What is the reality of your day to day? It all sounds very empowering, and I think very easy to romanticise what you’re doing but it must be incredibly intense and emotional and quite simply difficult. 

It’s been 15 years of very hard work. I’ve worked for lots of different people. Thanks to another woman, she demonstrated that there is no reason to do it for anyone else. If you deeply love the wines you are serving, you can thrive in natural wine. It’s not the classical way to do it in France, buying and reselling. It’s more of a UK or USA thing. I buy stock and redeliver, it’s a lot of logistic - organising the trucks, dealing with the warehouse, the custom problems, all sort of annoying and boring things. Then there’s the accounting side. Paying the producers, which I like, it’s a concrete joy, you’re doing some good but then you have to grab the money you’re owed (from restaurants and shops) and the state doesn’t help with this. You really have to kick up a fuss; it can take months and months. As a woman I’m taken for a pumpkin. The wine tastings are interesting but tiring and often repetitive; you’re pouring in seven or eight restaurants a day to show the wines. Then you come home, and you have your children to look after and that whole part of your life. The most fun bit is going to the vineyards and meeting the producers. Seeing how it’s going and finding out when we’re going to bubble the wine and plans for next year. 

It’s been tough due to global warming, there’s really bad frost. And suicides. We had some amazing wine producers that shot themselves last spring. Agricultural suicide is coming to the natural wine. You work so hard - it’s like biodynamic farming - and then global warming fucks it up. Frost at the end of spring is devastating. There’s only so much you can do. The global warming brings diseases which is why I’m so interested in hybrid vines. They’ve been lasting decades and are so much more resistant.

Can you tell me a bit more about your political agenda with wine making?  

Let me tell you about two projects I’m very fond of. 

Tu viens d’où? Where are you from? This question is often asked my French people. Most of the people asked are born in France but have a broader heritage. People are asked when they’ve just met someone. I want to overcome this in many ways, and one is through wine. This bottle has a honeybee’s wax smell and muscat taste, there’s definitely a delicate orange blossom somewhere in there. It’s a little creamy. This wine is from all sorts of different origins but not really from one in particular. It’s a from a region that isn’t well known, Franconia, Germany. This is troubling for every well-educated sommelier because they don’t know about it which I think is a pretty good representation of the people asking other French people where they’re from because they don’t look typically French. 

Amazons is another of our wines which explores the pre considered ideas of powerful women. Armour around your body, on a horse, a bow and arrow. All of these Greek mythical women who are thought of so highly. We have so many amazons which are so much closer and relevant to our history than these mythic women. It’s troubling to see how many modern female warriors haven’t been considered. We don’t know about them, and they’re not being talked about. There are many racist ideas of the appearance of powerful women. The wine is red because it’s a hybrid wine (mixed plants by pollen (no GMO’s or manipulation – it’s totally natural) they’re resistant to any sickness. However, it tastes like a white wine. It has no structure at all. If you drank it blind, you’d think it’s white. People think it’ll be heavy but it’s not at all. It’s a wine that will question the people and allow them to resonate with it. If you represent people, they feel invited. 

What is new on this year’s batch? We currently only have last years.

 We’ve got some wine from Bordeaux called Cancel Culture. It was my first wine. It’s what got me into this. It’s coming at the end of the Spring. This wine is important, it’s saying no means no. It’s very delicate with a slight infusion of pink grapes. 

What is one of your favourite bottles you have produced? And which label is the most significant to you?

 White sauvignon blanc, I usually hate it because it’s either cat piss or jam but it’s never good to me. A friend makes it and it’s impossible to tell it’s a sauvignon blanc. It’s always very interesting for me, it brings me to places I’ve never been to. We did a maceration, and it really tastes like pineapple. I want to drink it all. The idea around this wine is that you didn’t mean the right wine yet. It’s a play on dildos. A play on misogynistic men who don’t believe lesbians are lesbians, that they haven’t found the right man yet.  

What are your thoughts on expanding? 

 We could expand, we need a place to work in… we’re working from home currently. We need a wine cellar. It’ll be a big step. And as we mentioned, the vineyards are something we’d love to do. There are five of us now, we need a little home. It’d be good to host our wine makers. We thought we were at the maximum but due to the disastrous last couple of years, we need more, more white wines. We’re trying to find some new producers who are able to send us some wine. We’re growing and we have more customers, but we don’t want to give up our old customers. As a rule, for now, we’re only employing female wine producers. We need more women!!

What do you see the future for women in wine making and especially natural wine making? 

 I think we can do it, we must be super strong, as we are in all the different industries. I don’t know any job that’s easy as a woman. It is getting better though and only because we’re fighting. There’s still a lot of room that we can take back. 

How would you encourage other women to get involved?

 You have to follow your heart. if you love a particular wine form a particular region, explore it, produce it, settle down there. I see a huge future in the hybrids. If I was a young fresh woman in the industry, I‘d become the queen of hybrids, plant them everywhere. Do what you want and don’t let anyone make you believe it’s not for you.