The Dream of Wine and Silk

I'm learning I'm a settler-colonizer because of wine, and acknowledging this requires a...revolution? Asking for a friend.

I started studying American wine this year to understand why we (Americans) treat it so differently from European wine. And what I found is that the story of wine in America IS the story of America (surprise surpriiiiiiiiise). For me, this changes what it means to walk a vineyard, which we know to be on stolen land.

Then, a few months into my studies, the Hamas attack of October 7th ignited an international conversation and saw a serious escalation in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people by the Israeli government. This is the part where I meet my responsibility as a writer by telling you that I am brand new to this topic—it was this date that I began learning about the 75-year-long conflict. That’s how new I am.

In fact, this isn’t an essay—it’s a question. I’m asking something like: how do we, as American wine people, care about genocide in a real way? How are we powerful?

As I grapple with feeling largely powerless to support the people of Palestine, I turn to my studies on American wine history and wonder if the way we begin affecting real change is with hard conversations about how our country, which funds human rights violations abroad and at home, got to be here in the first place. Does it start with a hard look at us?

I’m a wine writer, so that’s where I’ll begin.

The Israeli Wine PR Email

A few weeks ago, I received an email from an Israeli wine trade organization detailing their campaign, “Sip For Solidarity”. They had a hashtag: #DrinkIsrael and invited me to interview their point of contact.

The email detailed the attack by Hamas on October 7th, which happened mid-harvest, when many production teams had to abandon their work. Obviously, this was going to obliterate tourism and their vintages would be lost. This email was a request for support.

I wonder how many other people opened that email and thought I’m not touching that. I did.

But two months ago? Israeli wine would have excited me. And if I’m honest, my thoughtfulness around the political implications of taking this on didn’t feel righteous at all. First, it highlighted my previous ignorance. Then, it suggested that I was, perhaps, willing to accept certain forms of ethnic cleansing, forms that are less overt.

Like the kind operating in Gaza and the West Bank for 75 years, like the kind leading up to this escalation. And like the kind operating on the ground in my own country.

Settler Colonialism

Settler colonialism is a form of colonialism that aims to erase and replace the indigenous population, and for us here in the States, it is the story of us. It began with The Virginia Company, an English trading company chartered by King James 1 in 1606. The object was to colonize the eastern coast of America, then called Virginia.

The first colonizers chose this place because wild grapevines were growing everywhere, and there was a real desire to make wine that could rival France and Spain.

Settler colonialism is defined as a present project: continuous and ongoing in its efforts to forcefully take resources from indigenous people. This definition is how many argue that Israel is, in fact, a settler colony. We also know that America is a settler colony by this definition; we see it operating today as continued land annexation and a refusal to teach Native American history or practice land acknowledgments.

In early America, settlement depended on wine.

In A History Of Wine In America Vol. 1, Thomas Pinney refers to the “dream of wine and silk” as a driving force behind the English colonization of the American South. England badly wanted to make homegrown wine, silk, and oil. Early explorers, seeing wild grapevines growing all over the place, painted a picture of a place where England could make this dream come true.

Almost every colony began with the objective of making the first great wine. Establishing viticulture was a patriotic duty, and for a bunch of reasons that are fascinating but off-topic, they failed over and over again.

But the potential to make wine remained a selling point for each colony, and many early settlers had to lie through their teeth about how well it was going in order to continue to funnel money into their efforts.

Of course, we know that those efforts included owning slaves and committing genocide on the Native American people.

We continue to make wine on stolen land.

The day I closed that PR email from the Israeli trade org, I drove to a winery in North Carolina. Something felt off about my decision not to touch the Israeli wine situation while simultaneously preparing to write about wine in Buncombe County, on the ancestral land of the Anigiduwagi, more commonly known as the Cherokee. I don’t practice land acknowledgments in my work.

A few weeks later, Wine Spectator published an Instagram post about the plight of Israeli winemakers, and the comments were polarizing. I saw other people in my community calling them out, while others expressed gratitude for the support. But witnessing all of this—both in myself and others—felt like witnessing a kind of convenient accountability, one where many of us were finding it easy to remain accountable to justice because the issue was so far away, and the sacrifices we needed to make were few.

What does accountability look like?

In America, it’s public knowledge that we operate on stolen land. But when we walk a vineyard, do we understand that the story of settler colonialism in America begins with wine? Are we really being productive in how we critique colonialism or are we obliging the current PR etiquette?

And what does accountability look like in the wine industry? How do we reckon with the complicated truth of how we got here?

The point of this essay/question isn’t to derail the conversation of a ceasefire in Palestine, which I support. Instead, it’s to wonder if we’re really caring about genocide in a way that makes a difference. Wine can’t be untangled from the political environment in which it grows, and America is proof of that.

As wine people in America, where is our power and how should we assume responsibility?