“Never stand between audience members and their wine,” says Natalie MacLean, sommelier and author of Wine Witch on Fire, about her October 27 event at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. The book is a memoir covering a year in MacLean’s life, which she calls her “no good, terrible, very bad vintage.”
Cover of Wine Witch on Fire. Image provided.
“I will kick things off with a tasting of two wines from Kin Vineyards which is located in Carp,” she says before cautioning her audience that “for any remaining residual snobbery about wines from the Ottawa area, please dump that in the spittoon right now, because this winery is producing fantastic wines. I review thousands of wines from every wine region around the world every year and these—in a blind tasting—stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the best chardonnays and pinot noirs and other wines that I’ve tasted.”
“So, there’ll be two full glasses of wine for every attendee… then Julie [S. Lalonde] and I will have a conversation about the issues in [my] book. It’s the story of one woman and how she has to resurrect her life in the glamorous but sexist wine world. It starts with my shock [about] my husband of 20 years, a high-powered CEO, asking for a divorce, and then my year gets even worse when an online mob comes for my job.”
“Going back and forth between despair and determination… I start drinking too much. So, I really have to fight for my son, rebuild my reputation, and salvage my own self-worth during this year, and it really makes me dig down and question my own relationship with alcohol.”
Natalie MacLean. Photo provided.
After years of inner searching, MacLean says, “I came to the conclusion that perhaps my story might help even one person feel less alone and kickstart a conversation around these issues. Even though you may not have gone through a divorce, you’ve probably felt loneliness and the longing for love. Even though you may not have been mobbed online, you’ve probably felt a fear of the future or career disappointment.”
Even with this knowledge, she found the memoir challenging to write.
“My inspiration for finally getting this book out there came from the memoirist Glennon Doyle, who said ‘write from a scar, not an open wound.’ You might ask, ‘why bother writing about it when all the healing is done?’ and for me the poet Sean Doherty had the answer. He said, ‘why bother? Because there’s someone somewhere out there right now who has a wound in the exact shape of your words.’”
From reading her book or attending her event on Friday, MacLean wants people “to take away a piece of themselves better understood.” She clarifies with an analogy: “In winemaking we have a term called ‘dry extract,’ and it is what’s left of wine after all the moisture is boiled out of it. It’s the core taste elements of what wine is, and I think when life boils us down to our essence, when we go through trying times, we can discover in ourselves a resilience and strength we never knew we had.”
“I don’t wish terrible times on anyone, but they can be a gift for better understanding and for better confidence in yourself that you can make it through, that you can go through the dumpster fires that life throws at you and come out on the other end stronger, wiser, fiercer.”
Find out more and get tickets to Natalie MacLean’s event and others at the Ottawa International Writers Festival website.
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