Rebirth
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I took what was intended as a short break from wine writing in 2020, when it became clear that Covid was having a major impact on the wine business — no events, restaurants closing, no travel. I was busy writing a novel and decided to focus on that while Covid came and went. Covid came, but never went. And then my life was immensely saddened and complicated by my husband’s death following an accident in December 2020.
Two months into widowhood I discovered that someone had stolen and republished a large amount of content from the Swiss news web site I published from 2006 to 2016, including articles by many of the 40 people who worked with me. My photo is still there, to imply the site is legitimate, which it is not — and there was nothing to be done legally about it, I learned to my shock. This at first seemed like a slap in the face, given the larger matter of death in the family, but over time it angered me more. Eventually I decided to get out of the self-published blog business and move my work to a Substack newsletter/web site, using the writers’ platform Medium for most articles. Ellen’s Wine World, the blog, will remain online, but for the archives only. I will gradually move some of the more timeless archived articles to Medium, where you are reading this.
Grief is a strange bedfellow; initially, I kept very busy and then I abruptly ran out of steam and enthusiasm for several months. The Covid waves coupled with a historically poor wine harvest in most of Switzerland in 2021 further dampened my incentive to get back to work. On a purely practical level if you’ve lost your dinner partner, can’t invite guests and can’t go out to dinner, how do you taste wine without drinking yourself into a hole?
There was a silver lining: I began to hike. Hiking is balm for a bruised heart. It’s also a parallel path for understanding why wine is wonderful and so much more than a pleasing drink. To paraphrase Paul Klee (a drawing is just a line going for a walk), a wine is just a vine going for a walk. What better place to begin than Switzerland, with its 66,000 km of marked trails and the 148 km2 of vines that are used to make artisanal wines?
My new book, Wine Hiking Switzerland, the first in a series published by Helvetiq in Basel/Lausanne, comes out 6 September in English, French and German; details to follow. This newsletter is a complement to that work and will, I hope, encourage you to join me, in “walkin’ the vine,” mostly in Switzerland, but with forays into other wine landscapes. If you like wine and would like to understand it better, but you don’t want it to take over your life, this newsletter is for you.
You can expect wine and food news and tips, and a few words about wines I like, regularly. Hiking, yes, although less than in the first issue of the newsletter, used to introduce my new book. It will appear roughly twice a month in subscribers’ mailboxes, depending on my workload. In addition, I’m selecting two wines a week that will become part of Ellen’s Little Black Wine Book, available quarterly for Substack paid subscribers.
All feedback is welcome!
