My piercing healed so well because I cried so much and other bad cuvée names (+ a domaine name change! I’m ABRACADABRA now)

If I needed a sign no one cares, then the fact I can count on one hand the number of people who asked ‘Hey Hannah, why did you name your wine Y’ is just that.

Thanks guys, love you too I’ll have my hand back. 

No one seems to care – much, and never will as much as me, so I figured I should do what my mom and friends say and get on with it so I can get on with other stuff... So I did and thank god! Because now I have the time to take pictures that take too much time like the admittedly rather nice one above.

I thought names matter a lot. Consider the aura-stripping power of a bottle poured from a sock! Drinking wine blind is like using crutches, drunk, in pitch dark except someone also just spun you around and kicked away the crutch. But we do it because labels and names tell us stuff, and because sometimes these things can matter too much. (I think there are also people who think drinking blind is fun?)

Giving a name to a thing — a fear, a thought, a wish, an intention — (can) make(s) it (more) real, so one should give with intention. Or not! What does your cuvée name say about you? How personal is bearable, how much is yuck?* How much is a misplaced call for help? Must one just ‘feel’ it? Has the wine been made in the spirit of it? Must there be a hidden meaning to it? 

The new nonchalant me has decided rien, none, no, not.

The new me has chosen names because she liked the sound of them. The look of them. Quelques-uns refer vaguely to opaquely personal stuff but most do not. Two I’ve stolen from the books of an author I love, three describe the look/feel/texture of the bottled stuff (one of which, d’ailleurs, is another book rip-off), and there’s one I cannot pronounce and wish everyone who wants to order it — the Chardonnay — luck!

The new me has also chosen a new name for me (so busy!) because my real name is not a wine name: and this is a fact that was confirmed to me this February when I saw it on an actual poster, which was weird. Besides looking out of place next to the likes of Babass, Balagny, Bouju, Bruyere for reasons more obvious than not starting with a B, ‘Fuellenkemper’ is just too officially… me? And my wines I feel are not — and probably won’t until I learn how to make what I want.

With a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to repeat something I’ve made which begs the question: who made it then? I don’t mean mystically or energetically or ‘I’m so laissez faire philosophically that I let the grapes become the wines they wish to be,’ but literally. All I do physically is go get the grapes, put them in press or tank, then let the juice ferment. The rest, the ‘now it’s a wine people want to drink’ bit is bibbidi bobbed boo-abracadabra to me. 

Hence the new name (just the ABRACADABRA bit I mean).

It’s two letters shorter, in case you didn’t count, and unlike the quickly pretentious roads alchemy terms were taking me down — it's fun! Like me :) Plus! on posters, As come before the Bs. Not that anyone cares about names anyway.

p.s: Thoughts on the all CAPS? 

* true story about the piercing btw. 

Undocumented moments in wine: apparently I have to allocate mine

I’ve just started selling my wine for the second time in my life and I’ve come to some realisations. 

• Allocations are not just for the type of winemakers I thought they were.
• Winemakers who allocate their wines do so because they have to, not because they can.
• Excel spreadsheets are as vital to a winemaker as, say, buckets.
• I have over-sold my wine.
• I can’t drink any more of my wine.

I’m not looking for sympathy — though I’m pretty sure this is the reason last week my friend built my first excel sheet (ty Théo!) — but I am still hoping someone will soon write the book on how all this stuff works. "The Novice’s Complete Guide to the Stuff You Should Know about Making Wine that’s not about Actually Making Wine" and yes I’m aware there are schools, thanks, I didn’t go.

Cue tiny fiddles, I know.

The Stuff I Should Know but don’t that I’m currently struggling with will be in the chapter on how not to seem the keeno who will sell to anyone, the asshole who sells to no one, or the idiot who clearly didn’t read the preceding chapter on recording stock (see pg. 1 ‘Excel’). While we wait, you can use me as Case Study 10000, subheading: Learn from real life mistakes [name has been changed to protect my identity]. 

While I'm here, I’d also like to make some requests. 

Let there be lists! Numbers, bullets, reminders, prompts. People like me need lists. My diet is garlic, chilli — and lists. I write stuff down even after it’s done for the satisfaction of crossing it off. I am a freak! And I'm sure I'm not alone. (Oh, add lots of olive oil). To-do lists and don’t do this-lists, I need them all. I wouldn’t even mind to have the same info re-iterated in both. Example 1.0 could go:

Do: attach price list when you ask your clients to please place their orders. 

Don’t: forget to attach price list when you ask your clients to please place their orders. 

Do: wait to hear back from your biggest buyers before you open your client list.

Don’t: open up your client list before you hear back from your biggest buyers.

I’d also like lists of ways how to say the things I want to say, but in a better, less honest, more professional way. Like, instead of ‘I was probably drunk when I said yes’, try ‘Farts! It slipped my mind, I’ll have to check’. Instead of ‘So actually you can ignore the mail I sent you three minutes ago asking what you’d like to buy (no prices attached) because I realise now that I have negative amounts of Gamay’ it would be better to say… what exactly? ‘Sorry sorry sorry I’m a n00b and I’ve overso—I mean, under-estimated demand for my wines I can note you down for next life but in the meantime how about some some volatile Chardonnay?’

General question: what’s worse, telling clients no then yes or yes then no?

Is it better to ship big and far to places I’ll never go (though ahem Vortex, waiting on that invite to Tokyo) than 12 bottles to places I can deliver myself? Is selling to four bars in the south of France selling to three too many? Does the same maths apply for a single arrondissement in Paris? To Switzerland which is polite, erudite, punctual and, looking at the order, thirsty; but if I’m to follow the advice and allocate proportionally: tiny? 

Do I reserve for my ‘non-wine friends’? To trade with my winemaker friends? I’ve already drunk a lot of traded wine on credit (to ‘trade’ in French is to ‘troc’); the bottles I owe are marked in red and BOLD in my stock.

Who do I work for if my work is unpaid and my wine over-subscribed so now I have to buy other people’s wine because I can’t afford to drink mine? Every year I say I’ll make a personal tank, not for sale but for me. What’s the difference of doing this and trying (and I’m failing) to hold back 12 bottles of each cuvée? Now there’s a price on my wine, the more I don’t sell, the poorer I’ll be (what’s funny is that when it’s still in tank you can drink what you want because somehow it still feels free).

To conclude: this is me announcing that from now on I will be allocating. This decision has been based on what my supply, demand, and other people tell me. I have learned from my own mistakes that it’s more stressful to let people tell you what they want than to tell them what they can have. I am afraid of my excel sheet. It is a mosh pit of colour with its boxes of green, caps, highlights, requests in one colour and reality another, double digit negative numbers, and it is SCREAMING AT ME. I have miscounted what I can give, underestimated what people want, and am genuinely grateful that anyone wants anything! Of course I’ve said yes. What’s ’12 de chaque’ in the scheme of things? 

Now I’m just waiting for someone to write the chapter on how to say not what I want, but honestly what I mean. That please forgive me, I wasn’t even drunk, and I'm trying to be respectful of what everybody wants, but I didn’t have excel and I'm not a professional and I thought I’d have enough because I’ve never made so much and that it’s totally my fault that your 12 has gone from reasonable to too much now the for-far orders of 120 de chaque are in. 

Email going out soon.

Love, a total no0b