“When you taste a natural wine, you are tasting good farming.”

Welcome to my natural wine website! But full disclosure, this is not Sanaya writing this – it’s Andrew. I know I know, not exactly the M. Night Shyamalan plot twist we may want it to be, but life isn’t always a Hollywood blockbuster. Unless, of course, you have been introduced to Sanaya and her wines. What is truly amazing to me is what it is exactly that Sanaya is so captivated by when it comes to wine, and that in itself has captivated me. I don’t love wine – I love Sanaya’s love of wine.

What I have learnt over many dinners, conversations and lectures (PowerPoints will come later) with Sanaya is that the alcohol aspect of wine is the least interesting part to her. If wine had zero alcohol, she would still be obsessed – but my interest would dip, I’ll admit. What captivates Sanaya is the process of wine, the stories behind how they came to be. The intricacies of natural wine is of special interest to her, and how every aspect of one’s environment will adjust what product comes out of the other end. The types of minerals in the soil, if it was a warmer or colder summer, how long the wine has contact with the skins (if any), how much or little rain fell on Saturday, May 16th…all of it is but a stroke of the paintbrush that creates the masterpiece in the bottle before you.

I have been a very inactive participant in countless conversations with wine people we have met over time, but I have been an active listener. I have heard stories of winemakers taking over their father’s vineyard and completely revamping it with grapes from a different region to create a totally new type of wine. I’ve heard sommelier gossip about certain producers that should be avoided, and others that should be getting more recognition. I have heard the names of grapes I could have mistaken as Pokemon, and tried my best to match the name of the wine with a label I liked yet failed time and time again. But Sanaya has kept up with everything, and created an incredible reserve of knowledge and insight that she continues to fail to realize.

In summary, this is why we are here. I am trying to coerce Sanaya into sharing her knowledge, her stories and her palette with whoever will listen. She is convinced no one will, and that may just be the case (but it won’t be). Even then, that is no reason to not share what she knows, and at the very least this project will be the process of putting her incredible wine encyclopedia in the mind onto paper, so it will never be forgotten.

We have shared some wonderful times together over a bottle or two of wine, and through the days, months and years of sharing these experiences together we have both learned a lot. This is where those stories and knowledge will be dumped, forever being a resource for us, and hopefully you, to go back to and learn a thing or two about wine.