The founders of “Go There Wines” are on a mission to show that every wine has a story — and to share those stories from lesser-known winegrowing regions.
The company is run by Michelin-starred restaurateur Rose Previte and her husband, former “Morning Edition” host David Greene, along with their close friend Chandler Arnold, a philanthropist.
Greene believes sharing the stories behind the wines could have a big impact on the producers and the industry.
“If we can tell [these stories], we're setting an example for this industry, and we're touching these lives of people who mean so, so much to us, and hopefully starting a movement,” Greene said.
On Thursday afternoon, on the eve of the Food and Wine Classic, Previte and Greene are showcasing “Go There Wines” at a tasting event called “Winemaking is Freedom.” The fundraiser event for Aspen Public Radio runs from 4 to 6 p.m. at a private residence in Aspen’s West End.
Kaya Williams spoke with Greene and Previte in advance of the event about their company, the power of flavor and the social impact of wines.
If you want to taste the wines for yourself, meet the couple and support Aspen Public Radio, tickets for “Winemaking is Freedom” start at $250 at aspenpublicradio.org.
Kaya Williams: These are lesser-known wines, so how did you two get to know them?
Rose Previte: I actually own a few restaurants in Washington, D.C. And since my very first one, Compass Rose, which opened in 2014, we've been on a mission to present wine from places you might not have heard of, or places you didn't think had wine, for example. And I learned that lesson living in Russia with David, while he was covering Moscow for NPR.
I discovered Georgian food and Georgian culture and Georgian wine. They've been making wine for 8,000 years. But honestly, David and I, who had traveled even before living in Russia, didn't even know anything about Georgia. We knew it had been part of the Soviet Union. We had no idea there was amazing wine and amazing food.
And so that was the real inspiration, and David and I both became obsessed with it, traveled to Georgia and learned quickly that wine was geopolitical — that at the time, you couldn't even buy Georgia wine in Russia, the Russians wouldn't allow it. And I sort of made it like my Putin protest, to come back to the states and sell as much Georgian wine as possible.
And then I'm Lebanese American, and my second restaurant, Maydan, is food from, you know, everywhere from North Africa, to Eastern Europe, a little bit of Iran and Oman. And I realized quickly that my own ancestral land of Lebanon was another region producing amazing wine that nobody had ever thought would come from Lebanon, because you don't think of wine and Lebanon together.
And so the more I looked, the more I realized, there were more and more places like that. Bolivia — you never hear Bolivian wine, but it's right there by Argentina, and Paraguay and Chile. So why wouldn't it have really good wine?
So it turns out when you start to look, it's actually all there. And I think what we're trying to do obviously is bring it to you and amplify the voices of the people that we've been fortunate enough to get to know.
Kaya Williams: It strikes me that on the radio, you can hear a lot of sounds, you can kind of imagine what something looks like but you cannot taste what's on the radio, but you can taste a wine. So what role does flavor play in the storytelling that you're working with now?
Greene: I mean, my mind immediately gravitates to Abdullah. Abdullah Richi is one of the winemakers we've partnered with. He's a Syrian refugee who has been living in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, learning how to make wine, being mentored by a winemaker who we've been very close to, [who] Rose has worked with for a long time.
Now he's just an amazing winemaker in his own right. And, you know, Rose had a wine festival a few years ago. Abdullah couldn't come because he has a Syrian passport — the United States would never let him in.
But Rose played his voice. And I'll never forget it, because he was imploring people to not taste these wines and think that this is some kind of charity — like, that you're going to taste the flavor, and it's not going to taste as good as the wine that you love, but like, you're doing it because you feel sorry for him.
He wants us to all know that when you sip his wine when you buy his wine, yes, it's supporting him. Yes, he's sending that money back to his family in Syria. But he's a proud businessman. He's a proud winemaker. And he wants the flavor to be as important in terms of the taste of the wine as it is the flavor of the story.
Williams: Have you ever taken a sip of wine and found yourself back in a country that you haven't been to for several years?
Previte: There's nothing more powerful, and I think wine is such a passionate and such an intimate process. Now that we know our winemakers and have seen them, with their own hands, pick these grapes, crush them, it's such a personal experience.
The flavor brings it all back. It brings back watching them make their wines but it also brings back the bumpy Lebanon mountain road that we were on when we stopped and pulled over and had some wine and it was just — it's a really special connection.
Greene: I mean, that's the beauty of it, and I think that's where it all kind of blends — to use a wine term — blends together. You know, the Dzvelshavi grape is this almost extinct grape from Georgia that the two of our winemaking partners Baia and Gvantsa [Abuladze] make. They want to save this grape.
It is a delicious grape. It's a great chilled red.
[To Rose:] You know better than me, but I think it is as good as any chilled red you have out there.
But it has a distinct flavor. And like my dream is that people will taste that. They'll then know enough about Baia and Gvantsa’s story, that they're trying to save a grape that the Soviets literally ripped out of the ground during Soviet times because they didn't think that it produced in high enough volume to be, you know, viable economically.
And you know, here are these two Georgian sisters who are incredibly inspiring, they're using this grape that the Soviets tried to destroy, and they're making a delicious wine that’s distinctive. And I want like, a really fine-tuned [sommelier] to taste that and be like, “This is Dzvelshavi, it's amazing. It's like, just as dry as I want it. The tannins are right,” whatever, you know, people who know much more about wine than I do talk about, but also be connected to that story. And imagine that you're making a statement about, you know, “the Soviets are not going to destroy the wine culture in Georgia, period.” And all of that just sort of interacts together.
Williams: To that point, you both have touched on wine reflecting a lot of the social changes that are going on. Go There Wines is marketed as a social enterprise company. So do you see it going the other direction too? Can wine incite social change?
Greene: I certainly hope so. I mean, I look at our winemakers. I mean, Nondumiso Pikashe, she's a winemaker in South Africa. She grew up in the township during apartheid, which you know, was very poor and all black. And during apartheid, if you're a young black girl like Nondumiso was, you could dream of being in the wine industry, but like, there was not a chance. Her only relationship with wine was, this is what the apartheid government gives to people in the township: cheap wine to get them drunk and keep them from ever rising up and trying to fight for their future.
And so she became a school teacher and always had this dream, you know, that she wanted to be a winemaker at some point. And she is now — she's a winemaker. She has Ses'Fikile, which is her own wine brand, which means in her native language, “we have arrived.” We make a wine with her, we make two wines with her. We want our company when it is profitable to support her in fulfilling her dreams in any way that we can possibly help her. Because her dreams are incredible, and they're all about social change.
Like, her dream is that she is a pioneer that makes a statement in modern-day South Africa that the wine industry is open to everybody. And she has a leading voice on that now and she wants that voice to grow and we want to stand with her. So I think she's one example of a winemaker who is doing exactly what you just said, which is using wine to really spark social change. So I think it absolutely goes in both directions.
For more information on “Winemaking is Freedom,” click here. A wine tasting runs from 4 to 6 p.m. followed by an exclusive, limited-seating dinner at 7 p.m. Tickets to the tasting are $250; tickets to the tasting and the dinner are $500.
