Introducing The American Vine Interview Series: Conversations with America's Small Winery Owners and Winemakers
Starting this fall, I will be sitting down with the owners and winemakers behind some of America's most compelling small wineries. Here is what to expect from The American Vine Interview Series.
Introducing The American Vine Interview Series
There is a version of American wine writing that is mostly about scores and shelf prices. I have never been very interested in that version.
What I find genuinely compelling — is the people. The winemaker who left a career in finance to plant Grüner Veltliner in the Texas Hill Country. The third-generation family in the Finger Lakes who quietly makes some of the most precise Riesling in the country and has never once hired a publicist. The couple in the Willamette Valley who farms four acres biodynamically and sells out every vintage before it is even bottled.
These are the stories I want to tell. And starting this fall, I am going to tell them properly.
What the Series Will Cover
The American Vine Interview Series will be a recurring feature — published right here on the blog — dedicated to long-form conversations with the owners and winemakers behind some of America's most interesting small wineries.
Not the famous names. Not the wineries with waiting lists that stretch five years and tasting fees that require a reservation three months out. I mean the places you find because someone who knows wine pointed you toward them. The producers making fewer than 5,000 cases a year. The winemakers who are still doing their own punch-downs at midnight.
Each installment will go deep. I am not interested in the polished talking points that show up in press releases. I want to know why someone chose a particular site, what they got wrong in their first vintage, how they think about farming in a changing climate, and what they are actually drinking at the dinner table when no one is watching.
Why Now
American wine has never been more interesting, and it has never been harder to find the signal through the noise.
The past decade has seen an explosion of small producers working in regions that barely existed on the wine map twenty years ago — the Texas High Plains, the Sta. Rita Hills, the Eola-Amity Hills, the North Fork of Long Island, and many others. At the same time, a new generation of winemakers is rethinking what American wine can be: less extraction, more transparency, varieties that have no business being this good in these soils but somehow are.
The problem is that most of these producers are too small to get coverage from the major publications, too independent to work the trade show circuit, and too busy farming to spend much time on social media. If you want to know what they are thinking, you have to go ask them.
That is exactly what I intend to do.
What to Expect
The first interviews are already in the works. I will be speaking with and hopefully traveling to several wineries and regions this fall.
Each piece will include:
- A full Q&A transcript, lightly edited for clarity but otherwise unfiltered
- My tasting notes on wines I have tried. Some wineries cannot ship to me here in NJ but I will do my best with this.
- Context on the winery and region for readers who are coming to these producers for the first time
- Practical information — where to find the wines, whether the tasting room is open to visitors, and what to order if you go
The answers, I suspect, will be worth the price of admission on their own and hopefully get you interested in their wines.
A Note on How I Choose Who to Feature
I am not taking submissions, and I am not accepting payment for coverage. Every winery I have found genuinely compelling, and whose story I think deserves a wider audience.
That is the only criterion.
If you have a producer you think I should know about — a small winery doing something remarkable that is not getting the attention it deserves — I would genuinely love to hear about it. You can reach me at chuck@theamericanvine.com. I read every email.
Stay Tuned
The first installment of The American Vine Interview Series will publish this fall. If you want to make sure you do not miss it, the best way is to subscribe to the newsletter — I will send a note the moment each new conversation goes live.
In the meantime, I will keep doing what I have always done here: drinking American wine, taking notes, and trying to figure out what makes this country's best bottles worth caring about.
There is a lot worth caring about. Let me introduce you to some of the people making it.
Explore Topics
Written by
Chuck Hoeffler
Chuck Hoeffler is the founder and editor of The American Vine. He loves tasting and writing about American wine, with a particular focus on regions and wineries that deserve more attention than they typically receive.
