will be diving deep into that topic next time. That episode will be coming out next month, so do listen out for that. You can find me on Instagram as Victoria's Vine Secrets or drop me a message on the comments in this episode. Thanks for listening. See you next time.