I am relieved to see that pootle — of such frequent occurrence in my vocab — isn’t one of those weird words you learn from your family, only to realise in adulthood that it doesn’t exist and that your family is just a bit eccentric.

Indeed, pootle is a dictionary-level word meaning “to move or travel slowly, in a relaxed way, and without any real rush or specific purpose.”

For any of you who really know the south, you will recognise this sentiment: this is the southern French state in a sentence.

Like the apéro, the pootle is a palate cleanser for the mind, body and soul. It is the perfect balance of doing something whilst doing nothing. I came to really savour the pootle while I lived in Stoke Newington in London. Perhaps it was the place — Stokey’s modern iteration being a pootle-heaven (previously it was the place to buy crack) — or the fact that my intense work schedule and responsibilities meant that I savoured every moment where my mind and body weren’t needed by anyone or for anything.

I could spend hours lolloping up Church Street in Stoke Newington, mindlessly pulling at the racks of clothes in the charity shops, looking at gorgeous furniture and knick-knacks I couldn’t afford. I would pick at flapjacks from family-run cafés whilst aimlessly tracing a path through Clissold Park. I would get lost in the back streets of my neighbourhood, maybe stumbling across an old pub, drinking a beer and reading a newspaper left over from some other human.

Sometimes I would just walk to nowhere. In the world of the pootle, there is no A to B. There is no destination, no purpose, nothing I need to come home with. Maybe I will come home with washing-up tablets and a keyring shaped like an octopus. Maybe I will fall in love (one can hope), or maybe I will get caught in the rain.

Having said that, I think I may be looking back at my own ability to slow down and smell the roses with a little more grace and calm than I ever actually achieved.

I remember once telling (bragging to) my therapist about how much I had achieved in my state of relaxation, how successful my pootle was. She rightfully pointed out that this supposed relaxation wasn’t a competition to be won. I laughed. It was. And I was the winner.

Needless to say, I wasn’t really the winner. I had stress-induced alopecia, and constantly dreamt of living in a place where pootle was a state of mind. Welcome to southern France.

I would like to argue that I am better at relaxing now. But perhaps this is less to do with me and more to do with my environment. People literally walk slower here (to my inner distress), terraces are filled with people at all times of the day, drinking coffee or pastis, smoking and generally doing little else. The best coffee shop in town doesn’t open until 9am - sometimes even 10! - not giving a toss about hustling that morning trade. My gym doesn’t do a class until 10:30am, and even when the south is filled with tourists (and money), a lot of shops and restaurants close.

And while I am better at taking mid-week afternoons off to languish on the beach and prioritising market-meanders over work calls (I know, I know, I am a hero), I do weirdly struggle with the pace of it all sometimes. Hilariously, it was one of the topics that could ignite a real fight between me and my southern French ex. He would rib me for my “early dinner” at 8pm, chastise me for “rushing” him, and balk at my suggestion of an early morning swim at 7am. Mon Dieu! Non!

However, whilst my London-core instinctively wants to push against the grain of all this goddamn relaxation and pressureless existence, there is one part of this country’s cultural pootle that I want to take to my grave: The Apéro.

As it turns out, an al-fresco apéro in the south of France was the medicine I always needed. A sun slinking low in the sky, the Mediterranean shimmering like gold-flecked topaz, a pack of Camel Bleus, a bag filled with chilled pét nat, all whilst surrounded by a group of gorgeous French women. That is medicinal.

How to Rebound Like a Legendary 38-Year-Old

I felt it would be unfair to tease this on Instagram and then never actually write about it. As most of you likely know, I was dumped by Le Prof - by text - just over a month ago. And in doing so, he has unleashed me back onto the market. What does that mean at 38? Apparently: lock up your sons, your fathers, your husbands (I’ll explain), and any other man aged between 20 and 60.

For the last few years, I’ve been bombarded on Instagram by funny anecdotes of women coming into new-mid-age, whereby your allure suddenly stretches across a much wider age bracket than it used to. Where we once cast our eyes toward older men - and they, right back at us - you slowly become aware that there’s now another set of eyes on you too: their sons (not always literally, but you know what I mean..). You realise you’re being hungrily checked out by both. How bizarre. How bloody excellent.

And so, this month I downloaded an app and almost immediately matched with a married father of two in a non-monogamous relationship (an ENM, for the less-modern-dating-literate), and a very hot, age-appropriate winemaker. I snogged a 23-year-old in a club while we drank vodka cranberries and felt like I’d accidentally been transported back to 2008. And - a story for another day - I was rescued from the sea by a man (in his 50s) who then somehow tracked me down on the internet and asked me out over email.

Many of my girlfriends have taken younger lovers - full-blown relationships with men a decade their junior. And while I’m not hankering for anything serious, when a 24-year-old called Damien kissed me, and then licked the sweat and saltwater from my neck as we cruised along the Med on his friend’s boat, I couldn’t help but think my friends were onto something.

Maybe beach apéro and hot, lickable 24-year-olds are all the medicine I need this summer..?

Bisous hotties xx

P.S. If you want to know how great a Sète-style apéro can really look, feel and taste, come read my full Buvette guide here. Only for the hungry and the curious.

However, July was also the month that I came to realise that an elderly neighbour had been slashing my bike tyres because she didn’t like where I parked it. It was also the month that a bat - known as a bald mouse, une chauve-souris, in French - flew into my bathroom and somehow drowned in my loo. My trip to Sardinia accidentally began with a traumatic six-hour long bike ride in which I ran out of water and envisaged my unnecessary death being announced somewhere inconsequential in a British tabloid newspaper. The Sardinia trip also laid bare a friend’s not so great relationship with alcohol and a serious, towering displeasure at their forgetting of a parcel of suckling pig from an agriturismo. It would have been funny if he hadn’t been so horrible.

And it was also the month I got dumped by text message, at 1:18am.

As I write this, there’s still a week of July left — and my thirty-eighth birthday lies somewhere in its final reaches. I have a feeling this month still has more to give, for good or for bad.

Maybe it’s the lolloping, lazy pace of summer, the collective heat-stupor, the sense of closing one chapter on the eve of a birthday — but none of it feels like it really matters. I’m not especially sad or angry — not about the breakup, the slashed tyres, or the drunken tantrum in Sardinia. I think that’s entirely down to having such badass, honest, hilarious, supportive friends around me. On the ferry back from Sardinia, I found myself daydreaming about them like a love-struck teenager. I often say I’m not good at relationships. But then I look at my friends — at the depth, the love, the support, the connection — and I understand that I am good at relationships. I am good at loving people, and at being loved.

When I made the snap decision to move to France two years ago, I don’t think I appreciated how much my friends were going to become collateral in my hot-headed decision-making. And I don’t think any of us appreciated how much they’d have to do to pick up the slack, plug the holes, and catch me when I fell — offering endless flexibility when calls and texts went unanswered, until I’d call back needing something from them.

They’ve offered me beds, food, money, holidays, so much fucking laughter, and never-ending support and positivity for my crazy ideas. They’ve shown me a level of empathy and care that has pulled me out of some of my darkest days. They also know exactly when to tell me I’m being a dick — being too blunt, or just annoying, sanctimonious, and a bit pompous.

But they also just let me be me, even when they are surreptitiously dragged along for whatever adventure I decide on next, knowing full well that they’re going to have to deal with all the chaos that ensues. I am eternally grateful to you all - and love you all so very much.

Almost becoming a water-jousting WAG

Before I got unceremoniously dumped last weekend, I was experiencing my first season as a water-jousting girlfriend. What the fuck is water-jousting, I hear you ask?

Well, it’s sort of like medieval horse jousting, but on a long rowing boat, with high plinths at the back where the big man-jousters stand.

I’d initially wanted to join in myself, seeing it as a way of ingratiating myself truly into local culture. But after realising the lances were topped with sharp metal prongs, and watching a friend snap her ankle during a training session, my adventurous spirit wilted — and I decided that watching the matches on the quayside with a cold beer in hand was by far preferable.

Something you should know about Le Prof — my now former French lover — is that he had two great loves in his life: water-jousting and history. He first watched a match at nine years old and was immediately mesmerised — by the sport, the energy, and, I think, in part, by the strong sense of masculinity running through the whole thing. But when I asked him about the sport’s origins, he admitted he wasn’t sure. For such a water-jousting, history man, I was surprised he didn’t know. It became apparent that, in fact, nobody really knows.

What we do know is that joutes have been played in Sète since its creation in 1666 — even throughout both world wars. Some trace the sport as far back as Ancient Egypt, where it was used as a form of real water combat; others point to Ancient Greece, with Greek settlers said to have brought it to Marseille around 570 BC.

By Medieval times, joutes had spread through France, with matches being played out in front of royals and adoring fans in rivers and canals across the country. Today, there are apparently enclaves of the sport still in existence across France, but down here, in the Languedoc, the sport is thriving. And the men that play? They are seen as demi-gods by many; the picture of manhood, masculinity and true southern grit.

The essence of joutes can feel so charming - a sort of romantic continuation of tradition and camaraderie. The players dress all in white, with striped blue and white tops, the crowds are adoring, and the air is thick with the smell of the sea and the fragrant scent of pastis - the jouster’s undeniable drink of choice. There are live bands in the stands, and on the boats themselves, there are musicians who play traditional Languedoc folk music like “La Charge,” the tune that accompanies the men into battle.

Whilst I am still very much enamoured with this sport, I am also aware that there is an underbelly imbued with traditional ideas of masculinity, gender, machismo and even aggression. It is a sport that only recently allowed women to start participating - but only in certain clubs, and begrudgingly at best. I have heard from some of the female (and male) jousters that they are ignored completely by the male jousters, the younger men being the most against their joining at all.

Writing this all so soon in the aftermath of dumping-gate means that I am feeling a bit tempestuous, and tempted to draw parallels between certain people, sports, behaviours and expectations of who we are and what we want as men and women. I remember the first time Le Prof told me that the most dedicated WAGs would come to every match, holding the bag of their male jousting partner, and when, inevitably, he would fight, land in the water, and be pulled out onto the quayside drenched, she was there with a towel and dry clothes. She could then take the bag home, so that he could continue, unencumbered, for a night fuelled by pastis and bravado.

He must have brought this up with me four or five times. Did he expect me to do this? I have a strong suspicion that he would have really liked me to be the dedicated and doting jousting WAG… Unfortunately for him, that just isn’t me.

The jousting season is short but intense; from June onwards, there are almost weekly matches in the canals of Sète, culminating in the Saint-Louis festival at the end of August - 19th - 25th August - where the Top Jousting Man is crowned. His name to be part of Sètois history.

Whilst I might not be cheering on this particular jouster anymore, I will definitely be there. And, if you are in the vicinity, I highly recommend that you come along too!

And then, one day, you go to think of them. To repaint the angles of their face, searching for the soft lines around their eyes, the shape of their mouth mid-smile. But you falter.

That face, once as sharp as cut glass, is now hazy in your memory. Their number has slipped off your WhatsApp “Frequently Contacted” list. Their name — once lingering hungrily on your lips — has quietly tucked itself away. You have to rustle around, move some boxes in your mind, to find it.

But I’ve come to realise that this crush — and every crush that has come before it — is a particular kind of choice. It is a choice that, in the moment, makes you feel violently alive, but ultimately is an experience that will wash over you, through you, but never really change you. It is the perfect choice for someone who craves intensity without commitment, and intimacy without having to give anything.

This is the beginning of an essay that I wrote in May. It talked about my sense of (never really) belonging, but my active decision to try and ground myself and begin the work it takes to really belong somewhere. It was filled with thoughts of family and heritage and history. I hadn’t realised when I was writing it that it was also my two year anniversary of living in France.

But something happened last month. Firstly, I didn’t publish a substack. No irreverent commentary on France or wine or boys. I wrote an essay and I hated it. I sounded a bit like a naval-gazing asshole and it made me cringe. For the first time in almost two years, my mind became completely muddled and unable to make coherent sense of my tangled thoughts and feelings.

I am still not really able to, but I think that I am beginning to understand a little more of what was and is going on. I have been here, in the sweaty realm of southern France for two years. Two fucking years! How did that happen? What have I achieved? What did I want to achieve? Sometimes, it feels like I am not really sure.

But what I can acknowledge is that I am feeling a bit paralysed. My creative spark is dimmed and my mind feels rather void. I have always loved the act of dreaming, of visualising and idealising some perfect future version of my life. I inherited this from my mother - the consummate dreamer. And for so long, these fantasises revolved around a life out of London. It was a life by the sea, away from the traffic and the chaos of nine million people. It was to have a multi-hyphenate career and a sense of personal freedom over my time.

And then, at some point the penny dropped. I became weirdly self-aware that it was happening. The dream was in motion. The sunshine and the affordable flat and the career that scoops up anything exciting that I want to do is happening. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I think that is why I started this essay with the memory of this crush. It was a moment when my imagination felt painfully alive, thinking of something that remained tantalizingly out of reach. And now my life is in the throes of something bigger and more profound. As May came and went, I was in the trenches of navigating two new businesses, a challenging professional relationship, and a serious romantic connection that is anything but throwaway.

I am in the depths of a committed life, and I realise that I actually find that very uncomfortable. My actions have consequences and I no longer live with the completely untethered abandon that I used to. People take stock of my actions, my moods and my desires. I am part of a headcount and a community. My boyfriend asked me something the other day; whether being in a relationship changed the way I felt I could write? Whether I felt I could be as honest as I have been?

The question cracked something for me. I don’t feel free in the way that I did before. I am no longer a voyeur, an outsider listening in and wryly commenting on the world as she sees it. I am now in it. Part of it. I don’t think that this is a bad thing, but it is a new thing for me. It is a total shift in my identity and personal perception. I am not entirely sure of what this new version of myself is.

I think I am grieving my old self a bit. And with that, I have momentarily lost some of the creative liberty that I once felt. You’d think that the hardest part of my journey would have been moving to a new country, immersing myself in a new culture and language, making new friends in my late 30s or going it alone professionally in this savage economy. But it turns out that for me, the hardest part of this is not being able to run away or blow it all up with some delicious mischief when the shit starts to get real.

Until next month (hopefully).

Bises x

My first essay included conversations with sommeliers turned brand managers, communication leads and entrepreneurs. This week, I will dive into the mosaic of my own experiences, as well as talking to people doing sales, buying, running a podcast and becoming a winemaker.

Sara Rossi | UK | Now: Trade Sales Manager

In one or two sentences — who were you as a sommelier?

I worked as a sommelier in London for 11 years. I began my career as a Commis at the 45 Park Lane Hotel, where I was fortunate to work with an extensive wine list and serving many iconic wines. I tasted produces that I could never been able to afford in everyday life.

After three years, I felt to broaden my experience and joined Gordon Ramsay Royal Hospital Road. It was an intense environment with long hours and high pressure, but it taught me discipline and helped refine my service skills.

Following that, I moved to Fera at Claridge’s by Simon Rogan, where the wine program was entirely different from anything I had experienced before. Winelist focused on biodynamic, sustainable, and organic wines. This experience was transformative for me, both professionally and personally, as I met incredibly passionate people in hospitality—many of whom have become some of my dearest friends.

My most significant experience as a sommelier was at Trinity Restaurant, where I spent four years as Head Sommelier. During my time there, I was honored to be nominated UK Best Sommelier of 2020. This recognition came at a meaningful moment, just as we were emerging from lockdown, bringing a sense of positivity and celebration.

When did you realise it was your time to leave the floor? Were you nervous? Excited? Did you know what you were going to do?

After more than ten years in hospitality, I felt the need to explore and learn something new, still within the wine industry, but in a different sector. I spoke with Chef Byatt (Trinity) about my decision to leave, and he was very understanding. I was nervous and uncertain about the future, as I was changing my career entirely and wasn’t sure how it would turn out. I began considering possible opportunities and career paths, and working as a Sales Rep seemed like the perfect fit. It allowed me to stay connected with sommeliers and buyers while enjoying a dynamic role that didn’t require sitting in an office all day.

Did you do anything to prepare yourself before you finally left — practically, financially, or mentally?

When I decided to explore opportunities in sales, I reached out to several people already working in the field and asked as many questions as I could. I wanted to understand not only the day-to-day aspects of the role but also how to prepare for interviews and effectively share that I was seeking a new opportunity.

What have you done since leaving?

I joined Roberson Wine in 2023 as a sales representative. It was my first role in sales, and I also took on extra shifts on the floor in restaurants and wine bars to supplement my income. As you can imagine, I was very junior in the role, and the salary was not at the level of a Head Sommelier.

What does your working life look like now?

I have been working at Vine Trail for almost two years now in the trade department. I have really enjoyed my role: I work remotely, as the Vine Trail office is based in Bristol, while my colleague Alessandra, my Director Rémi, and I look after the London trade. We work from home and regularly go out to meet clients for meetings, events, and tastings.

My day usually starts at home, where I check emails and respond to orders and requests, and in the afternoon I am often out visiting clients. I am also involved in organising trade events and producer visits, which I really enjoy.

I think my former restaurant self would be very proud of what I have achieved and who I have become—and probably quite surprised too, as she was once very uncertain about the new role.

What were the sommelier skills that carried you — the ones you already had but perhaps didn’t fully appreciate until you were on the other side?

One thing that really helped me transition from hospitality into the trade was my previous experience as a sommelier. It allowed me to understand the dynamics of restaurants, as well as the timing and needs of sommeliers.

Working on the floor also made me more resilient and, above all, patient, which I find now very helpful in my role. Wine knowledge is another key skill I developed during my time in restaurants, and it’s something I now apply to my day-to-day role while continuing to grow and evolve.

If you could go back and give your former sommelier self any advice, what would it be?

Truly enjoy each moment and the experiences along the way. Travel as much as you can, don’t be afraid to make mistakes, and remember that it’s okay to take a break from time to time.

Mattia Scarpazza | UK | Founder of Looking into Wine podcast + Marketing manager

In one or two sentences — who were you as a sommelier?

For 9 years, I was Head sommelier at Petersham Nurseries in Richmond, London. And then I had a brief part-time stint at the end at 67 Pall Mall.

When did you realise it was your time to leave the floor? Were you nervous? Excited? Did you know what you were going to do?

After nearly a decade on the floor, I felt it was time to try something new. I felt and still do (I only left 3 years ago) happy of my decision, but I do miss some of the opportunites to taste great wines and the conversations with other somms colleagues.

Did you do anything to prepare yourself before you finally left — practically, financially, or mentally?

I have done a lot of work on marketing and content marketing in particular prior moving to that part of the industry. While I was working as Somm, I began working on these skills, networking and building my confidence.

What have you done since leaving?

I have primarily worked in a start-up as Content Manger and Digital Marketing. I had the opportunity to join full time with them so I took it. I have had some occasional hospo day gigs along the way.

What does your working life look like now? Tell us your role, what you actually do day to day, and what your former restaurant self would make of it.

I manage content about wine producers, create stories to pass on to collectors, worldwide. It is a blast speaking to some on the most influential wineries in thew world to tell their story in our own way.

I think my old-self would be proud on what I’m working on and the creativity involved with it all. I love the fact there is something to learn everyday.

What were the sommelier skills that carried you — the ones you already had but perhaps didn’t fully appreciate until you were on the other side?

The ability to quickly sum-up a winery, understand what clients need in a few sentences and what is not essential ( a lot other technical things as well beyond any collectors).

If you could go back and give your former sommelier self any advice, what would it be?

Try to use the network of somms and really explore other avenues that interest you. A lot of people what to know opinions and ideas from sommeliers. Use this. Test the waters with different things you are passionate about or you think you might enjoy doing. It takes time - sometime years for those new assets to pay-off.

Hanna Krilov Cohen | New York | Wine Specialist & Buyer

In one or two sentences — who were you as a sommelier?

I was a sommelier in mainly French wine list driven restaurants and wine bars that worked to convince any and every one to drink Burgundy or Champagne with their meals. I was encouraged early on to specialise within the wine world and I did so with Burgundy.

When did you realise it was your time to leave the floor? Were you nervous? Excited? Did you know what you were going to do?

I’m not quite sure I was completely convinced that I was ready to leave the floor at the time that I did. I knew I was ready to move on from the restaurant I was working at and had an offer to work in retail, as well as an offer to be a wine director at a restaurant. I got some great advice to try retail, even just for a little because that opportunity wouldn’t come around as quickly as a restaurant job would have. I tried it out knowing at any moment I could choose to go back to restaurants, and almost two years later I haven’t run yet. I always had this feeling that I wouldn’t be the best sales rep, so when looking outside of restaurant jobs, retail felt like a natural progression. I was incredibly nervous, but I didn’t really know what to expect at all from this new role.

Did you do anything to prepare yourself before you finally left — practically, financially, or mentally?

I think physically I had to prepare myself as it was a really big adjustment to sit in front of a computer for most of my day and not be on my feet. Financially there was a welcome of more stability and structure as I was moving from a tipped role where there was no real consistency to a salary position.

What have you done since leaving?

Since leaving restaurants I have worked at just one job as a wine specialist/buyer at Chambers Street Wines in New York. I started off just as the buyer for Burgundy and have since expanded to Champagne, Germany, and Austria as well. I have had the opportunity to travel much more frequently, with two trips to Burgundy and a trip to Champagne in the last year in a half.

What does your working life look like now? Tell us your role, what you actually do day to day, and what your former restaurant self would make of it.

I work approximately 9-5ish Monday through Friday with one day working from home, something I never thought possible! I buy Burgundy, Champagne, Germany, and Austria for the retail shop Chambers Street Wines. As much as ‘buyer’ is a big portion of my title, I spend most of my time selling wines. I write a lot of content for email blasts to our newsletters and spend a lot of time tasting and researching wines in order to form those emails.

Additionally, I sell a lot directly to customers whether it be allocated wines, or just special offers that I think specific people would enjoy. I help sell wines on the floor of the shop when needed and make sure our shelves are full of a wide array of selections for our customers.

I think my former restaurant self would be proud that I have stuck to myself and kept the same level of pride in my work. I haven’t swayed from supporting the wines and winemakers I love. I think my personality has always driven me to just try my best at whatever it is I am working on, so I think I have worked really hard to keep the same level of work and precision in retail that I would normally have done on the floor.

What were the sommelier skills that carried you — the ones you already had but perhaps didn’t fully appreciate until you were on the other side?

I always carried very strong organizational skills as a somm that I think helped greatly when I started working on the floor. My day is much less regimented and it takes organization from myself to schedule my day. I think I always was confident in my wine knowledge, but I think switching roles really ensured that feeling in me. Being able to take that knowledge and skills into an entirely different role was very eye opening to me.

If you could go back and give your former sommelier self any advice, what would it be?

I would tell myself to reflect a bit more on what aspects of my role as a sommelier I like most, and how I can move into new roles that allow me to focus best on what I enjoy most. This is something I have learned more recently, and I think could have helped me a lot back then. I think I would also tell myself to focus more on the wines and less so on the everything else going on in a restaurant. There can be a lot of distractions, but if you’re able to focus and just learn as much as you can on each and every wine you’ll get so much more out of it.

Sarah Wright | UK | Winemaker - of own Wright Wine + for London Cru

In one or two sentences — who were you as a sommelier?

I started my London somm life at 10 Cases, then went to Lucky Cat in Mayfair until the pandemic hit. When the lockdown lifted, I got hired as the head sommelier for The Mulwray, Evelyn’s Table, and The Blue Posts (part of Paskin Studio). I worked with Honey Spencer and our unbelievably talented wine team to create the low-intervention wine program for that building until January 2024. I’m still causing chaos doing disco shifts at a few venues in London (usually Honey’s restaurant Sune in Broadway Market).

When did you realise it was your time to leave the floor? Were you nervous? Excited? Did you know what you were going to do?

When I was helping with London Cru’s 2020 harvest, Alex Hurley - the head winemaker - jokingly asked if I missed the floor when I was halfway through a tank dig-out. I, earnestly (and probably high off the CO2 fumes in that tank), told him, ‘I never want to *not* do this.’ I really fell in love with all the dirty, difficult tasks that winemaking involves. So when I was hired to run the wine program at The Mulwray, I told the leadership that I needed to build in time away from the floor to help with harvest every year.

I enjoyed working in hospitality, and I adored building a wine program of which I’m still so proud, but my heart was counting beats until the first pick of the year. I started seeing signs that I wasn’t going to get the support for that harvest time away each year, and a change in the head office’s attitude towards the company-wide wine program felt like they were going in a different direction to our initial vision, so when I was able to take a harvest gig down in South Africa in early 2024, the timing seemed right for me to step away from full-time hospitality.

Did you do anything to prepare yourself before you finally left — practically, financially, or mentally?

I’m quite lucky, really--I’ve got an incredible husband who’s a software engineer, so (in the interest of transparency) my financial situation is solid.

Practically, though, there are a lot of changes that I’ve had to make. Working at a wine bar in Soho, a Michelin-starred restaurant, or a neighborhood restaurant in East London, I definitely put more time and effort into my appearance and attire. Now I spend most of my days either creating or cleaning up messes in the vineyard or the winery. I might call my current daily uniform ‘emo pre-teen boy’ since I’m now wearing hoodies and dark-coloured t-shirts - usually with a wine-themed graphic - and quick-drying hiking trousers. I still carry my pen, wine opener, lighter, and Sharpie - my service kit is more of an emotional blanket than you’d expect, but it makes me feel ready to face the day.

I’m not eating staff meals most days, so I’ve also been cooking and ‘meal-prepping’ at home a lot more. I feel like I’m becoming a bit of a cliché, sometimes--I’m waking up early, stocking up on tupperware that doesn’t leak in my bag, making sure I have a book to read on the Tube and trying to time my commute to handle rush hour. My hours are closer to the ‘Normie’ Monday-Friday 9-to-5 than they’ve been since before I moved to the UK, but I feel myself butting up against the idea that I’m not ‘Hospo’ anymore. Does that feeling make me mentally underprepared to transition from ‘hospo’ to ‘normie?’ Probably. Am I thinking too much about this? Also probably.

I’ve also started a wine brand and had to figure out all the UK registration forms, different governing bodies, licenses, and miles of red tape that go along with starting a business. I’m an immigrant, so all the legal and logistical details in setting that up feel very ‘two countries separated by a common language,’ and I’m honestly still trying to parse all the ins and outs of owning and running a business in the UK.

What have you done since leaving?

I’ve been able to help out in two harvests down in South Africa in 2024 and 2025, in addition to making wine here in the UK, as well as the aforementioned Agent-of-Chaos role I’ve played on the floor of a few of my friends’ restaurants. I had a bit of time repping grower Champagne as well, and while I’m still a huge fan of the wines, I’m much more passionate about making wine than I am about selling it. I’ve now got three vintages of my own label (Wright Wine, not to be confused with Joel Wright’s Wright Wines portfolio) as well as becoming the Assistant Winemaker at London Cru, where Alex has allowed me to get involved in winemaking every year since that 2020 harvest.

What does your working life look like now? Tell us your role, what you actually do day to day, and what your former restaurant self would make of it.

I’m a full-time winemaker now, so my days and weeks are dictated by a different chaos from that of shift work. Harvest and fermentation are very seasonal, but when the grapes have come off the vine and into the winery, I am tethered to the tanks for at least 13 hours every day making sure the ferments are healthy and progressing well.

Even outside of harvest, vineyard work and finished-wine care take up time every week, and cleaning and maintenance of the winery and our equipment add to the to-do list. On top of winemaking, we have private and public events every week in the winery that need to be organized, programmed, staffed, and supplied, so the event planning and execution is always filling up my schedule even when the winemaking is pretty chilled. Most days I’m at work by 9:30am and leaving before 6pm, though, so it’s still much closer to a Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 schedule than I’ve ever had at a restaurant.

When working in a restaurant, a Saturday off is a precious, rare occasion--I always felt like I was back amongst the living after shifts that had me on a vampire schedule. I still have about two Saturday work events each month, but they’re shorter days than a shift (or double) on the floor, and I can still plan to have a dinner or a social event that same day without cramming it into a Saturday morning before shift or expecting it to occur after the restaurant closes (guaranteeing we end up at El Camion or Bar with Shapes for a Name--or invading a friend’s home--to end the night). The ‘work-life balance’ is much more focused on life now, and I’m enjoying the extra time I have to bake, read, and see my friends during daylight hours.

What were the sommelier skills that carried you — the ones you already had but perhaps didn’t fully appreciate until you were on the other side?

Keep your service kit with you at all times - you never know when an afternoon will have you searching the nearest high street for a shite bottle-opener because you and your (also-sommelier) friend wanted to have a bottle in the park on a sunny day, and nary a corkscrew was to be had between the two of you! Always be prepared.

Translating between wine-speak and human-speak is so important. Somms spend most of our tableside time trying to create a bridge of understanding what a guest actually wants when they ask for a ‘light, dry white wine.’ I’ve got an arsenal of guiding questions and observational tools to figure out how best to lead them to choosing a wine that will give them a great experience. And winemaking, though it shares a lot of the same language with sommelier work, has the same translation difficulties. When I’m sharing the wines we make with a group of non-winemakers, trying to create meaning between our levels of understanding is always a process of trying different narratives and techniques so we can all walk away with a positive shared experience.

If you could go back and give your former sommelier self any advice, what would it be?

Be kind to yourself first, your team next, and your guests third. If you know what you want and you protect your needs and priorities, it becomes easier to create reliable and enduring relationships with your team. If you and your fellow workers can rely on one another as a team to achieve your service goals, hospitality--true hospitality, an ardent welcoming of guests into your space for an experience that everyone can enjoy--is almost a guaranteed result.

When you find your people, cherish and celebrate with them. I feel very lucky to have many former colleagues for whom I care very deeply, and whose successes I am proud to celebrate and encourage--and from whom I have received incredible support and love.

Remember that while you know a lot about wine, you don’t know everything. Keep learning, keep exploring, and go to as many tastings as you can. And taste wines from the supermarket every once in a while; most people are getting their wine education from the offerings at Lidl, Tesco, or Waitrose, and keeping that frame of reference in mind when communicating with guests can do wonders for our mutual understanding.

Imposter syndrome doesn’t go away! I still get invited to trade tastings, and I love going to them - even though I’m no longer a wine buyer, I am lucky to have the ear of quite a few wine buyers and we love sharing our latest finds. I struggle with attending, since there’s definitely an argument that I wouldn’t be there ‘legitimately,’ but I also think it’s important for winemakers to be knowledgeable about portfolios and producers that are being shown in the London market - and I think of so many of the attendees and suppliers as friends and peers. So I’m still going to pretend that I belong, fight that imposters syndrome, and believe that I’ve fooled them all into accepting me (queue devious laughter.

Amber Gardner | France | Freelancer + founder of Buvette Tours + Deux Soeurs Export

What have you done since leaving?

I have done so many things to make money in the last few years, and uncovered ways of making a living in this industry that I didn’t know existed. There’s no better way to explain it than just listing them:

• Working with importers and wine brands across buying, sales, events and content creation — newsletters, blogs, social media, packaging, tech sheets. There are plenty of importers that are open to part-time set-ups with people, so don’t be afraid to reach out and ask them. This is how I did it!

• This naturally led to helping wineries find importers (as an agent), and working on buying introductions for a finder’s fee.

• Knowing the UK market so well, but now with a solid footing among producers, I have been able to do translation, comms and storytelling aimed at opening up English-speaking markets — working directly with producers and with PR agencies.

• Good old-fashioned wine writing. There is real demand for writers with a sommelier’s perspective, and this Substack has actually led to real commissions — which has felt like a very good reason to keep going.

• Wine tourism, through my own company Buvette Tours, as well as tastings for local businesses and working with other tour companies as a French-to-English guide and translator.

• Hosting events — tastings and wine dinners — with the likes of Plots & Parcels.

What does your working life look like now?

I fall somewhere between entrepreneur and freelancer. I am — accidentally — setting up two companies simultaneously, while doing plenty of freelance work around them to keep me sane and solvent.

My working week is in constant flux, which I love. I almost always get up early, when I’m most productive, which gives me a solid morning before things inevitably come up in the afternoon (or I want to go to the beach). Right now, my weeks are filled with pitching and business development, writing and content creation, and navigating French bureaucracy — a very real and occasionally painful part of the job.

I work fewer hours than I did on the floor, and my life is considerably more balanced. But the constant need for self-motivation can be tough, and the financial instability is real. What I have managed, though, is to carve out something that is varied both commercially and creatively — and for that I’m genuinely grateful.

What were the sommelier skills that carried you?

First and foremost: my network. Being based in London meant I had met an enormous number of producers and worked with many importers over the years. That network has been invaluable — and building and sustaining it is absolutely a skill in itself.

Closely behind that is my understanding of the trade, and particularly of the consumer. Having bought wine, sold wine and talked about wine to real people, I know what end customers are thinking, wanting and worrying about. That perspective is genuinely rare, and importers, brands and winemakers need it.

Communication. As a sommelier, you are talking to people constantly — most of whom know very little about wine. You learn to make it snappy, engaging and fun, and to tailor the experience to the person in front of you. That skill translates surprisingly well across formats and audiences, from winery newsletters to consumer-facing content.

Finally, problem-solving and adaptability. Many of my clients have appreciated — not always immediately — how resourceful I can be. It’s probably why I can move in a single day between scheduling Instagram content, building a pitch deck, writing an article, selling wine and translating for a group of Americans.

If you could go back and give your former sommelier self any advice, what would it be?

Travel for work as much as you can. Take that six-month opportunity in Japan. Do harvest in South Africa. Help make cider in Devon. Just do it all.

Beyond that: be nice. Don’t be a dick. This industry is small, and if you are thoughtful, curious and genuinely good to people, it comes back to you — I promise. I can’t count the number of times I’ve picked up the phone or sent an email asking for help, a contact or a favour. Almost every time, someone says yes.

Oh, and make your clients sign contracts, even if they are your friends. This may seem obvious, but projects can move quickly, and in the face of slow communication from them, and your eagerness for work, it can feel reasonable to let things slide. This year alone, I will lose thousands of pounds in earnings from verbal promises but having nothing signed. A very tough lesson to learn.

I really hope that this has been or will be of some help to some of you out there. And if anyone has any questions, or wants to chat about anything in more detail, please know that my proverbial door is always open.

Right, I am off for a weekend of wedding wildness (not mine) in Spain.

Hasta luego chicosssss x

We had opened the hotel in the immediate aftermath of Covid — after many stop-starts and lost furlough — into an environment that I can only now recognise was physically, mentally and emotionally extremely challenging. For any of you who are regular readers this will mean something to you: my hair began falling out ten weeks after we went back to work.

And so, I almost immediately knew that I no longer wanted to work on the floor; my whole perspective and enjoyment of life had shifted. I now loved going to bed early, watching TV with my housemates in the evening, and not working 12-hour (sometimes longer) shifts. But I was finally reaching a pinnacle of my professional career, and waving a white flag now felt like it would undo all of those years of hard work and progression.

Even if I did find the courage to leave — to pivot — where would I go? And who could I become, in the wake of a career built entirely in restaurants and wine?

You see, a career in wine and hospitality is different to other careers in so many ways. Firstly, there are the shift patterns — further exacerbated by working in hotels — meaning your working life can take place anywhere between Monday and Sunday, 10am to 1am. Because of this disordered existence, the rest of your life begins to shift to accommodate the new normal. It becomes more and more difficult to maintain relationships outside of this world, and so, slowly but surely, this becomes your world. Your friends, your lovers, your acquaintances, your parties, your time off, your hobbies — they all begin to orbit your new dimension of wine and hospitality.

And the thing about being a sommelier in particular is that you need your world to orbit wine. Without that, there is no way to consume, learn and network as much as you need to in order to be great at your job. Even for those not reaching for the highest accolades, your time is spent at tastings, masterclasses, lunches, dinners, and — if you are lucky — on trips. And, unlike in most careers where training and development are considered part of the job, in the world of the sommelier these endeavours are undertaken almost entirely outside of your working hours.

Throw all of this on top of a 48-hour working week, and you will find yourself in the weeds — both mentally and physically — very quickly.

I am aware that I have made this sound like some terrible cult that isolates you from your friends and family. But when you are in it and happy, it is the most wonderful thing. You choose a life in wine because you love it — it certainly isn’t for the money or the ease. Add this passion to the world of hospitality, and you open up an entire sub-culture that belongs only to you and your new colleagues, friends and lovers. You can get reservations where others can’t. You are treated like royalty in even the chicest of dining rooms. You receive exciting invitations, opportunities to taste incredible wines, unspoken discounts, extra dishes sent out from the kitchen. And this isn’t just in your home city — you are part of an international club, a gang that transcends borders.

And, oh my god, I loved it. For so many years it made me so happy. It was anything but easy, but I dove in head first — taking every opportunity, accepting every invitation, trying everything, travelling the world, and building a network of friends and colleagues far and wide.

But eventually, something shifted. The shine of great wine, coveted invitations and star treatment began to fade, and I was left facing the daily grind of post-Covid hospitality — the hours, the uncertainty, the uninhibited guests — without the pleasure of the perks to take the edge off.

I will not pretend that I wasn’t scared. I felt tired, overwhelmed, uninspired, and utterly lost. I had no savings, no family who could cushion a fall, and little energy to think about what came next.

But, as you have probably gathered, I somehow made it out. I made moves — some of them terrible. I networked, got creative, said yes to things I wasn’t sure I could do, took on work I didn’t love to fund the work I did, and slowly began building towards the projects I was passionate about. And after four strange, full years, I have come to realise that I had far more skills and knowledge at my disposal as a sommelier than I ever gave myself credit for.

And this is why I am writing this — for anyone who is curious, ready for a change, or who simply needs to see where this wonderful career can take you. I’ll be exploring the many unexpected ways I have managed to reshape my professional life, and talking to former sommeliers from around the world about their own moves off the floor and into a whole range of other careers.

With the array of responses coming in from all over the world, and from a myriad of different points of view, I will break this down into two parts. One coming out today, and the other next weekend.

Juliette Bertrand | France, Australia | Now: Freelance / Studying Diploma

In one or two sentences — who were you as a sommelier?

It might seem surprising for a French person, but I officially became a sommelier whilst I was in Australia, after falling head over heels for the world of fine dining and high-end hospitality while working at the Museum Art Hotel in Wellington, New Zealand, during my first Working Holiday in 2015. I already had a strong passion for everything to do with good food, but I must say that listening to the sommeliers (led by Maciej Zimny, DipWSET) debriefing after each service fascinated me.

Without a doubt, I went on to complete the first three levels of the WSET and continued my adventure in Australia, first in Perth at Shadow and then at Petition wine bar. Next, I worked at a winery in South Australia to get a clearer idea of how wine is made. Left the countryside and started working at Syracuse wine bar in Melbourne, and finally at Bartolo wine bar in Sydney. I think what I enjoyed most was discovering all these foreign wines (Italian, Spanish, Greek, Australian and so on) and feeling like I was learning something new every day, service after service. I also really enjoyed picking the perfect bottle to suit my customers’ needs – so rewarding.

When did you realise it was your time to leave the floor? Were you nervous? Excited? Did you know what you were going to do?

I left the floor end of 2019 when I returned to France, just as the Covid pandemic hit. It was quite a challenging time, full of self-doubt and major changes, but I was lucky enough to land a role as a communications officer for a European NGO, which gave me a taste of the joys of office hours and working from home – two concepts a world away from those long evenings spent running around the floor on burning feet.

Did you do anything to prepare yourself before you finally left — practically, financially, or mentally?

Not really – it was a jump into the unknown, though fortunately with some savings (thanks to the generous Australian wages).

What have you done since leaving?

I worked for a while at Vino Vibes, an online platform offering wine masterclasses, alongside other projects in the field of communications. This experience enabled me to create a masterclass on Chardonnay, which included a trip to Burgundy – a real treat!

Above all, I made the most of this return home to spend time with my loved ones and my parents, who are artisans, with whom we launched the brand, Ampholia Fragrances, combining terracotta and home fragrances. I really enjoyed showcasing our region and the south of France way of life – a true return to my roots, in short.

What does your working life look like now?

Well, I’m mainly working on my brand now, handling everything from logistics and managing the online shop to communications and international expansion. I started studying for the WSET diploma in Paris last year and am currently preparing for the final exam (D3, aka ‘the beast’) in May. I’ve started a tasting group with international students from Supagro (Vinifera EuroMaster) where I introduce them to an international grape variety, the regions of the world where it’s most found, and the different styles it can produce (an excellent way to prepare for the diploma).

What were the sommelier skills that carried you — the ones you already had but perhaps didn’t fully appreciate until you were on the other side?

Hospitality has really taught me to overcome my shyness, to feel at ease with just about anyone, to be meticulously organised, and to plan as far ahead as possible. And above all, not to panic (difficult, I know) even in the middle of chaos. I reckon anyone who can get through a hectic shift can pretty much achieve anything in life, hahaha

If you could go back and give your former sommelier self any advice, what would it be?

Wear running shoes - if you can - and enjoy the ride, it’s not gonna last forever. Oh, and every day is a new adventure on the floor so go with the flow and take deep breaths 😉

Nicolas Alexandre | UK | Now: Brand Manager

In one or two sentences — who were you as a sommelier?

I would say that the most significant role was back at Davies & Brook where I was sommelier for 2 years - it was when I thought I would spend my whole life working in Michelin star restaurants. My last role on the floor was as GM at St Bart’s.

When did you realise it was your time to leave the floor? Were you nervous? Excited? Did you know what you were going to do?

When I stepped in a Restaurant Manager position for the opening of Restaurant St Bart’s, everything felt different, more challenging and little rewarding. It was my girlfriend that made me realised how unhappy I was. It was heartbreaking, it felt like ending a toxic relationship, the ones that you keep trying to make work, I am not sure that I would have been able to do it without support. Then I decided that I needed to go back closer to wine and I applied for role of Trade Account Manager at Newcomer Wines. I was very nervous when I started but I loved the portfolio so also excited to discover something new and different.

Did you do anything to prepare yourself before you finally left — practically, financially, or mentally?

Not much; I didn’t have a lot of time off in between to reset, so I kind of just went for it.

What have you done since leaving?

Well spending almost two years at Newcomer Wines but was always happy to also work the floor at the bar (Newcomer bar in Dalston) when possible or to host consumer events. When I decided it was time for me to see something else, I spotted an opportunity as French Brand Manager at Liberty Wines and after chatting with our very own Amber I decided to apply. I have been working there since and it’s going very well !

What does your working life look like now?

First, I do have office hours (which my old self would probably despise), but what I find interesting in the role of Brand Manager is that I am doing a lot of different things. I am basically representing Liberty Wines French Portfolio in the UK, organising producer visits, managing limited allocation, launching new wines or even internal training, I am also the eyes and ears of the producers on the market. I think the young Somm I used to be would enjoy being friends with producers the most or maybe being able to host a masterclass at Liberty offices.

What were the sommelier skills that carried you — the ones you already had but perhaps didn’t fully appreciate until you were on the other side?

Prioritising is the one skill that helped me the most I think, also sense of urgency and working under pressure are definitely valuable. I think that when you work in fine dining you don’t necessarily realise how much stress goes through a service, you can really see who is used to it or not.

If you could go back and give your former sommelier self any advice, what would it be?

I would probably tell myself to have more fun and to take it less seriously! Also probably to taste more of the expensive wines lol.

Ellen Doggett | UK | Now: Communications Lead

In one or two sentences — who were you as a sommelier? 

I was the Head Sommelier at a small Michelin-starred Trinity before becoming the Assistant Head Somm at the large five-star hotel restaurant, Kerridge’s.

When did you realise it was your time to leave the floor? Were you nervous?Excited? Did you know what you were going to do?

My boss at the hotel restaurant was wonderful and keen to help further my development. He sat me down one day to talk about my career, where I saw it going, and how he or the company could help me get there. It was a strange, glass-shattering moment when I suddenly realised everything he was suggesting sounded like my worst nightmare. I was burnt out. I was tired of working the opposite hours to my partner and not seeing my friends outside hospitality more than once or twice a year. In that moment, I realised I needed a change.

It was a scary decision to make. At that point, a lot of my personal identity was tied up in my job. Who was I if I was not a sommelier? I started putting out some feelers to see what might be out there for me, and the role I landed on was in trade sales for a small importer.

Did you do anything to prepare yourself before you finally left — practically, financially, or mentally?

The financial aspect was daunting. I was making good money at the hotel restaurant, especially with tronc/tips on top. The role I was offered in trade sales came with a significant pay cut on paper, but when I crunched the numbers, I realised I would be earning more per hour than I was currently, simply because my hours would be reduced from 50+ to 36 a week. Time was what I wanted more than money. It was the reason I had decided to leave the floor in the first place: to spend more time with my loved ones and myself, rather than working all the time.

Things were tight for a while, and I picked up the occasional extra shift in friends’ restaurants to help. It took some time for me to fully leave the floor.

What have you done since leaving?

When I left the floor to pursue a new direction in my career, it meant starting from scratch. I went from being a senior manager with responsibilities and a salary to match, to a junior salesperson with no practical experience. It has taken me six years to get back to where I was before, and I do not regret any of it.

I started in trade sales and then transitioned into online B2C during the pandemic, as the importer I worked for had a long-standing retail website and private client base. This helped me discover a talent for writing, marketing and SEO, alongside developing my sales skills.

As lockdowns came and went, I found myself juggling a range of roles, including my original trade sales position. Working across so many different areas of the business helped me realise what I wanted to do.

From there, I was approached to help set up another online retailer for a similarly sized pecialist importer. I developed their website, design, social media, marketing, PR and private client base, and packed and sent every order we made. The aspect I enjoyed most was the writing and content management, so when a large importer advertised for a copywriter, it felt like a natural fit.

I have now worked for that importer for nearly three years. My role has evolved from copywriter to communications lead/manager, and there is scope for it to continue growing.

This is not where I expected my career to be six years after leaving restaurants. I had been so certain that I would be working in trade sales for the rest of my career. It goes to show how important it is to keep an open mind and say yes to opportunities that seem interesting - you never know where they might lead.

What does your working life look like now?

All my days are different. I work closely with a range of departments across the business, and the work I do for each is never the same. There is a lot of writing, sometimes about wine and producers, sometimes about business insights, sometimes sales emails, and sometimes business award applications. Alongside that, there is everything involved in managing and developing the website and our social media accounts. It is all very varied, and that is something I really enjoy.

Working in restaurants was fun because it was not formulaic, and I like being able to keep that sense of variety in my role. Despite spending much of my career in sales, it is not something I particularly enjoyed in hindsight. This role is a much better fit.

I think my former restaurant self would be pleasantly surprised to see where I have ended up. She was quite unsure about the future and only had one role in mind that she thought might work for her off the floor.

What were the sommelier skills that carried you — the ones you already had but perhaps didn’t fully appreciate until you were on the other side?

There are so many transferable skills in sommelier work. Working on the floor teaches patience and compassion, as well as how to read people, and the kinds of questions to ask to better understand their needs and deliver what they want from the experience they are paying for. It also teaches you how to work effectively in a team in very high-pressure, high-stress situations. Problem-solving is another crucial one.

Being a sommelier taught me that there is always a solution. No problem is unsolvable; you just have to keep a cool head and work through the situation with clear communication to resolve it.

Then, of course, there is the wine knowledge I gathered during that time, which I have continued to develop and still use every day.

If you could go back and give your former sommelier self any advice, what would it be?

I’d tell her to worry less about the future and enjoy the moment more. I am very happy with how my career has ultimately developed since leaving the floor, but I do miss the buzz of service. I would get so stressed about being perfect for my guests and team that I’d forget that it’s meant to be fun.

Nika Shevela | Spain | Founder of Wine Alphabet + Lagom Somm

In one or two sentences — who were you as a sommelier?

For two years, I was a sommelier and then a consulting sommelier at Iradier, Barcelona - at the times of the fantastic chef Laura Veraguas, who is a true wizard with all things plant-based.

When did you realise it was your time to leave the floor? Were you nervous? Excited? Did you know what you were going to do?

For me that was always going to be just one chapter - and a key part of my training - of my wine life. I am also somewhat clumsy naturally, so I knew that service was something I had and wanted to master, but I kinda knew I was gonna end up doing other things of wine. My first degree is Translation and Interpreting, so I had a good hunch it was gonna do with comms and teaching probably.

I’ve had to pivot quite a bit in my professional life, so I would not say I was particularly nervous.

Did you do anything to prepare yourself before you finally left — practically, financially, or mentally?

Not really, it all kinda fell into place - the restaurant group did not have that much of a need for a consulting sommelier, the chef was leaving shortly after and I was ready to keep exploring the wine world.

What have you done since leaving?

I went on to work in wine retail (wine shop manager at a Catalan specialist wine merchant), also as a food and wine tour guide (five years of experience with the Barcelona Tourism Board helped there for sure). I then landed a job as a wine writer with a top wine marketing agency, where I spent three years working on some great accounts like the California Wine Institute or Canary Wines. In the pandemic, I also started teaching WSET courses online, luckily, there was a lot of demand for that. Some other teaching gigs started coming along too - and I started my Diploma in 2022 as well.

What does your working life look like now?

I now mainly teach at a university level - fun and comprehensive courses like Business of Wine and Economics of Wine - at the US university foundations, so I get to learn a lot from my Gen Z students. I also still teach some formal/structured wine qualifications such as Spanish Wine Scholar (more as a guest lecturer in other places in Europe - like Berlin Wine School) and the Wine English Specialist course for Spanish and Catalan-speaking somms (that one is online).

This still leaves me time for some wine writing, some research, occasional consulting (Spanish vintners selection, comms consulting) and hosting some curated wine events (from a wine residency at the Barcelona Soho House to women-made wines and women book authors pairings).

What were the sommelier skills that carried you — the ones you already had but perhaps didn't fully appreciate until you were on the other side?

Resilience, attention to detail, listening and ‘reading’ very different people.

If you could go back and give your former sommelier self any advice, what would it be?

Be bolder and be more apologetic about your choices and your instincts - being reasonable is overrated 😉

I’ll be back next week with some more faces, more voices and more thoughts on where you can take your working life once you are ready to leave the floor… Bisous x

Funnily enough, the thought hadn’t really occurred to me until now. Perhaps my senses were clouded by a heady mix of burnout and adrenaline; I was so desperate to build a life that made me happy, propelled by ambition, curiosity, and a deep, unquestioning belief that it would somehow work out.

And now? Things are moving—but so slowly they barely sustain my little French life. It’s a life stripped back to essentials. I’ve learnt to eschew the more boujis London-girl niceties that once felt like pillars of my mid-thirties womanhood.

Gone is the sexy wrought-iron gym.
Gone are the regular manicures, pedicures, eyebrow threading, the hair colouring—and even the haircuts.
Gone is my subscription to The Week (sigh), or my FT Weekender fix.
Gone is Prime. Gone is Spotify (okay—those were moral decisions), and any other streaming service.

Gone are the weekly restaurant excursions and definitely gone are the frequent mini-breaks.

Mostly, I haven’t minded this stripping back. In many ways, it’s been freeing—realising how much of it was just habit, shaped more by quiet societal pressure than by anything I actually wanted.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved having the money to pamper myself when I felt like it. The occasional treat yourself moment (thanks Parks and Recs) felt like a perfectly valid and needed escape from the daily London grind.

But what I didn’t realise at the time was that all of this self-care came with a slow, suffocating pressure to keep pace. The nails, the hair, the body, the face, the clothes, the gym, the holidays, the perfectly curated home. Even at the top of my game, I was never able to afford all of it.

So even when I was doing well financially, I still felt like I was somehow losing. Life has an excellent way of moving the goal posts for how you should tally your own success and happiness.

And now I find myself here, with my increasingly grey hair and my short, naked nails, taking stock of my rapidly dwindling savings, and really considering the gamble that I took with my life. This year - if I am lucky - I will earn about £25000 pounds, with no holiday or sick pay built in.

For many of my London friends, I know that this will feel like a shockingly low number, as their incomes reach ever higher into the six figures, and those with dual incomes start earning in a year what I may earn in the next ten years.

But this is where this gamble will always have paid off for me, even if my bigger dreams for a simple, long life by the beach don’t.

You see, here, there are no sexy wrought-iron gyms, no members clubs, no high end restaurants. There is no constant call of advertisement to spend money, keep up, be better. Our big ticket high street shops are Etam, Claire’s Accessories and Monoprix. And when you walk out into the street, you’d be hard pressed to say what era it is. The men and women are often very well-dressed - chic in that way that the French do so well - but unshackled by the constant churn of trends and fast fashion.

As for the bodies and faces? Normal, enjoyed and lived-in. In a town filled with thirty and forty-somethings, there is plenty of grey hair, wrinkles and physiques that haven’t been honed by the gym. That insidious creep of physical uniformity hasn’t taken hold, and people don’t seem to be concerned by this continuous need to optimise; to “fix” and “tweak” themselves into something other than who they are.

Removing myself from that side of London life has been so fucking freeing; the stripping back and understanding of what a happy life for me really entails.

And while I have my ups and downs - the winters and the gossip can create a creeping sense of claustrophobia - I am happy here. I feel free and relaxed and inspired. After over a decade of stress-induced alopecia, I finally have all of my hair. Admittedly the new bits are growing back in the wrong direction, and one part with a new jazzy curl, but it is my body’s way of telling me that I am ok. At my core, my body and my mind are at peace.

And that is what feels so viscerally devastating about the possibility that this life isn’t meant for me. To finally find a place, and a pace that feels right, work that feels rewarding. But, in and amongst this happiness, also grappling with the reality that maybe, financially, I won’t be able to make it work.

The realities of dating French men

When I sat down to write, I vowed that it would be about something upbeat and jovial. I fear that I have been a touch too morose and existential over the last months, and wanted my words to be a frolicking lark, full of naughtiness and silliness.

However, I find that whatever my intentions are for writing, I never really know what words are going to come out of me. I am not sure if any other writers experience this, but I hope I don’t sound too much like a faux tortured artiste. Thank you for allowing me to exorcise a little more of my existential soul. I am now ready for some larking.

For any new readers here: I have a penchant for foreign men - with a strong leaning, in recent years, towards French men. This penchant began at school in Ireland, where the mix was roughly 50% locals, and 50% kids from overseas. My first boyfriend was from Kenya, and I was enamoured by his clipped accent, tales of beach and bush life, and the way that he wore leather bracelets and colourful kikoys (a sort of sarong).

Then there was the array of Austrian and German boys. I was drawn in by their composed nature, the way they said yarh, and their uniform of chinos, polo shirts and a side-parting. There were the bohemian Irish boys with their warm smiles and worn out wool sweaters, and the Spanish guys: some of the prettiest, with their lashings of dark hair and thick eyelashes.

I grew to love how their foreignness - their upbringings, cultural references and take on the world - blended with my own foreignness to them. What I viewed as my unexciting origins in southern England seemed to take on something more shimmering and curious in their foreign eyes. And so, I was hooked.

University, work, travels - and let’s be honest, London life in general - became a playground of handsome foreign men. For any of you that don’t know, London is a sea of Frenchies, and the wine trade even more so. Between the pub, the weekends dancing to house music and my 9-5, I was surrounded by these lotharios. Looking back, I think I underwent some sort of French-life-and-lover conditioning.

The situation I now find myself in - living in France and with a French lover - was probably an inevitable fate.

About ten years ago, I fell deeply in love with a Parisian French man living in London and, of course, working in wine. He was older - at 29 - and his inherent Frenchness felt sophisticated to me. His accent melted off my clothes and we spent countless hours talking about wine, and food and how he would show me the wonders of France.

However, we also fought. He was arrogant, opinionated, and believed he always knew better than me. I didn’t know it then, but this would become a theme - amongst others - in my trials and tribulations of dating French men.

I promise that this is a moment for silliness, and not a total French Man takedown, as I think Le Prof - my lover du jour - is slightly afraid of. For any of you with similar tastes to my own, or even accidental forays into this world… I hope that you will find some kinship here.

A few realities of dating a French man:

1. They will always think that they know more about food or wine than you. It doesn’t matter if it is your life-long profession, being born French means that they know more. Despite knowing nothing outside of France, that is not the point. Their uncle’s cousin is a winemaker, so they know.

2. They will be genuinely shocked if you cook them a vegetarian meal. To be honest, vegetables will be an optional addition if you are cooked for. My first French boyfriend used to tell me that he just felt so weak if he didn’t eat meat. Poor sod.

3. They believe it is socially acceptable to recite poetry to you. Without irony. If you are like me - British and uncomfortable - this will be an excruciating experience.

4. If and when you try to speak in French, they will look at you with either such tenderness or lust that you cannot keep on talking. It is actually very annoying after a while.

5. They are constitutionally incapable of humbleness. Everything in their frame of reference is, in some way, the best — the best cheese, the most beautiful village, the finest market. You will learn to silently accept these bold proclamations, whilst secretly disagreeing with every one.

6. They have a real penchant for the dramatic declarations and the stage-worthy performance of love. You are the sun, the moon, the shooting stars, the love they never knew they needed. They are also likely shagging a few other girls.

And, as a woman officially dating a man from the south, I beg any other woman venturing into this territory: know Georges Brassens. He is a singer-poet from Sète, who remains a sort of patron saint in these parts. Not knowing him will lead to incredulous gesticulation and his songs being earnestly sung into your lost face, as if unearthing some deep-rooted knowledge that you’d forgotten.

Although, even when you do know Georges Brassens, it will still be sung at you like some sort of southern mating dance.

. IN FACT, LOTTE IS THE WORD USED OUTSIDE OF THE REGION TO SAY BAUDROIE AKA MONKFISH. WITH SOME DERISION, I WAS TOLD THAT LOTTE IS USED FOR THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS AND THE TOURISTS.

PLEASE ALSO NOTE THAT I DON’T RECOMMEND ASKING FOR CHATTE IN FRANCE. USE ROUSSETTE. IF YOU’RE NOT SURE WHY, JUST LOOK UP THE SLANG (AND MOST COMMONLY USED) MEANING FOR CHATTE. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

I feel like an apology is needed. I did that classic thing of going gun-ho into the new year with hopes and dreams and declarations of upping my writing ante, only to write the first in my new Sétoise Snackery series…. And then tumbleweed… Nothing.

I am putting it down to the terrible weather which has forced the closure of the Étang de Thau (our seawater lake that is the epicentre of oyster and mussel production), one of my desired fish never seemingly being available and falling for a man who romantically jested that, “nous vivons d'amour et d'eau fraîche” - that we were living on love and fresh water alone. Not quite true, but I enjoyed the sentiment.

So, to atone, I cooked scallops in vermouth and a small shark. And as the French man thinks that love and fresh water are a sufficient diet, I decided that my Mother and best friend were worthy recipients… Although I think that the latter wished she’d never been invited to dinner.

Au marché

Thankfully for all of us, these recipes are easy and very affordable. And while I struggled to find the fish for the main - roussette, a type of small shark which we call a (spotted) dogfish in English - scallops are in abundance across the market stalls, with the season running from October to April.

The scallops were jazzed up with a simple addition of finely diced Paris mushrooms, thinly sliced leek, lardons, a couple of dollops of crème fraîche and a generous glug of vermouth. I think that in part I was drawn to this recipe for its ease, but also its addition of our local vermouth, Noilly Prat.

Before I moved here, I didn’t realise that the distillery was just across the water from Sète, in the very pretty harbour town of Marseillan. The vermouths are made from the local grapes Picpoul and Clairette. And for the white extra dry vermouth used here, there is an addition of aromats like camomile, coriander and bitter orange. If you’re in the area, I’d highly recommend visiting the distillery.

As for our little shark - also known locally as chatte - I was finally in luck at the Friday morning market in Bèziers. While I was excited to have hunted down this elusive creature, the silence of my Mother and friend upon seeing it didn’t fill me with great hope. I had heard that roussette was great because it had firm, tasty pink meat on the bone - not, as I would go on to taste, unlike monkfish.

However, visually…. I guess you’d say it looked glossily pink, veiny and very tail-like. And I could feel my guests’ initial curiosity curdling into something that looked suspiciously like fear.

But the gauntlet had been thrown. The naked, limp shark tails were stowed in my cool bag and we busied ourself with finding the ingredients to make a rich tomato sauce, and an array of cheeses to fill us if all else failed.

Dans la cuisine

I have a bad habit of just launching into recipes without reading through so as to prepare and manage. Perhaps it is some sort of cooking arrogance or a new late-30s version of thrill seeking, but if that is your style, these recipes are well suited. I forgot a few things and added in things later than instructed but personally, I think it all worked out ok…

Here is how I decided to tackle my dual cooking responsibilities:

1. The tomato sauce. A slightly different take on what I’d consider a classic: soften down sliced onions, before adding parsley (I forgot), finely sliced garlic and a couple of diced tomatoes (I also somehow forgot but just added them in later).

2. Add a couple of tablespoons of tomato concentrate and a healthy splash of white wine. While you let it cook down, heat another pan to brown your shark tails for a few minutes each side.

3. Perhaps you don’t need this noted, but the tails are slippery gits and I somehow managed to fling/bowl two of them under a cupboard. The kerfuffle brought another accent of dread to my guests, as if the tails were somehow alive.

4. Once brown I snipped the tails - with scissors - into the tomato sauce to tackle later.

5. I took two more pans (not sure how I mathematically did this on my Mother’s tiny stove) to cook down the thinly sliced leeks in a generous bed of butter in one, whilst doing the same with the diced mushrooms and lardons in the other.

6. Now for a generous, fragrant addition of the Noilly Prat vermouth to the leeks. If you are not salivating at all of these buttery, smokey, sweet smells by now, you are not human.

7. Bring the ingredients of both pans together, mix with a few dollops of crème fraîche, and generously ladle onto the scallops.

8. Put these into a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees for five minutes, and in the meantime, put the shark tomato stew onto a simmer, add a few capers, and it should all be ready post-starter.

Where it went so wrong, and so right

So, the scallops were excellent and the right thing to do is serve it with bread to mop up the sweat-smokey-buttery mix left on the shell. Overall, no notes for myself.

As for the shark… As the saying goes we eat with our eyes before anything. My friend struggled to get over the quite visceral image of the raw tails, so perhaps keeping them under wraps before serving is best. The roussette itself was deliciously firm and meaty, falling easily away from the tailbone. I wish I’d had parsley to tear over to finish as it definitely would have added another dimension. Again, we just had with bread but it can be served with pasta, rice or potatoes. The world is your carby oyster.

Boire un canon!

I had a strong idea of what I wanted to drink with this as the menu was coming together… Something that flirted that line between fresh and deep, being light and playful but simultaneously full of flavour. If that makes any sense…?

I became a bit obsessed with the wines of Domaine Balansa located high in the Corbières north west of here a few years ago - their La Vinhota cuvée acting as the proverbial gateway drug for me.

It is made predominantly from Lledoner Pelut - a native grape closely related to Grenache but with distinctive hairy leaves, which is where pelut comes in as it literally means hairy. The grapes are grown on schist which, for me, always gives this savoury tension to the wine - like the smell of rocks after heavy rain.

Add in a little carbonic maceration like they use in Beaujolais to hit the fruity, smashable note, and you’ve got one sexy, versatile wine.

Chuck the bottle in the fridge for twenty minutes before you drink it, and I promise you’ll be a happy bunny.

The wine: Domaine Balansa La Vinhota

Now, I am off to hunt for wild leeks and asparagus because it is finally sunny and the French man has admitted that we may need more than just love and fresh water to survive on….

Bisous, bisous, bisous x

​

And just as the curtain was beginning to lift - farts no longer giving me fear - I left my laptop on a plane. What the actual fuck. No! Admittedly, I got it back, but it pushed me a little too close to the edge for my comfort.

Last May, I wrote an essay about what I learnt after a year of living in France. I want to laugh at my naivety, scoff at my cute assumptions that I had seen the underbelly of my new home. I hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface. And now that I live in my dreamy little fishing village, is it bad form to celebrate my year here with a list of reasons that I hate this country? Like sending a hurtful message to a lover in the heat of the moment, maybe it is best to sleep on it?

So, I decided I would give it a hot second, and to pick this up after a week’s long trip to the UK. I was so looking forward to some of my undeniably British (middle class) creature comforts. I was over croissants and pain au raisins. I wanted bacon sandwiches and sausages sandwiches, inexpensive and alluringly soft and warm in my hungry hands. I wanted Radio 4, the Archers and the glories of excellently nuanced British humour. I wanted M&S and Waitrose. I wanted the FT Weekender and The Week. I wanted to eat lunch after 1:30pm, and I wanted the sex appeal of Soho with its dark bars and strong cocktails. But more than anything, I think I really wanted anonymity, clarity and ease.

Because France is anything but easy. It is an analogue state that seemingly revels in friction and confusion. Sometimes it can feel like suffering is an intrinsic part of life here, not malicious per se, but deeply embedded. And whilst I adjust to the constant need to carry cash, have documents printed, accept emails will go unanswered and there will be zero laurels on which I can rest, I wonder if there is something to this maddeningly way of life?

As we increasingly seek to soften the edges of daily existence — obsessed with time-saving, efficiency, next-day deliveries and online-everything — we may be losing something essential: friction, effort, and ultimately satisfaction. While I sometimes want to weep at the artistry of bizarre office hours and the insistence that everything be done in person with someone profoundly unmoved by your urgency, I also love waiting to shop on a Wednesday morning when the market is on, my bags filled only with what is in season. I love realising I have the exact change for my €1.80 coffee. I love the gentle patter of an afternoon spent in Bricorama or Decathlon, hunting for whatever obscure item I suddenly need. And most of all, I take deep satisfaction in the small, inconsequential interactions I have each day with real people — however occasionally frustrating they may be.

The apparent secrecy of French work

What I am fast learning - especially since I went all in on French work in January - is that this friction is never more present than in the working culture here. I knew things would be challenging as a foreign freelancer who’d left behind any sort of legacy or clout in the UK, but I wasn’t prepared for the secrecy and opaqueness surrounding almost every decision. Undoubtedly, this is even more marked in Sète where the rules are unwritten and the networks of access are often historical and familial. Who you know is what matters, and stepping outside of the unwritten rules can have a detrimental effect on your reputation and relationships. Gossip is rife and any sort of perceived bad behaviour can travel like wild fire through the town.

I found myself twisted into knots earlier this year, trying to keep up with the entanglements of who hates who, refuses to work with who, who has barred who… And how I was meant to remain an impartial player in all of this. Is it possible for me to just do a job, build a business, without being absorbed into this arbitrary fractionalism? I am still not sure as to that answer.

What I had grown accustomed to in London was abundance — of opportunity, of collaboration, of relative anonymity. In a city of nine million, there were rarely original ideas, but a thousand nuanced retakes and a constant rush of bright-eyed people willing to try. When you remove most of that population — and most of that churn — ideas and ambitions do not circulate in quite the same way. They do not dissipate into the crowd. They linger. And, occasionally, apparently, they are taken by other people.

I recently had a meeting relocated because the previous café’s walls “had ears.” I am frequently advised not to share “my plans” too widely, as if I am plotting some sort of municipal coup. The caution would be amusing were it not so consistent, and from such a variance of people.

The most jarring moment came during a conversation with the partnership team of a well-regarded Franco-British music festival. They loved our proposal to collaborate — but we would need to include their existing wine partner (another big player in the south). No problem, we said; let’s open the conversation. They seemed startled by our willingness, asking what if their partner simply steals the idea? I initially found this dramatic, until a seasoned PR person from the region confirmed that such things do, in fact, happen. It would seem that ideas - if naively shared - are there for the taking.

I think I have found this essay very difficult to write this month because I am genuinely finding this new working reality confusing and, at times, uncomfortable, as I learn an entirely different paradigm in which to conduct myself. I have spent a small lifetime working with velocity and ease, where generosity of ideas and energy percolated, ebbed and flowed. You could throw things at the wall and see what stuck. If it didn’t, no matter — there would always be more ideas, more people, more walls.

But I am learning that in a smaller ecosystem, ideas are not disposable. Nor are reputations or allegiances. Everything lingers a little longer, and carries a little more consequence.

What unsettles me most is not the opacity itself, but the loss of fluency. I am used to understanding the rules of the room. I am used to moving quickly, and with a confidence bestowed to me by a hard-earned legacy. But here, I have to move more cautiously, listen harder, renegotiate my instincts, and accept that I have no legacy on which to negotiate my position.

For those of you who come here for the wine chat, I wrote a piece on some wine trends that I think you’ll be seeing a lot more of in 2026, and the years to come…

Wine Trends for 2026

Small town dating: an avoidant girl’s nightmare?

Maybe some of you have figured this out by now, but my dating style errs on the side of avoidant, with the occasional anxious flourish (thanks Dad).

I enjoy having lovers on the other side of the country - or in another country all together - and feel comfortable in the throes of forlorn romance and inevitable loss. I am well suited to pining, dreaming and creating entangled stories with men that never can quite be but can simultaneously run for years. This somehow allows me to love and be loved, while keeping one foot firmly out of the game - never having to give into domesticity, and ready for my inevitable bid for freedom.

But, what happens when you fall into the arms of someone who lives just two hundred meters from you? Who doesn’t exist as a voice note, a half naked photo or a passionate weekend in Paris? There is no myth-making here.

This man is tangible, real and available to me.

And in a town like this - where everyone knows everyone (often very intimately) - anonymity truly and utterly evaporates. My romances once thrived and dissipated in crowded bars and cities, leaving little mark on anyone but us. But here, my choice of lover - a local teacher no less - is duly, hungrily noted as his ex serves us wine and his colleagues bump into us on our first date.

While I am painfully aware that running away is no longer an option, and everything and everyone that I try on in this town will be noticed and picked apart, I am not sure I can change my ways too much. This country offers plenty of friction, yes — but it has also unleashed my creativity, excitement, and intense desire to publicly snog my new neighbour, Le Prof.

Why try to contain that?

Until next month… x

My name is Amber, and I’ve spent the last fifteen years working in wine across the UK, Australia, and Europe. About eighteen months ago, I absconded from London life with a vague dream of living a little more freely, wildly, and—hopefully—cheaply in the south of France.

I started writing a few months after I arrived, and for those of you who’ve been here from the beginning, you’ll have seen how my voice—and the things I discuss—have shifted slightly over time. Wine is very much part of what I write about, but always within the context of a wider life being lived. It’s entangled with French culture, mid-thirties angst and adventure, and as much romance and love-making as I can respectfully pepper in.

If that sounds like a journey you fancy sticking around for, I’m very glad you’re here.
Bises xx

So, you know how I’ve been harping on about being resolution-free, about wanting to stretch—luxuriously, no less—into my life here in France? To feel my new home. To love it, hate it, understand it. Well, it seems the gods were listening. For better or for worse.

My first hours of 2026 were resolutely good. In recent years, I’ve tried to control my entrance into the new year: soberly, earnestly, and with the hope that this mighty act may somehow wipe my slate clean and set me up for a year of purity and achievement. Unsurprisingly, it never quite delivered.

So this year, I didn’t fight it. I let the universe shape my emergence however it saw fit. And apparently, it felt it was important that I spend the first hours of 2026 micro-dosing on something locally foraged, while nakedly rolling around with a man from Nîmes called Romain. Not a bad way to begin my local cultural exploration.

I decided that if this was the energy my year intended to bring, I wasn’t mad about it. Especially since, with the finishing line of 2025 in sight, I discovered I’d become an unwitting side character in not one, but two romantic entanglements. It turns out the well-versed image of French men being insatiable (and dishonest?) isn’t just a stereotype, but an occasional reality.

Like something out of a romcom, over a long lunch with girlfriends, I received my first-ever You don’t know me, but I’m sleeping with X text. It was funny. Then it wasn’t. This girl was clearly devastated by my accidental presence in her life. While she and I managed to navigate our way out of it respectfully, X had scored an own goal with his pointless lies. Had he played his cards right, he could have had a Parisian lover and a Sétoise lover. Instead, he rang in the new year with neither.

You see, the modern dating scene is heavy in declarations of communication and honesty. And while I think that the intention is there, the follow-through rarely is. My second romantic entanglement came from someone who preached radical openness after years feeling that he had to hide his true self in relationships. I respected the raw honesty, related to it - with all of its messiness - and that self-assuredness that comes with getting older and really knowing what works for you.

But of course, that wasn’t the case. He’d actually been having some sort of a relationship with a colleague the entire time I was on the scene. The details are still somewhat hazy, but while she was leaving her husband for him, he was messaging me saying he wanted to kiss the nape of my neck as I fell asleep in his arms.

So how does this all feel? Weirdly… Ok. Like this whole year, it was as if I was part of an immersive theatre show where at moments, I really felt like I was in it with them - caring and wanting, tangled up it all - but when the lights came up, and the EXIT sign blinked, I just grabbed my jacket and left all of the drama, lies and weirdness behind me.

And honestly? I’m just so grateful I’m not the girl who left her husband for a man who can’t tell the truth.

Vinfluencers and the new paradigm for doing wine

I had never really considered writing about vinfluencers—the sexy little moniker given to wine influencers—largely because they’re a relatively modern creation, and one my world rarely collides with. That said, wine has always had its influencers; they just tended to be older, wiser, and armed with decades of knowledge and experience. They wrote books, shaped global styles, and quietly dictated taste. Jancis Robinson, Steven Spurrier, and Hugh Johnson are just a few of the OG influencers that come to mind.

That slow accrual of knowledge was precisely what drew me to wine in the first place: the sense of gradual, committed, almost infinite learning. I don’t think I fully grasped at the time just how bottomless the pit of wine information really is—but ignorance is bliss, and here I am, fifteen years later. I liked that there wasn’t really a way to fake it. You just had to do the work. It felt honest and tangible.

Then, as with almost everything else, Covid changed this all.

Wine moved online. Tastings, conversations, expertise—compressed into screens and soundbites. I even briefly dabbled in the dark arts of live streaming, hosting virtual tastings with a friend who had gone down the path of becoming a supermarket wine buyer. It was billed as a kind of Sommelier vs. Big-Time Buyer taste-off. Scintillating stuff, as I’m sure you can imagine.

Covid hit just as I had turned up the ante on my sommelier career. I was working extremely long hours in what I can only describe as an amazingly intense environment. Every day was a crash course of knowledge and stress-testing. We had adopted the use of a port tong from our sister restaurant, Eleven Madison Park—considered, at the time, the best restaurant in the world. It gives you a sense of the elite, pressurised world I was grappling with.

In case you don’t know what a port tong is: it’s an archaic-looking contraption that includes an open flame over which you heat a pair of metal tongs until they glow bright orange. You then clasp them around the neck of the bottle, remove them, and rapidly douse the area with cold water, creating a sudden change in temperature. This should force the glass to crack, allowing you to break off the neck and serve your wine in a show-stopping manner for high-paying guests.

This kind of training and exposure was one way to secure a position among the respected and influential in the scene. And to be honest, my move into this punishing environment wasn’t simply for fun—it was a tactical play to push my career and standing upward.

But Covid changed the rules. Years of technical expertise and hard-earned networks were side-lined in favor of catchy video hooks and editing flair. Followers on Instagram and TikTok suddenly mattered more than service mastery or accumulated knowledge. Initially, I didn’t think too much about it—there are always many ways into wine—and this was just another of them.

Soon, my own social media began to swirl with images of women posing with bottles—positioned perfectly beside their hard, very visible nipples (if you know, you know). Mini-videos whispered in faux-husky voices signalled their role as the “sexy” vinfluencer. That’s when I began to understand a little of the new world that was forming.

As the pandemic began to ease and we were finally released into the wild again, I found myself at the heart of (v)influencer culture, as we opened the very glitzy NoMad Hotel in Covent Garden. It was an insufferable mixture of ignorance and narcissism, with one influencer literally climbing into a giant flower bed mid-service for a photo shoot. I should point out this was a regular influencer, not a vinfluencer, who - on the whole - are far better behaved.

But a new scene was unfolding before my eyes. Vinfluencers—with their microphones, portable ring lights, and armies of followers—rose to the top of invitation lists for the city’s array of coveted wine and restaurant events. In a city under constant, exhausting reinvention, these people became a key tool in creating buzz and visibility. Whether they knew anything about wine was far from the point.

As most vinfluencers are women, you run the risk of being labelled bitter or jealous if you question anything about this new paradigm. And maybe I am. It’s a tough pill to swallow, realising that the road to success and recognition isn’t always an equal one. It is undoubtedly a tale as old as time. But as we face an apparent crisis in the wine trade—how to engage the vinously disenfranchised non-wine drinking youth—maybe it’s not about knowledge, but about nipples and gravelly-voiced recommendations?

Luckily for me, as my grip on London’s wine scene begins to soften, none of this really matters too much anymore. The rewards of visibility and authority may have undergone a seismic shift back home, but in my world of winemakers, little has changed. The respect afforded to time, learning, and patience remains as strong as ever.

And besides—most of them don’t even know how to use email, let alone care about vinfluencers.

I had planned to write on SO much more this month, but I think I have written enough. I promise, in February, I will be sharing more weird secretive things I have unearthed already this year. Plus, I may have been on a few dates with a real life local. Undoubtedly, there will be some adventures to share in due course.

Ciao for now x

I think I was drawn to this dish because my weather app said it felt like minus nine degrees, and my body was in desperate need of being warmed from the inside. Plus, when I checked in on Elizabeth David and Rick Stein’s takes on the recipe, both proclaimed it one of their favourite dishes. My gut instinct felt vindicated by the legends, so there was no turning back.

Many people think of French cooking as haughty and heavy on butter, but that really isn’t the case down here. Sète and the surrounding areas are decidedly paysan — strongly connected to the land, and here, very much to the sea. While the word is sometimes misconstrued as “peasant” in English, it comes from le pays — the country — and speaks instead to small-scale, traditional farming and culture rooted in place, season, and necessity. Plus, butter comes from northern outposts like Brittany and Normandy, so instead, expect a healthy dose of olive oil for these local recipes.

Au Marché

Thankfully the recipe for this isn’t particularly complicated. However, I did that classic thing of confusing myself by obsessively re-reading different recipes, until my mind was a jumble of alternative takes. I ended up with two massive monkfish heads in a bag, but couldn’t actually remember why I needed them in the first place.

Whether you choose to make your own stock or not (I did - it was easy, and I finally realised what my fish heads were for), you will be making a court bouillon in which to poach your fish, and basically, both this and the stock demand the same array of veg and aromats for their creation.

A court bouillon is really the backbone of French fish cooking, and because I think that there is nothing more terrifying than coming across a recipe in a recipe, I will give you a brief low-down so you’re prepared. It is a jazzy name for a vegetable broth that has either a little white wine or vinegar added to it. Rick Stein suggested adding orange peel - which felt very seasonally on brand - and a bit of chilli. While the addition of orange is an acceptable accent on the classic, the chilli definitely isn’t. I did both. Sorry Sète.

I was very happy to have a southern native with me as I stepped into the hallowed, chaotic covered market, Les Halles. The way that the fish stalls are set up means that the fishmongers - these robust, no nonsense men and women - stand well above you, calling down to you with their thick sétois accents. I whispered my needs to my friend, who began the negotiations.

Something to note is that a classic bourride can technically be made from any meaty white fish from the Med, but the traditional Sète take is to do it with monkfish. Monkfish in French is baudroie, until it is cut up, and then it is called lotte. Why? No idea. Don’t kill the messenger. As for the fish heads - ask and you shall get. Perhaps it is because they are so ugly and large, but they are not on display, however are very much available.

And while you can roughly estimate 250 grams per person of fish, we were recommended to up it slightly due to the substantial bone that runs through the monkfish.

Dans la cuisine

I am going to break down the steps as I saw fit:

1. The stock. Or a fumet which is a broth using the heads and bones of the fish. I realise now that I made I hybrid of regular stock and fumet with my big old fish heads. It seemed to work… Use any white fish remains, but avoid oily fish like salmon or mackerel. Once you’ve brought it to the boil, turn it down to a simmer and don’t cook it for longer than 20–30 minutes. Apparently, any longer and it can draw out something a bit musky and feral from the bones, which doesn’t sound like a vibe. Strain.
   

2. Make your court bouillon with your fish stock. This southern take is great with fennel, tomatoes, and the aforementioned chilli and orange peel. A sprinkle of saffron here turns the broth miraculously golden.
   

3. Poach your fish for a few minutes, then remove it to a plate to keep warm. Rick (we’re on first-name terms now) suggests letting some of the cooked-down veg come along with the fish before everything is strained. It definitely adds a more hearty, lived-in feel when the dish is finally served.

4. Strain the court bouillon, leaving you with a fragrant, orange-hued liquid.
   

5. The aïoli. If you’re lucky like me, you’ll have had a friend make it for you. Word of advice: make more than you think you need. Judging by how many local recipes call for generous additions, you can never have too much.
   

6. Slowly mix your aïoli into the broth, a ladle at a time to avoid curdling.
   

7. Chuck your monkfish back in and voilà — your bourride is ready to serve.

Where it went so wrong, and so right

Overall, I’m actually very chuffed with how this dish turned out. And I stand firm on my call to add chilli, which gives this subtle undercurrent - not so much of spice but something uplifting and almost refreshing.

However, I would have liked the sauce to have been thicker, more substantial. In hindsight, I maybe would have added more aïoli, and under Elizabeth David’s instruction, would have added a couple of egg yolks to elevate the overall richness of the sauce.

Also, I served with new potatoes, but wish I’d gone with the more classic choice of grilled bread topped with lashings of aïoli. I mean, what had I been thinking with the potatoes? We live and we learn I guess.

A final note: my apartment - and undoubtedly me personally - smelt very strongly of garlic the next day. You’ve been warned.

Boire un canon!

This literally means “to have a drink” in French slang, but there’s something playful and spontaneous about the phrase. It feels social rather than serious, which made it a fitting title for my thoughts on drinking.

In the world of wine pairing, you often hear the phrase “if it grows together, it goes together.” Much as it gives really gives me the ick, there is some sense to it. One of the closest wine regions to Sète is Picpoul de Pinet — Pinet being the town, Picpoul the grape. It sits just across the Étang de Thau, the vast saltwater lagoon fed by the Mediterranean and home to its famous oysters and mussels, with vineyards that quite literally dip down to the water’s edge.

The wines from here are celebrated for their bright acidity, saline edge, and vibrancy — a true reflection of their home on the banks of the sea.

Many Picpouls are simple and straightforward, which, when you’re battling 35 degrees and counting, is the perfect companion. However, it was very cold and the dish was robust and flavourful, so I opted for a Picpoul that had a small addition of Roussanne added.

Roussanne is another native grape, but very different from Picpoul, it brings fat and texture to the wine. The two together showcase this very sexy, moreish push-and-pull of tension and warmth, if that makes sense?

The wine: Domaine La Croix Gratiot « Zazous » Blanc

I have a final confession: I didn’t drink this wine with the dish. I was being earnestly dry. We drank kombucha which was a terrible pairing, especially the raspberry kombucha, which was laughably bad. I felt actual guilt for the dish - guilt that I hadn’t serenaded her with some glorious wine, ready to undertake some sort of passionate flavour dance with her.

So instead, I drank this wine while writing this and thinking remorsefully of my golden bourride. As I said before, we live and we learn.

Bisous, bisous, bisous x

But the constant movement began to slowly take the shine out of the adventure. Leaving home every two or three weeks left my life weirdly untethered. Routines disappeared, my fridge was rarely stocked, and I would pre-emptively grieve my little life here in Sète before I was even gone.

One evening, returning from another stint away and feeling particularly scattered, I decided to cook my way out of it. I latched onto a recipe for pot-au-feu from Victor Coutard’s Substack, How to Get Lost in France, drawn in by his promise of a long afternoon watching meaty morsels melt into a fragrant, wintry broth. I went to the market, then to the butcher in Les Halles, where the pot-au-feu very nearly became a horse stew—an error only corrected when the woman behind the counter clocked my accent and decided to intervene. I had somehow missed the array of horse motifs and the word Chevalier emblazoned on the front of the stall.

That day felt like a small revelation. Purposeful and absorbing. I learned how to cook something I had never eaten, let alone cooked before, and took great pleasure in the gastronomic instruction to skim off the scum as the meat gently simmered. My mind was occupied by nothing other than my concern for this pot-au-feu, and my body was resolutely nowhere else but the kitchen—cooking, drinking wine, and waiting (slash panicking that I wasn’t sufficiently scum skimming).

But as is life, the months charged on, and by the time I was ready to bid goodbye to 2025, I’d barely cooked any more French classics, but I had made the wild decision to quit all of my work and cut loose the men in my life.

So what comes next? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. But as I said last month, I do want to finally get to know where I am living. Like in every part of France, there is a very real sense of pride and appreciation for food and wine, and all of the cultural heritage that comes with it. And so, while I figure out some bigger things, I thought it might also be a good opportunity to eat very well and become just a little less ignorant along the way.

And so, Sétoise Snackery is my pet project that will bask in the glory of southern French cooking and plentiful wine. So much of life down here is about enjoyment and conviviality, and that is all this really is.

I’ll be working loosely from Jacques Rouré’s Recettes Sétoises de Bouzigues, with inevitable detours via Elizabeth David, Rick Stein, and whatever local advice gets thrown at me along the way. The dishes will be borrowed, misremembered, occasionally butchered, and—if I’m lucky—sometimes shared with lovers and friends.

Last Wednesday, I decided to cook a bourride de baudroie à la sétoise (rolls off the tongue, I know)—Sète’s unapologetically garlicky fish stew, thickened with aioli and often eclipsed by Provence’s more famous bouillabaisse. I had never eaten it, never cooked it, and until recently hadn’t even clocked its existence. But starting off with a local underdog of a recipe felt like a fitting start. Plus, nobody died, so that is good.

The full lowdown of this ridiculously delicious dish, and the wine I (sort of) quaffed with it, will be dropping into your inbox this Sunday. The Sètoise Snackery will drop mid-month (ish), with my regular Substack coming at the end of the month (ish), as per usual!

If you feel like cooking along, I’d love that. Try the recipe, ask questions, tell me where it went wrong (or right, because I love praise), and share what you drank with it. Consider this an open invitation to live a little bit of this southern French life with me.

Bisous bisous bisous x (we do three kisses in Sète)

There is, however, something quietly reassuring in knowing that ancient Chinese beliefs have a very good, very wholesome reason for why this year has felt so wild, intense and unpredictable. Every corner of my life has brought soaring highs and barrel-scraping lows. I have tried so much, moved so much, hurt so much, laughed so much, swam in the ocean so much—and had countless moments where I felt like giving up. But as I wipe away the blood, sweat and tears, and drag myself unceremoniously from the trenches of 2025, I can see that there is something beautiful lying in my wake. Like the springing up of infantile flowers after a long, unforgiving winter.

Because when you are in the trenches, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees—and I say this as a single, childless person, so my condolences to those navigating with that added load. This year, I fought two bouts of depression that hit swiftly and powerfully, like a punch to the stomach. My eyes sprang countless tears, and at times I had to gasp for breath amid the intensity of my emotions.

I initially wrote an entire December essay about this. I realise now that I was writing out my grief, trying to expel the residue of sadness that lingered in me. Ultimately, those musings weren’t something to share (at least not yet—until I get writer’s block and have to sink into the archive of my unpublished oeuvres). But I think they helped to dislodge something. Maybe even unleash it?

You see, 2025 was a big, fat year in all the ways that matter. I moved to a small French village called Sète all on my own. Admittedly, I’d been living with my mum just a few villages away, but I think that makes it even more significant—because I genuinely feared I would never move out.

This move wasn’t because I fell in love or was lured by a once-in-a-lifetime job. For the first time in my life, it was a decision made entirely in spite of work and in spite of love, as my pool of people shrank from roughly nine million to 45,000.

This move really was for no other reason than my happiness. Okay, and blue skies, sunshine, the Med, affordable rent and wine, the mountains, and windsurfing. It turns out those things are what make me happy. Weird, right?

It was also the year I broke an accidental year of celibacy and fell into a teenage-style, frenzied crush. Side note: it turns out that France really is the place to get laid. I can’t vouch for the emotional intelligence on offer, unfortunately, but it will definitely put an end to any dry spell out there.

It was the year I set about building a life in another culture, and in another language. I found myself linguistically lost and confused, so often not in on the joke. I was like the kid your mum told you to invite to your birthday party—missing the slang, not getting the cool-kid references, smiling weirdly and out of time as incomprehensible words fell around me.

People reverted to English as soon as my French faltered. I still had to use a translation app all of the fucking time. One guy literally corrected my grammar in the throes of passion. And while I have met a lot of people, and shared many great moments, most of my nights out still start by myself, as I try to launch myself casually, unselfconsciously into the lives of those more embedded here than me.

It was the year that I really tried to become an agent, a writer, a sort of Franco-British wine dealmaker. I was naïve, made a lot of mistakes, got rejected and ghosted. But I also got published, became a mini-agent (with a single client), and became more and more au fait with negotiations, deal-making, holding my nerve, and doing all of this in French too. There were some days where I felt literally giddy as I looked around me and realised how much I had succeeded in building something for myself totally from scratch.

Maybe it was those giddy moments—drawing me into an intoxicating bath of dopamine and self-congratulation—that also led to my crashes this year. The universe demanding a sort of just and needed equalisation.

Normally, at this time of year, I would be planning and scheming: detailing all the glorious things I want to achieve, to become, to tick off my haughty list for the year ahead. But this year, I don’t think I’m going to do that. Not because I don’t have dreams or ambitions, but because I want to stretch—luxuriously—into the life I already have.

It’s a life I don’t yet know or fully understand. I’m not sure where it will take me, or what it may offer up. For now, I want to let it unfold, without demanding that it become anything at all. I want to reach into the nooks and crannies, getting in on the local gossip, small talk and politics. I want routine, to know the seasons, the landscape, the underbelly. I want to get bored of this place, craving an escape to Corsica or Sardinia on one of the ferries lying in the port.

And while I grapple with this unsettling change in pace for me - a pace that is eschewing my normal antics of goal-making and tangible achievements - I am reassured to know that this is all ok, because it is the Year of the Motherfucking Snake! And that changes things.

While I thought my year was occasionally falling apart at the seams, I was actually just being a snake. I was a slinky snake waking up, shedding my skin, and slithering out of hibernation to wreak glorious, sex-filled havoc—rebuilding the foundations of my life for all that’s to come. So thank you, ancient Chinese beliefs, for your positive take on this mental fucking year. Bring on the Year of the Horse….

For the uninitiated, it’s one of the great, chaotic nights in the wine calendar: the arrival of the first Beaujolais wines of the harvest. Light, red, juicy, and so dangerously drinkable - the party version of Ribena. It always lands on the third Thursday of November, and if you ever want to bag yourself a restaurant wino in the wild, it’s hell of a good night to do it. We’re all out there: drinking, flirting, and making decisions we’d never endorse in daylight.

Yet beneath all the juicy wine and flirtation, something darker kept tugging at me this year. While I was busy having a freezing-cold snog on the edge of London Fields, my friends were announcing pregnancies, engagements, home purchases. And although I am genuinely proud of the route I’ve taken — a winding, improbable one full of adventure and stories — a small, insistent part of me kept whispering that I was lagging behind. That I’d somehow missed an invite to sit at the adult’s table. That I wasn’t ticking any of the boxes everyone else seemed to check almost absent-mindedly.

I don’t know. I’m not entirely sure why I’m sharing this. Maybe because it sat uncomfortably under everything I did this month, pinching away at me beneath all the fun, wine and the late-night bravado. And maybe because someone else might recognise the quiet ache behind a life that, from the outside, looks airy and exciting but is, in reality, far more nuanced and at times, difficult. I do think I’m where I’m meant to be — but some days I’m not convinced I’m moving forward at all. Some days I wonder whether all those life-defining moments my friends are having will ever find me, wherever my meandering path takes me next. It’s thrilling not to know what life will hand you — and absolutely terrifying too.

Right now, though, I’m simply tired. Tired of hustling, of mustering resilience I’m not sure I possess, of fixing on a smile when I feel pretty fucking threadbare. I want, just for a moment, to be wrapped up - responsibilities lifted off my plate - and to be simply, cosily looked after. I wonder if you’re still allowed that at 37?

We are launching a natural wine tour company - welcome to the world Buvette Tours!

Much of what I’ve written above led me to finally bring a long-held dream to life: Buvette Tours. After years of visiting the Languedoc, I bought a small, slightly dishevelled home here with my mum in 2021. It became a catalyst for spending as much time as possible in this wildly beautiful, historic part of France. I was mesmerised by endless blue skies, by the mountains and the Mediterranean cradling the region, the architecture, and the creative energy that pulses through this place. Being here made my mind feel expansive and free. When I was caught in the punishing loop of post-Covid high end hospitality, these were moments that began to give me inspiration again and really stirred something in me, making me want to be part of this life, to celebrate it, revel in it, and share it.

As I have for many years, I began visiting winemakers, wandering vineyards and cellars, and gathering around tables (or an upturned barrel) to share stories, wine, and charcuterie. Time slows as you wander through their work, their thoughts, their creations. These experiences aren’t meant to be rushed; they are to be savoured. For me, they offer a window into lives built on hard work, philosophy, and belief in something bigger — lives that aren’t defined by commutable routes, office perks, or paychecks, but by craft, passion, and connection.

I realised there was a way to bring these two worlds together — to open the doors of artisan winemakers to people who crave authentic connection, without flashy cellar doors or marketing. In a world where so many of us long for meaningful experiences, this felt like something worth creating. These aren’t mass-market wine tours; they’re intimate, insider experiences shaped by real relationships and an understanding of the region from the inside out.

Thankfully, I am not doing this alone. I am building Buvette Tours alongside Maurane El Mokkeddem, a fellow sommelier and restaurant-kid. A native of Sète who spent years working in London’s top restaurants, Maurane is kind, funny, and deeply respected here. Her network is unmatched — and, most importantly, she sees all the beauty this region has to offer, and knows how to share it.

Buvette Tours is officially launching in Spring 2026, and while we are both based in Sète, we will also be working across Bèziers, Montpellier, and Nîmes. We’ll be offering small, immersive half-day or day tours — the kind where you might share a long lunch with a winemaker, taste wines straight from barrel, and eat oysters that have just been pulled from the Étang… The kind of day that you’ll remember for many years to come.

Alongside our tours, we are also excited to launch our bi-monthly newsletter - A Splash from Buvette. This will be a dive into the stories, faces and happenings of the region. Think of it as being part wine journal, part travel guide - and the first place to find out about our tours, dinners, tastings and events!

Buvette’s tours are for everyone — from friends and family to work colleagues, and for the curious novice to the seasoned connoisseur. If this sounds like something you’d love to experience, get in touch at bonjour@buvettetours.com or visit our website to learn more.

Every month this Substack helps me unpick the weeks that have passed and relish all the moments, mishaps, and flashes of beauty that an ordinary life can bring. And while I’ll be honest that I’m still wrestling with feelings of personal and professional inadequacy, the time it takes to reflect and write this always brings me a little peace.

And as I chew the fat about what to include — because there is SO much I never find the time or space for — I end up smiling, sometimes even laughing out loud like a mad woman. This month, while one friend was telling us her chosen baby name, another sent me a nine-minute voice note detailing her first threesome. And while someone else explained how her proposal in the US went down, another was sending me lingerie pictures ahead of a Dom-Sub shag fest she was about to embark on.

It turns out that November was a rollercoaster of a month for more than just me — bathed in sex and sadness, but also in joy and laughter.

Bisous x

However, if you do love something I have written, or feel connected, seen or inspired, I would appreciate it so much if you could ‘like’ the article, or leave a comment, or share with a friend. In a world of algorithms, this goes a really long way. Thank you!

Sometimes I wonder why I am so obsessed with Sète. Every month brings a totally new iteration of this place, and I feel like a child mesmerised by all of the newness wrapped up in my first year here: the smells, the sounds, the traditions, the people, the language. And with October, we enter a mercurial relationship with mother nature. A relationship where one day she is seducing you with sunshine and cloudless blue skies. She calls you to dive back into her incandescent waters that seem perfectly marbled with turquoise and emerald green, catching the golden light of the low lying autumnal sun. And then, the very next day, she takes it all away; she engulfs you gusts of violent warm, salty air and turns the sea a moody, deep blue, swelling and smashing her against the rocks dramatically and with pointed indignation.

You see, the beaches and rock formations that were once yours to lounge nakedly on while snacking on peaches and cold beers, are once again hers. And yet, I love it. I love the creeping morning mist that cloaks the peak of Mont Saint Clair - the hill around which Sète tucks herself. And I love the closure of the beach bars and clubs that usher in the more secretive side of Sète’s winter months. I love the later sunrises, especially after the storms, that unearth the old boys patiently fishing from rickety boats or from the weathered quaysides. And I love seeing the braver of us out spearfishing or kite surfing in the gusts that whip across the once-calm sea.

But, as is often the case, I was torn away from my seaside mecca for work (and always hopeful adventure). This month taking me to the unlikely destination of Bordeaux in south west France.

Can a group of pirates save Bordeaux?

This is the second time in my fourteen year wine career that I have been invited to this famous region on the invitation of a wine board. My first invitation came at the dawn of my life in wine - in 2013 - when I wore a headset and took orders over the phone for an importer based in west-west London. Why was a small fry like me being invited on an all expenses paid trip to Bordeaux? Apparently they were trying to showcase the wonders of the region and its wine to the next generation of winos like me. Not a bad idea, in essence, to partake in a bit of future planning. Maybe one day I would be rid of my headset and doing something more important in industry…?

It is only really recently that I have understood the importance of that trip, or the wider ramifications of what was at play. I was too busy trying to act like a professional wine woman whilst chowing down on foie gras, marvelling at the beauty of Saint-Émilion (a must-visit for Bordeaux lovers), and practising the art of all-day drinking without embarrassing myself. But behind my youthful play acting, there was a slow but very real panic unfolding within Bordeaux.

I can’t recommend enough reading the article from Neal Martin, the wine critic and Bordeaux aficionado, titled Bordeaux: The Crisis Laid Bare. Published earlier this year, it gives a concise, if depressing window into what has happened to this lauded region. He pinpoints 2009 as a tipping point of where things began to go wrong - where greed, profiteering and arrogance coalesced to create the perfect self-destructive storm.

People stopped buying Bordeaux. And people are still not buying Bordeaux.

My 2013 trip to the region - designed to woo me - had quite the opposite effect. Amid the heady mix of Michelin-starred meals, architecturally sculpted wineries with multi-million-euro fit-outs, and immaculate men in crisp white shirts and navy gilets who looked like they’d never touched a vine in their life, I felt like Bordeaux simply wasn’t for me.

It was delicious in its own way, yes - but it was for the moneyed, the bourgeois, the flashy. Not for a girl on £20k, working in Acton, trying to find her place in the wine world. Unfortunately for them, while I did finally rid myself of my headset and go on to do bigger things in the industry, I, like many of my peers, never felt a connection to Bordeaux: not to its culture, its ethos or its style of wines.

However, this visit gave me hope that there was a side of Bordeaux that I could reacquaint myself with, and find connection to. There is a new-wave movement taking hold, under the charmingly illustrative moniker, The Bordeaux Pirates. The group was the brainchild of Jean-Baptiste Duquesne of Château Cazebonne, who initially began the humble Facebook group as a place for people to share thoughts and ideas for the region.

But the zeitgeist had taken hold, and the Union des Vignerons Bordeaux Pirate was officially launched with the goal to celebrate alternative, innovative winemakers in the region. Tired of the standardised wines being produced there, of the boring packaging, and of the restrictive appellation rules that stifle creativity and experimentation, they began calling for change.

But what does it really mean to be a Bordeaux Pirate? Well, you need to either be certified organic or in conversion (an important step in modernising Bordeaux), and have at least one wine considered pirate by an independent tasting panel. This wine must challenge the status quo to receive the stamp of approval with a Bordeaux Pirate label (below).

There is a humble realisation that even when we reach the top of our game, we must find ways to connect and innovate, or else die. Bordeaux overplayed its hand, thinking that high prices, luxury and (overstated) scarcity would give it never-ending relevancy. But it didn’t. Nowadays, people crave realness, stories and winemakers with dirt under their fingernails. Maybe this group of pirates is just what we need to bring this back to Bordeaux.

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Wait, do I have a boyfriend?

In the midst of all this Bordeaux pontification and a few days back in London, New Paris Man asked if he could come stay for a couple of days between jobs (he’s a photographer). I said yes. Those few days stretched into a week, but I didn’t mind. He’s easy company, and unlike most of my friends, I genuinely like sleeping beside someone.

Somewhere in that week, I began to notice the little, almost imperceptible moments of daily life shared with another person. It felt strangely nice and unexpected - I realised I hadn’t experienced this shared quotidien life in a long time. The kiss on the nape of your neck as they begin to stir in the morning. The offer of half a clementine, peeled between calls. Trips to faire les courses, picking up bits for the house and planning what to eat for dinner. And the hugs as you stand pensively at the stove, lost in thought.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. What was, or is, happening?

Funnily enough, another man seemed to answer my internal questions. He asked if I was coming to Paris to see my boyfriend. My boyfriend? I don’t have a boyfriend. I thought the question was intended to be a playful tease, overstating the seriousness of my situation. But it wasn’t.

I had heard about this folklore of French dating culture - where you meet someone and, almost unspokenly, enter the territory of being a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a couple. Had I, by indulging in this cosy quotidien life, become a girlfriend?

And so, over an apéro at the end of a long, sunny bike ride from Sète to Marseillan, I decided it was pertinent to ask. Am I your girlfriend? Unsure of how to pose this question, my French faltered, confusion ensued, but finally it was clarified: yes, he did think I was his girlfriend. Wasn’t I? If I wasn’t his girlfriend, then what was I? A plan cul (fuck buddy en Français)? Well, I am not really your friend, I stumbled. His face stalled in confusion. Wow, I am nailing this.

Did we come to a conclusion? An agreement? I am not sure we did - my awkward Britishness smothered it all in kisses and comfort. But just as Chanté Joseph’s article in Vogue - Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? - is going viral, I feel comforted in my uncertainty surrounding the concept of boyfriend. Is it something that I even want? Can I choose the rules of engagement? Perhaps create my own romantic ecosystem - according to Amber? I guess we’ll see how it all unfolds.

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The very hot antidote: Bad Bunny

This final addition to my October newsletter has really nothing to do with anything. I just felt it was important for all of you reading to know that I am a very new convert to the charms of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio - AKA Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar. But, my god, am I converted.

Much like how Pedro Pascal gave us hope for mankind, Zohran Mamdani is giving us hope for politics (and the toppling of American fascism?), Benito brings his own sort of brightly coloured, sex-god-gyrating-magnatism-but-can-still-salsa-with-your-abuela kind of energy. He has somehow made the goatee a sexy again, and has caused so much upset in the MAGA-toxic masculinity-community, that you really can’t help but love him even more.

His songs NUEVAYoL and BAILE INoLVIDABLE have become my antidotes for stress and existential dread. I dare you to not to dance - and to not, even momentarily, feel like you might just be sexy and Latin enough to start salsa-ing in your kitchen. And trust me when I say that his Shrek SNL skit will rid you off your worst mood.

There was a moment at university where I had to choose between French and Spanish because my tiny little brain was confusing the two. As you’ve probably realised by now, I chose French. However, I can’t help but thinking that if I had chosen Spanish…. Maybe…? Ámbar y Benito..? I am glad you guys agree.

Hasta lluega chicos x

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For all my irrational fears that I’d been invited as some sort of sacrificial sommelier lamb (sommeliers seem to be such a fetish these days, that one can’t help but wonder), it turned out to be one of those lovely, fun, unexpected experiences. These sudden opportunities, changes in tack and plunges into the unknown (for good and for bad) are the allure of the life of a freelancer for me.

I swing between an irrational fear of monotony and a craving for a familiar, well-trodden path - one paved with certainty, milestones, and regular paychecks. However, the irrational fear is clearly a greater force in my life. I remember the familiar sense of claustrophobia creeping over me in my last role as a sommelier; was every day going to look like this? Was every day FOREVER going to be a mix of deliveries, cellar work, service, hateful and/or fawning guests? Bookended by setting up for service and closing down after service? Faux-energetic briefings punctuated by monologues from our narcissistic, ineffectual General Manager?

Fully aware that I can veer toward the dramatic and existential, this Groundhog Day reality was enough to bring tears to my eyes. And it often did. Undoubtedly laced with tiredness and the unfortunate knowledge that in working in a hotel, I had somehow signed over every hour of my day and night to them to use me, I often found myself sobbing. Sobbing on my bike (dangerous). Sobbing on the bus (uncomfortable for everyone involved). And, a favourite among my colleagues: sobbing in the cellar - a soothing temperature for such activities.

So I guess this is how one finds oneself writing beside the turquoise waters of a small, kidney-shaped pool somewhere in Benahavís. Thrown together with a group of people never seen before, and perhaps never to be seen again. I’m pouring First Growths, Super Tuscans, and ice-cold Bollinger - my feted role as wedding sommelier serving more as a symbol of their wealth than of my craft. It is all so wonderfully random, enjoyable, and transitory. I am also trying to figure out whether the ridiculously fit twenty-five-year-old butler is hitting on me, or simply professionally charming. Either way, by Monday, I’ll be back in my own bed, ready to concoct more adventures and career segues.

When it comes to the rich, are they really that different from us?

Another reason I said yes to this wedding sommelier gig was curiosity: I wanted a peek behind the curtain. What do the rich drink? How do they drink? I had already wondered if I might be a sacrificial lamb at the altar of vinous riches, and my mind brimmed with both wondrous and terrifying ideas. However, it turns out that, in the end, they’re no different from the rest of us.

Of course, weddings are a time for tradition and the celebrations have to be inclusive and palatable for a wide-ranging audience. For the rich apparently, this means Grand Marque Champagne, First Growth Bordeaux, Burgundy and Super Tuscans. For as long as I’ve worked in wine, and long before that, these bottles have formed the foundations of fine wine - classic, instantly recognisable markers of wealth and (apparent) taste. No matter the ludicrous prices they command, the rich lean on them like a safety net, reassuring themselves that they’re in the know.

However, we - the common people - are in fact just the same. Especially in moments of economic strife and existential uncertainty (sound familiar?), we tend towards the known and the familiar. The last ten years in wine have seen an explosion in newness and rule-breaking. Fueled by the sex appeal of natural wine, we have witnessed an incredible renaissance in how and what we drink; orange, Croatian, Blaufränkisch, blouge, Terret, pét-nat, Czech, nouveau, English (!), anything from volcanic soils… The list goes on. In the last ten years - especially in international markets like London, New York, and Tokyo - wine has become immensely diverse: an ever-deepening well of styles, grapes, and regions.

But, I fear the tide is turning. I say this as someone who works close to the front line - working with winemakers and importers, and selling wine to sommeliers and buyers. Even amongst the die hard natural wine evangelists amongst my friends and clients, the shift is clear. The people have spoken. They want comfort and reassurance. They want to know exactly what it is that they are getting. They no longer want surprises (and occasional disappointment), especially when a glass of wine costs at least £10 plus service charge these days.

But while the pendulum is indeed swinging back, I don’t think we are going to swing full circle back to the 90s or 00s - as much as my bank account sometimes craves it. The effects of diversity, organic and biodynamic farming and lower sulphur additions are here to stay; they’ve embedded themselves in the general wine-drinking psyche, the compass of winemakers (even if some are merely jumping on the bandwagon), and in some cases, in the actual rules of appellations - in certain cases now allowing for the addition of native grape varieties and a wider range of acceptable styles (such as a cloudiness or orange).

I think we’re going to see a resurgence of classical appellations - Chablis, Sancerre, Bordeaux - infiltrating wine lists once more. Of course, in many restaurants in the chi-chi parts of town, these wines never really left. But in the new wave of restaurants, wine shops, and bars that kneel at the altar of natural wine, such appellations have been decidedly uncool and overlooked in favour of giving other regions and styles a fighting chance at the limelight.

I am already seeing the creeping hallmarks take place; the mineral-driven Jura Savagnin being replaced by the OG mineral maestro Chablis, and the ultra recognisable Sauvignon Blancs of Pouilly-Fumé and Sancerre clearing out the more esoteric (incredibly delicious) versions from Styria and the Czech Republic. And while orange wine is here to stay, where lists were laden with varying hues and grapes, this is already getting shaved down to a single listing or two. In its place? A tentative welcome back to ultimate old school Bordeaux? Perhaps. But watch this space for wintery classics like Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Rioja, and if you’ve got the budget for it, a Barolo, Barbaresco and of course, the rich people’s favourite: Super Tuscans - basically Bordeaux made in southern Tuscany.

The comforting embrace of an older man

And while we’re all finding solace in the comfort of buttery Chardonnays (don’t pretend you don’t love it) and silky, sumptuous reds, I’ve been finding solace in the arms of a tall French man. With The Crush coming to an end - a touch of sadness threading its way through the final days of my brilliant summer - I think the goddesses of Sète (and sex and fun) stepped up. And like a child on the verge of tears, bottom lip trembling at the loss of its favourite toy, I was bestowed another Parisian man.

With salt-and-pepper hair, and a deep, gravelly cigarette-inflected voice that is perfect for whispering things in my ear that I barely understand (but am assuming are about my beauty and excellent ass), I am taking it for the pure, unadulterated comfort that it is. No games, apathy or inaction. Just the sweet enjoyment of coffee in bed, good wine, long weekends filled with things I shouldn’t mention, and a man who thinks I am a babe.

Anyway, as we can see, the pendulum of life and love and wine is swinging and by the time Bordeaux is officially “cool” again, I’ll probably be pouring pét-nat at a billionaire’s second wedding - still freelancing, still overthinking it all, but maybe making out with the butler this time?

This month has been epic, really - filled to the brim with friends, wine, daily swims (bar a few days where I was hungover to hell) and adventures among the sexy Cévennes mountains. But - I don’t know how to describe it - as the month draws to a close, I feel like the gods are whispering in my ear to grow up, and let go of the salty, scruffy version of myself; throw away my tattered espadrilles, put on a bra, get focused and brush off the final remnants of sand. I think what I’m trying to say is that I’m excited, and I’m sad - like it’s all over, but everything is still possible. The ultimate back to school feeling.

Wildfires and Environmental Rebellion

Whilst August is traditionally a month of folly and festivals here, August 2025 will go down in history as the month one of the worst wildfires France has ever seen tore through the Languedoc. As hordes of people descended for their summer vacances, 2,000 firefighters battled a blaze that consumed tens of thousands of hectares - an area said to rival the size of Paris.

The fire began just north of Narbonne, fed by years of drought, the tinderbox of garrigue scrub, and a particularly fierce burst of the Tramontane - a strong dry wind that whips down from the Pyrenees and can reach speeds of up to 200 km/h. Though the flames were eventually contained, the scars will be felt for years. For farmers and winemakers alike, land, homes, and cellars - entire livelihoods - were reduced to ash.

At the heart of the devastation lies Corbières, a rugged, beautiful pocket of the Languedoc. Here, vertiginous slopes of vines climb up to 700 metres, interspersed with juniper, rosemary, and thyme, and offer epic views to the Mediterranean. And whilst these wildfires are about more than just wine, the region’s vineyards are undeniably woven into the story of how we got here.

As Decanter noted this month, “There has also been debate about whether uprooting vineyards has contributed to wildfires spreading more easily, particularly as the French government has returned to the policy of compensating growers to grub-up, to curb overproduction.” This strategy has been used before to tackle wine surpluses and stabilise grape prices. Yet as vineyards are ripped up - often targeting old vines and indigenous grape varieties considered less financially lucrative - we risk not only losing potential fire breaks, but also the heritage and quality rooted in these sites. Isn’t a longer-term focus on moving away from chemical farming - which depletes soil health even as it props up yields - a better way to manage these crises?

Whether or not vineyards could have slowed the flames, it appears this was a man-made fire, only worsened by years of destructive agricultural practices. A deeper dive is for another day, but it is a fact that the Languedoc and the neighbouring Roussillon are suffering through years of extreme drought. And whilst we can pray for rain, what the land truly needs is a shift in farming: the encouragement of biodiversity, the planting of cover crops to enrich soil, and a wider embrace of organic, biodynamic, and regenerative practices. As the BBC recently reported, regenerative farming can cut carbon emissions, conserve water in the soil, and help crops retain the nutrients they need in moments of extreme heat and drought.

If the fires exposed the havoc that humans can wreak on the land, the political story of August revealed the other side of the coin: a people willing to fight back. In almost perfect symmetry, two million French citizens spoke up against the reintroduction of the banned pesticide acetamiprid. Like something from a film, the movement was led by Fleur Breteau - a cancer patient who had recently lost her hair during chemotherapy, and who has long campaigned against the use of agricultural chemicals. Supported by environmentalists, doctors, and left-wing politicians, Fleur spearheaded a tour de force of a campaign. With the powerful messaging of her collective Cancer Colère (Cancer Anger) - a group dedicated to politicising cancer - they gathered enough momentum to take the law to France’s constitutional court. On 7th August, the court ruled that the pesticide violated the country’s environmental charter and the constitutional right to live in a balanced, healthy environment.

Dubbed the “Duplomb law” after conservative lawmaker Laurent Duplomb, who had lobbied for the reintroduction of acetamiprid following its 2018 ban, the pesticide remains legal across much of the EU despite mounting concerns. Known to be toxic to pollinators such as bees, it is also increasingly believed to pose serious risks to animals and humans. This is at the heart of what Fleur Breteau and Cancer Colère are fighting: the conviction that environmental toxins and agricultural chemicals - enabled by government and industry alike - are driving alarming spikes in cancer. Fleur’s furious cry during the parliamentary vote -“Vous êtes des alliés du cancer, et on le fera savoir !” (“You are allies of cancer, and we will let it be known!”) - will remain a defining image of civic defiance in France’s shifting political landscape around farming and the environment.

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Mountainscapes: The Cévennes

Something I’m coming to understand is that escaping into the relative calm of the mountains is a must during a long, hot summer in the south. As the heat rises and tempers fray, finding solace in the Pyrenees, Alps or - in my case - the Cévennes, is irresistible. This utterly striking yet somewhat overlooked UNESCO World Heritage site forms the southern reaches of the Massif Central. It is peppered with medieval villages built into sheer rock faces, breathtaking hiking trails across limestone and granite slopes, and vertiginous gorges filled with luminous, fresh water calling you to swim.

I ended up going twice into the Cévennes this month. First, by train from Béziers to Millau - a journey alone I would recommend, as it winds through the rugged terrain of Occitanie, passing wine regions such as Faugères, Terrasses du Larzac, and the Aveyron. Second, by bus from Montpellier to Le Vigan - another trip worth taking, if only for the fact that it costs just two euros.

The water here is crystal clear, soul-cleansing and invigorating. Even in the midst of a heatwave - une canicule - there is reprieve among the gigantic mossy rocks and hillsides tangled with trees and scrub. As you lose yourself in the river’s twists and turns, the noise and connection to the outside world honestly just seem to fall away. You become small, almost hidden - tucked into this secretive world of rock pools and soaring peaks. It is the perfect escape from the chaos of summer.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point you in the right direction for some great meals, and of course, some excellent wine shops to stock the fridge with:

Vincens Vins & Spiritueux - Caviste indépendant - though tucked away in a rather unalluring industrial park on the outskirts of Millau, these guys did have a very nice selection of wines from across France (a rarity down here).

Snack de la Via - a charming, ramshackled summer shack that serves ice cold beers for those descending from the Via Ferrata, and fires up the barbecue each night for a hearty, simple, convivial meal.

Le Maquis - a very sexy little natural wine shop cum restaurant in Le Vigan. There is an incredible selection of local winemakers on display, with lots of repping of the new kids and up-and-coming. A very delicious education.

La Maison Odette - a ridiculously seductive spot in the village of Aulas. Part artist residency, part restaurant with rotating chefs and part auberge (a small hotel). The owner has impeccable taste and the place is so gorgeous that you’ll be sad to go home. Small selection of natural wines. Perfect for a dirty weekend.

La Guinguette d’Avèze - I didn’t actually make it here, but my friends basically made me feel like I had missed out on the best night of our trip. A touch more pricey than your typical guinguette, but with the quality and great wine to back it up.

The hopeful frivolity of summer romances

I suppose this is a continuation of the intoxicating crush I wrote about in June - without a doubt the topic in my year of writing that has sparked the most interest. I find it charming that, ultimately, crushes and romance and passion are an enlivening source of excitement no matter your age. They are not the reserve of teenagers - this silly pursuit really is for all of us.

And while I am tempted to bare all, that June crush is, in fact, signed up to this newsletter, and therefore has a front-row seat to all of my declarations. With this in mind, I thought I’d allow both him and me (mainly me) a little privacy on the topic. Even as I edge closer to my forties, I hold the hope of a summer romance close to my heart. I have done them so very well in the past - diving in head first, passionately, and with very little thought of the future. Dirty weekends away, long afternoons of drinking, snogging, eating oysters, even reenacting romantic kissing scenes from movies in public places (the Cruel Intentions escalator kiss being a firm favourite). Summer romances, I think, should be a sort of blueprint for living in the moment.

Yet their frivolity and carefree nature seem harder to harness as I get older. As the years march on, each of us find ourselves searching for different things, and the mature, adult thing to do is to have that conversation. What do you want? Where is this going? A necessity to draw a line in the sand, to set boundaries, to frame a clear-cut idea for the future. I feel like a brat admitting it, but sometimes I wish we could just stay in the frivolous grey area of lust and fun, without worrying too much about what comes after. Because ultimately, once that conversation is had, the fate of your fantasies is sealed.

In an ideal world, a summer romance should come to a fittingly romantic end - torn apart by campuses or continents. It should close on a high, before either of you knows too much about the other, leaving only a warm, seductive memory. And whilst my crush never quite turned into a full blown summer romance, we had our moments, and what I can say is that Parisians make excellent partners in crime for such affairs. They’ve got the gift of the gab - their words and promises melting over you like warm salted butter. They luxuriate in food, wine, and filth like the best of them. And while you undoubtedly run the risk of a little heartache, I’d argue it’s absolutely worth it, even if only for a fleeting, sun-kissed moment.

Until next month. Hopefully by then I’ll have dusted off the final grains of summer and sand, found a bra and let go of my wistful hopes for summer romance.

Bisous x

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Anyone who knows me well knows that I am not always good at dealing with emotions à la minute. I sort of melt in the face of the turmoil and expectation, becoming weirdly monosyllabic and detached, perhaps employing some well-timed humour as a tool for deflection.

I recently came across some essays I wrote in high school and was taken aback by how vulnerable and personal they were. One was so raw that my teacher said it felt inappropriate to even give it a mark - but they thanked me for sharing such a sensitive story. I'm almost certain I never told my friends about those same, sometimes painful, moments. But somehow, writing them down in my own time - without the weight of expectation or fear of others’ reactions - allowed, and still allows, me to share honestly and openly. The irony that one-on-one sharing feels more overwhelming than letting hundreds of you know the inner workings of my sometimes sordid mind is not lost on me.

But here we are. Thank you for joining me on this unexpected, year-long journey - meant, originally, to be about wine and France, but which has unceremoniously picked up tales of love and loss, fear and letting go… and, of course, summer crushes and why I think winemakers are so sexy. Hopefully you’ll stick around for another year of adventures and smatterings of wine.

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The natural wine constellation

Seeing as June’s Substack was basically a love letter to lust, I figured I’d fill this one to the brim with wine. (Sorry, no talk of French lovers this month).

My career in wine has been hodgepodge, to say the least. I chalk it up to my unabated thirst for the subject (pun intended), and the endless avenues this vast world keeps opening up. But one thing I know for sure: moving to Australia - and by accident, to the epicentre of a thriving natural wine community - changed everything. How I understood wine, how I engaged with it, how I would travel and live, from that point on (well, at least until now).

I’d moved to Australia to do harvest with the classical, highly regarded Shaw + Smith in the Adelaide Hills. It was everything I thought wine should be: serene, with perfectly manicured vines, an immaculate cellar, and an air-conditioned barrel room that felt more like a gallery than a winery. It was an amazing experience that embedded so much of what I had learnt in textbooks and during the WSET (the wine education system). It was neat, organised and purposefully sterile.

But somewhere along the way, I found myself at the home-cellar of Rainbow and Gareth Belton of Gentle Folk Wines. There was an air of freewheeling chaos; of children and animals running at our feet, utes careering up the road to pick up old barrels and drop off picking bins, people sampling wines and smoking roll ups. I was overwhelmed and underprepared. What was happening? Was I allowed to even be there?

As much as I feared I wasn’t cool enough -or bohemian enough - I was intrigued and open-minded. It didn’t look, smell, or taste like any wine I’d known before, but it felt exciting. And just like that, I was in. Part of an eclectic mix of waifs and strays from all over the world, all connected by wine - by natural wine.

What is natural wine? If you’re not so au fait with the concept, here’s a quick primer: at its core, natural wine is just fermented grape juice with nothing added, and nothing taken away.

Of course, nothing in life is that simple, and the concept itself is hotly (and tirelessly) debated. In part, this is due to the fact that, for a long time, there was no certification with agreed upon guidelines. The overarching consensus was that farming is to be done organically and/or biodynamically, and once the grapes are in the cellar, you need to let them naturally ferment and after that, basically don’t fuck with them (often referred to as the “hands off” approach). Don’t add sugar. Don’t add water. Don’t add acid. Don’t add tannin extract. And don’t filter or fine the wines. These processes are typically used to remove sediment or unwanted compounds - something many winemakers see as essential to guarding the stability and shelf life of their wines.

The only thing that some consider a passable addition is sulphur - up to 30mg per litre of sulphur after fermentation to be exact. To put this into context, the EU permits the following sulphur additions:

• Red wine - 150 mg per litre

• White & rosé wine - 200 mg per litre

• Sparkling wine - 185 mg per litre

In 2019, the French Syndicat de Défense des Vins Naturels set out 12 principles that ultimately formed the foundation for a formalised natural wine certification. It was accepted by the official French bodies (agriculture, fraud etc) and the first natural wine certification - Vin Méthode Nature - was officially launched in 2020.

If you’d like to dig into this world more, I’d highly recommend following newsletters Rachel Singer, Aaron Ayscough and Simon J Woolf.

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So, with that brief natural wine 101 out of the way, back to the story…

I spent the next two years in a whirlwind in Adelaide, understanding wine more and more every day, but also understanding that there was something bigger at play. This microcosm that I had found myself in offered up more than just “natty” wine, it offered up a whole subculture of shared values, artistry and inclusion. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of assholes in the natural wine scene - those who are exclusionary, snobbish, at times condescending, and even those who’ve been outed as prolific sexual abusers. But at its best, the scene felt expansive - full of people who wanted to share, experiment, and redefine what wine could be. For most, as long as you turned up with an open mind and weren’t a dick, there was a community for you.

I left Australia almost ten years ago, and have learnt that the microcosms of natural wine communities are actually part of a whole constellation of connected communities. They’re full of people that move between them, sharing ideas and contacts, and a soft landing pad for those of us taking the leap to start new lives. This far-reaching community has taken me under its wing in across the globe, and now, once again in France.

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Chai Uva and the spirit of Sète

Undeniably part of the fabric of Sète’s wine community is couple Mathilde Bayle and Pablo Siranossian of Chai Uva (“chai” pronounced like “shey”, and not like the tea as I was doing for a long time). As is often the way, this dynamic couple came from hospitality - Mathilde as a trained chef and Pablo as a sommelier.

I first found my way to this cellar — almost missable on a quiet residential street — on a cold December afternoon last year. The space is snug, filled with fibreglass tanks, glass demijohns, and pallets of wine you shuffle around as you taste and chat. It’s colourful — with posters, art, empty bottles and vinyl strewn across the walls and shelves.

Half a year later, and now living just two streets away, the space has transformed for me. Pablo and Mathilde use this nook for more than just making wine; they open their doors for apéros, winemaker dinners, and vinyl discos that merrily spill out onto the street. Their wines are the embodiment of balmy southern French evenings, surrounded by friends old and new.

As such, I thought that these two would be the perfect people to sit down with to talk about wine, food, culture, and of course, Sète…

What drew you to Sète, and how does the town shape Chai Uva’s vibe?

Before Sète we were living in Berlin, so the first obvious appeal was the weather, the sunshine and the sea. We wanted to get closer to the Mediterranean, and we knew already have a good community of winemakers that we knew in the area. For us, Sète was the perfect choice to set up a new life here.

For anyone that doesn't know your wines, what can they expect in a bottle?

Our wines are pure energy. They express the south, solar indigenous grapes, old vines and also freshness… We love tension in wines…. nice acidity …. and work with long infusions to give our wines depth, whilst also keeping them easy going… they’re the kind of wines that you can have everyday without getting bored.

I would never ask you to pick a favourite wine, but what is your favourite grape variety to work with? And why?

In terms of red we love Cinsault - an indigenous grape from the Languedoc, and the grape that we use for our cuvée Sumo. The grapes are huge, very juicy and the skin is so light that you can make rosés, easy light reds or, with more extraction, you can make medium bodied reds with a lot of depth.

We are also fans of Muscat à Petit Grains and Terret. Again, they’re both indigenous grapes from the region - the first is very aromatic but once you understand it as a winemaker, it is super interesting and useful in a cellar. The second is unfortunately often too forgotten or unknown, but it is a superb variety. Again super local, you can harvest it late and the alcohol stays low…. even at just 11 degrees [ABV] its ripe, very juicy and always keeps a nice acidity, which is a great advantage for a southern wine.

I find that each French region is very proud of what it produces, but when looking further afield, what region and/or producer are you always excited to try?

We are always curious to try the new La Sorga wines [a local cult winery from Anthony Tortul] as we kinda learnt to make wine with him.

Otherwise, we love wines from Austria, Germany, Greece and Mallorca … it’s always nice to see who are the up-and-coming producers around. Recently we met Elias Muster (from Weingut Muster - in Styria, Austria) and had his wines at the [Tarragona wine salon] H2O Vegetal. They are spectacular… great Sauvignons that are super fresh with incredible, endless length….

If someone was to have a bottle of your wine with a local delicacy, what would your go-to pairing be?

If new in Sète, you’ve got to have local oysters with Atomic 53 - our pét nat made from the local grape variety piquepoul. It’s a nice bubbly dry white which has quite a salty, zesty edge.

If not an oyster fan then go with a classic Tielle [the octopus tart] paired with FREAK, our new rosé/orange. It is a blend of 5 grapes; old vine grenache noir, carignan, aramon, terret blanc and terret gris. It is very fruity and spicy with a touch of strawberry, fennel and anise.

When not making wine and throwing parties, how do you guys like to unwind Sète-style?

Family time, seeing friends, sharing food in a bar near Les Halles…. early morning or early eve at the beach with some wines in the cooler

I feel like music is such a part of the fabric of Chai Uva. What is your go-to album of the summer?

We love the new EP from Steve Spacek - Blue Room. Also any of the new stuff from Byron the Aquarius….

What would you love to see in Chai Uva's future?

We are ready for the next step.. a bigger cellar, more space for ageing wines and another hectare of vines to experiment further.

For those of you in the UK, Chai Uva wines are imported by and sold at Top Cuvée.

Bisous babes and thanks for reading! If you feeling like sharing, hitting the like button or even going balls the wall, and subscribing, it means a huge amount and helps shine a light on my work to new readers out there x

However, I have passed into the all-consuming teenage version of a crush. One that renders your mind tunnel-visioned and hopeless. I have sat down countless times this month to write, gone on long walks and bike rides to chew over what I actually want to say. But then, without warning, my musings have been derailed by sudden thoughts of lust and deviance. Any nuanced ideas I may have had have been unceremoniously stopped in their tracks by my mind’s exotic dreamings. Despite my suspicions that a dive into the darker, more carnal aspects of my imagination may have been well received, I have decided to try and weather the erotic mental storms that I am currently going through, so as to keep this Substack on track… I think I am meant to be writing about France and wine? I can barely remember.

This painstaking crush has coincided with the definite and absolute arrival of summer - and all the sweaty, ocean-whipped, almost nakedness that this entails (especially when living on the Med). I landed back in France on the 21st June, which was not only the summer solstice, but also the France-wide mega celebration that is Fête de la Musique. This is an all day (and all night) music celebration which bears witness to the French tapping into their more feral edge; an interesting thing to witness considering that the French err more on the conservative side and are normally not afraid to berate others for such displays of wanton freedom.

But coming back to France for this genuinely beautiful display of kinship and fun made me relish the very real and evocative change that takes place once summer hits here. France shakes off the aspects of itself that entail more rigidity and regulation, giving way to its more frivolous side that vibrates with street parties, festivals, very late night dinners and the momentary acceptance of anyone and everyone (no matter how shit your French is).

This month feels like the beating drum that defiantly calls in summer; calls in the madness, the heat, the late nights, the inevitable draw to bad decisions. As soon as I stepped off of the plane in Carcassonne, I could feel it, smell it, almost taste it; the final loosening of springtime’s pretty, floral shackles. Gone was the cool evening air, the sweet scent of jasmine and the ability to live without being drenched in sweat. In its place was something more gnarly and intense, less forgiving. The air is now viscous and enveloping, laced with the baked scent of pine trees and lavender, and the marked smell of brine emanating from the ocean. The whole colour palette has changed too; the verdant greens and bright springtime florals have given way to something muted and sun-bleached, almost sepia toned. Summer has let us know that she is here.

An almost island baby

Being back in Sète these past few weeks has given me more than just that ‘living the fucking good life’ feeling. It’s brought me back to a rhythm I’ve been craving - one that also feels deeply familiar. My mum recently commented that it was funny how I brought myself back to a place that was similar to where I grew up.. And whilst I initially balked at this suggestion, it dawned on me that perhaps she was right.

I grew up on the small island of Hayling Island - tucked between Chichester and Portsmouth, and looking out to the Isle of Wight. And while it is indeed an island in name, it’s only really an island when the tide is in. When it’s out, it’s just... almost an island. Or as the French say about Sète, une presqu’île - an almost island. I believe that this semi-detachment/attachment to the mainland does something to the mentality; whilst the semi-attachment stops you from going stir-crazy and falling prey to an all-out island mania, the semi-detachment allows you to leave your real life worries at the bridge, descending into the island a lighter, freer version of yourself.

The delay this month hasn’t just been lust-fuelled - I’ve also been trying to put words to a feeling I haven’t quite been able to name. It is the sense that I am mirroring some of my most treasured moments of being a child; of living in a small place, encased by water and sand and winding paths wrapped in sand dunes that I could take my bike out onto. Of living in a place that centred around one haven - a place where you could go alone and always find friends or an adult to buy you a lemonade. Back then it was Hayling Island Sailing Club. Now, it's a small constellation of natural wine institutes in Sète: Cave au Vin Vivant, Pimpant and the newly-opened Soif.

For me, these places epitomise the easy-going, barefoot spirit that washes through Sète in summer - and if I’m honest, all year round. They eschew the London obsession with sleek fit-outs and state-of-the-art wine fridges - they are rough around the edges, imperfect and welcoming. Tabs - or notes as they’re called here - are scrawled on scraps of paper, bottles are pulled from old humming fridges, and no one cares if you're still sandy from the beach or if you made a bit of a tit of yourself the night before - someone will still pour you a glass and welcome you with a Salut! and a wink, as if you’re part of the family.

I’m going to talk about this more another day, but this is the beauty that I have often found in the world of natural wine, especially down here on this almost island: there is a community of people trying it out and giving it a go. It definitely isn’t always polished, and occasionally I have to declare a wine mousey as hell, but I’d prefer it that way.. real, welcoming and sometimes feral.

Anyway, that’s quite enough coherence for one day - I’m allowed to go back to sunbathing and fantasising now, right?

This year has made me realise that my relationship with France, its people, its ways, was like that of a long-distance lover. We’ve had many moments together over the last two decades - hot and heavy with appreciation and intrigue, so keenly aware that our time entwined was limited. I was able to turn a blind eye to the possibility of annoying quirks, bizarre sentiments and a possible obsession with bureaucratic paperwork. Because my moments in France have given me sailing to Belle Île and Porquerolles, swimming in ravines, gorging on baguettes and cheese, and bathing in five euro glasses of wine. It gave me markets, vignerons, French men, and generous helpings of butter.

I should mention that while I’m definitely a romantic when it comes to France (it helps), I wasn’t entirely clueless. My first real encounter was at sixteen, when I spent a semester with a family in Saint-Étienne, near Lyon. It was the summer Brice de Nice came out, the summer I learned to smoke, the summer I had cause to say, “Où est la discothèque?”, and the summer I French-kissed a French boy for the first time. It was also the summer I discovered that French kids got a three-course lunch - with cheese - at school. That one was hard to swallow when I returned to my lacklustre school lunch in Ireland.

The decades that followed were dotted with extended stays, seasonal stints, French boyfriends - and eventually, the purchase of a house here in 2021. I’d flirted with other countries, sure, but I kept coming back. Finally, I was ready to commit. Ready to exchange those fleeting, indulgent moments for something long-term.

You see, when you know that there is an expiration date, a romantic goodbye, it is easy to remain at surface level, dazzled by the sex appeal of a country that really has it in droves. But one year in, I am pleased to say that I am still dazzled, but also more familiar with the soft, weird underbelly of French culture. Here are a few things I’ve learned this year - from the charming to the downright shitty (literally).

• Sorry to start off negatively (although it is quintessentially French), but there is dog shit everywhere. I stood in some just last week. My mistake? Looking up - daydreaming, enjoying the coastal breeze and the morning sun. Silly me. Always look down. You need to be keeping a pointed eye out for the assault course of dog shit that lies ahead of you.

• They love a ciggie. This is, of course, no revelation in of itself - but I had assumed that there were some places that were sacrosanct from such behaviour. Perhaps at the gym for example? Apparently not. I have witnessed many staff and clients alike enjoying a quick clope (ciggie in French) break. A new take on a balanced lifestyle perhaps?

• Giving the French some love here - in 1981, they passed what is known as the Lang Law (after their Minister of Culture, Jack Lang), which protects the price of books and how much you can discount them. These laws were bolstered with a minimum delivery fee, so as to defend independent book shops from the tyranny of companies like Amazon. Allez les Bleus!

• They are blunt. Painfully so at times. For example, I had come back from the beach with, what I thought was an alluringly golden hue, only for a friend to see me and say, “Your face is very red.”. Yep, that brought me back down to earth. However, when you realise that this isn’t done with malice, simply factual observation, it makes it a little easier to accept… I think?

• Meeting times are loose suggestions - give or take 30 minutes (but never earlier, God forbid). I think this rule of thumb could be applied across southern Europe. Once, upon questioning why someone was twenty minutes late for our meeting, they puffed their cheeks and sighed, “On n’est pas swisses.”. No apologies. Just know, we’re not fucking Swiss. And they say it with such conviction, as though punctuality were some sort of moral failing.

• They don’t care about your feedback in restaurants. It is not wanted or appreciated, or indeed, accepted. One experience of attempted feedback ended in being told to fuck off et get out! You’ve been warned.

• Each region is fiercely proud and connected to what it produces. This is of course charming and calls to a sense of pride that we don’t typically display back in old Blighty. Good luck ordering Burgundy or Jura when you’re in the Languedoc.. Looks like I’ll be drinking Picpoul for the rest of my days. Pass me the tiny violin, s’il vous plaît.

*Mum and Ludo - I’d recommend skipping the next one. Not sure you need to know anything about my sexting.

• French sexting. Sneaking in just before the year’s out. I’m surprised I hadn’t experienced this little French treat until now. The French have an effortless way of weaving filth with romanticism - something British men, in my experience, simply can’t pull off. That said, it does take a moment to adjust to their style of dirty poeticism when you're used to seduction that sounds more like: “Show me your tits.”

• Last but not least, I would argue that there is such as thing as too much baguette. I’m sorry. I had to say it.

Alors, a whole year of France. As I wrap this up, I am sitting with a (British) friend in Paris and both of us wholeheartedly, passionately agree that whilst this country can be maddening at times, we are so unbelievably happy that we moved here. Santé to another year of getting to know this beautiful, complicated place.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I am lamenting said desert-like situation to my friend on a quiet Saturday afternoon at the bar in Bèzier’s Les Halles (the covered market). Admittedly, some wine had been drunk, but what happened next was definitely thanks to the generous, free-poured (God, I love France) Chartreuse served up and suavely slid across the bar to us. My switch from lamenting to snogging was rapid, even for my standards. You see, this verdant, shimmering “elixir of a long life” has a very real, very powerful effect on one’s senses and apparently, one’s ability to pull at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon in late January. The gentleman in question had innocently stood near-ish to me, but my senses for a French man with a large nose (thank you Jean Dujardin for that life-long passion) had been piqued.

And so, I told him he was handsome, asked if he would like to kiss me, and you guessed it, we kissed. We kissed in the middle of a brightly lit market hall, much to the bemusement and confusion of those around us, and indeed, him I think. This may well sound like your version of hell - a sort of public display of want - and I can totally understand that. But this moment has served as a reminder that this lusty, silly, whatever-for-tomorrow side to me still exists. Not caring who saw me kissing a stranger, or whether it was the appropriate place or time was quite liberating. I actually noticed that this particular handsome man started following this substack, so if you’re reading this - Salut toi! Probably a good sign as to my kissing abilities, at least.

In the months since, I’ve often thought about that afternoon - and the momentary, wanton abandon I felt. It’s not a feeling I have much these days - if ever. Is it silly to want to kiss strangers in unsuspecting places? To want to see where the night takes you with little care for tomorrow, when everyone around you is getting married, having babies, talking business and retirement funds? I miss the side of me that has a scar on my back from when I broke onto a boat with a boy called Charlie and well, you can guess the rest. And I miss the side of me that has a tattoo on my ribcage that I got one night in a wine bar in Paris when I was high on love and pills. I guess I just miss being that version of myself: impulsive, open, and a little reckless.

Maybe that’s the real power of Chartreuse? It is not just the elixir of a long life, but a reminder that even whilst I am laden in more responsibility and pressure than my younger years, it is there to help me unearth that side of myself - even if it’s just for one kiss in a market hall, in January, with a man who’ll read about it later.

Buy me a coffee ✌️

Are the monks drinking Chartreuse?

I know you may think that it is a stretch to consider that Chartreuse could possibly be the actual catalyst for such carnal freedoms, but I would like to argue this drink, more than any other I know, has a real and animalistic effect on people. And the skyrocketing sales in the last few years are a clear indicator that the people clearly love it; they love being unleashed, untethered. It has made me wonder whether the monks ever get high on their own supply? I am assuming not, or else I fear that things up in those Alpine reaches would be less monastic, and little more last days of Rome.

Chartreuse has an excellent origin story - probably the best. It’s all monks (hot monks à la Peep Show and Sex and the City perhaps?), centuries-old secret recipes, an indecent quantity of herbs, more monks, and now, a heartfelt declaration that they are limiting production - not for profit, but for monastic purity and the planet. And I fear in doing so, they’ve only made their liquor even more alluring (and their monks even hotter..?).

All of this has rendered Chartreuse like catnip to sommeliers and general drinks nerds. They (we) have become accustomed to scanning the back bars of bistros and bars in search of the ruby-green or topaz-yellow liquid. The process of scouring becoming a mere reflex. But why? What is so bloody good about a drink made from herbs?

If you don’t know this reference, I’m afraid you need to stop reading and immediately watch the film. It’s essential context. Like a scene from Death Becomes Her, when Meryl Streep imbibes the secret liquid to eternal youth, the consumption of Chartreuse can make you feel like you are immediately a sex god(dess). Where you were once tired and drowning in chats of oligarchs and tariffs, you are now energised with new ideas, a pert bottom and, on occasion, a mission to snog. Well, in my case anyway.

The liquid is powerful (the green more so than the yellow), and I have witnessed novices recoiling at the intensity and the immediate rush that even the smallest sip provides. But I implore you to sink in, to let the verdant, fragrant liquid slide down your throat and course through your veins - the intense flavours of mountain herbs, flowers, citrus and pine flooding every corner of your weary body. Because, let’s be honest, the monks clearly know what they are doing.

And so, whilst Chartreuse green superseded Brat-girl summer green by just a couple of centuries, for me the feeling and the meaning are the same: go out and live, and be, and be happy and snog who you want, and stay out late, and don’t care what anyone else is thinking or doing. I may be paraphrasing on behalf of the monks here, but I am sure that, in making Chartreuse, they just wanted us all to find a way to live free and wild.

Buy me a coffee ✌️

Last but not least, a huge shout to Hôtel Pinard in Montpellier, run by the ridiculously handsome, warm, charismatic couple Ben and Szabi. This wine bar and restaurant undoubtedly has one of the greatest wine lists in the city (potentially even the region), as well as having a very, very badass Chartreuse selection. You have been warned.