Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Meg Bernhard, author of Wine (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Date: November 28, 2025
Topic: Exploring the cultural, social, environmental, and personal dimensions of wine through Bernhard's Object Lessons book Wine.

Episode Overview

This episode centers on journalist Meg Bernhard’s book Wine, a wide-ranging meditation on wine as an agricultural product, cultural artifact, and lens on power, memory, and environmental change. Dr. Miranda Melcher interviews Bernhard about her experiences working on vineyards in Spain, wine’s exclusionary language, issues of labor and gender in the wine industry, climate change’s impact on viticulture, and how deep engagement with wine transformed Bernhard’s appreciation for drinking.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Meg Bernhard’s Background and Inspiration

• First Encounter with Wine ([02:54]):
  • Meg describes herself as a journalist and essayist from Southern California, now based in Las Vegas.
  • Her deep engagement with wine began when she worked on small, minimal-intervention vineyards in Spain right after college.
  • She entered as a novice:

    “In college, I was more accustomed to drinking cheap wine out of coffee mugs or sort of binge drinking. It was more about the intoxication than the actual pleasure of the drink.” ([03:17], Meg Bernhard)

  • Observing vineyards post-harvest, she became fascinated by “the rhythm of life” in wine production and the power structures—around labor, class, gender, and language—embedded in the wine world ([05:22]).

2. The Language and Power of Wine

• Learning the Language(s) ([06:50]):

  • Meg learned wine’s technical vocabulary—often first in Spanish—while working and living with a winemaker family in Spain.
  • She observed that the language for tasting (“notes”) is highly subjective, shaped by memory, class, and cultural background:

    “Our tasting notes for wine and the smells that we think can derive from a wine are really bound up in our sense memories... Our subjective experience ... is totally going to shape the way that we experience a wine.” ([08:41], Meg Bernhard)

  • She critiques the “standardization” of tasting notes, which have historically centered Western, affluent experiences and references.
  • There’s a push among some wine professionals for a more communal, story-based, and inclusive wine language.

• Memorable Quote

  “The problem of language is trying to communicate one subjective experience to another person. And it’s always going to be impossible... But if we can tell a story about what it is that we’re tasting, maybe that will bring us closer together.” ([12:19], Meg Bernhard)

3. Gender and Power in Wine Production

• Male-Dominated Winemaking ([14:50]):

  • Few women make wine, especially in Spain and California, though numbers are growing.
  • Historical and cultural barriers: e.g., in France, wine cellars were forbidden to women based on myths about menstruation ([15:35]).
  • Entry barriers are high due to required capital; knowledge hoarding by (predominantly white, male) gatekeepers persists.

• Scandal in the Wine World

  • The “court of master sommeliers” 2020 sexual harassment scandal highlighted exploitative mentor-mentee dynamics:

    “Knowledge hoarding and gatekeeping is really the way that people keep and maintain power.” ([18:34], Meg Bernhard)

  • Some change is happening as more women and minorities enter winemaking and challenge old norms.

4. Wine and the Environment: Two Epistemologies

• Structural vs. Ecological Knowledge ([19:39]):

  • Bernhard draws on anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard to distinguish between “structural” (social, calendar-based) and “ecological” (seasons, agriculture-based) time in vineyard work.
  • Structural knowledge: cellar decisions, aging, and social rituals.
  • Ecological knowledge: soil, weather, seasons; the true “terroir” of wine.

• Memorable Quote

  “Wine made in this particular way, made with limited intervention, tells the story of a year. It can tell you the story of the heat and the drought, of floods, of freeze. It’s like a memory keeper, a record keeper of one particular time on the planet.” ([27:10], Meg Bernhard)

5. Climate Change and Its Effects on Wine

• Direct Impacts ([26:12]):

  • Bernhard gives detailed, region-specific climate impacts:
    • Spain: Drought causes smaller crops but more concentrated, alcoholic wines ([27:48]).
    • France: Warmer winters prompt early bud break; late frost/hail destroys crop (up to 90% losses in bad years) ([29:23]).
    • California: Drought, extreme heat, and wildfires; smoke taint can ruin grapes ([30:54], [36:24]).

• Wildfire Smoke’s Unique Effects

  • “Smoke can bind with the sugar molecules in a grape... pretty much impossible to get out because you need the sugars for fermentation.”
  • “The lighter smoke wines taste a little bit like a campfire, a little smoky ... but on the other end ... it can taste like ... a cigarette butt.” ([37:05–38:50], Meg Bernhard)
  • Hazardous working conditions for harvesters, often undocumented migrants ([40:09]).

• Adaptation Strategies ([41:17]):

  • Vermont winemaker using hybrid grapes to withstand cold.
  • Experimental techniques (e.g., reverse osmosis) to remove smoke taint.
  • Labor-intensive and sometimes desperate practices: antifreeze candles, fans against frost.
  • Natural winemakers promote resilient, biodiverse vineyards; example of “vineyard sentience” in responding to pests ([43:59]).

6. Wine, Memory, and Personal Transformation

• Personal Evolution ([46:06]):
  • Working in vineyards shifted Meg’s relationship with wine from negative (binge drinking, familial alcoholism) to appreciative and contemplative.
  • She highlights the Spanish custom of “sobremesa”—extended, unhurried socializing after a meal—as emblematic of savoring and sharing wine ([47:42]).
  • Deep knowledge increases respect and pleasure:

    “When you know where the thing you’re consuming comes from, I think generally you have more respect for it.” ([46:52], Meg Bernhard)

  • But increased awareness also brought a sense of reckoning with wine’s power structures and inequities.

7. The Audience for Wine

• Who Meg Wrote For ([50:42]):
  • Wrote primarily for her brother, a non-expert patient with her “blathering on about wine”; aimed for accessibility.
  • Hopes to reach both wine novices and knowledgeable readers—anyone interested in “power and in pain and pleasure and memory.”
  • Seeks to demystify and democratize the culture around wine.

8. Wine Now: Author’s Relationship

• Current Perspective ([53:30]):
  • Despite doing a wine-centric book tour (“Books and wine. My two favorite things.”), Meg’s core relationship to wine is shaped by pleasure, sharing, and conversation.
  • Learning winemaking’s ecological side expanded her appreciation for place and landscape everywhere.

    “Wine has really reshaped the way that I see the world and I’m grateful for that.” ([55:43], Meg Bernhard)

9. What’s Next for Meg Bernhard?

• Future Projects ([56:42]):
  • Although Wine was a passion project, Meg usually writes about grief, loss, and death for magazines.
  • Interested in how we cope with collective loss, the pandemic’s cultural impact, and the psychology of secrets.
  • No next book planned yet, but open to suggestions and exploring related themes.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Tasting Notes and Power:

  “The people who have decided that Cabernet Sauvignon tastes like black currant ... have access to travel, for example. So that’s one way that tasting notes are sort of bound up in power and class.” ([10:25], Meg Bernhard)

• On the Sensory Experience:

  “You’re never going to taste the exact same thing that I taste. But if we can tell a story about what it is that we’re tasting, maybe that will bring us closer together.” ([12:19], Meg Bernhard)

• On Adaptation and Resilience:

  “A vineyard tended to this respectful and environmentally conscious way, is adaptable and resilient, and can often respond to its own sort of existential problems.” ([44:41], Meg Bernhard)

• On Transformation:

  “My experience with wine went from ... being sort of negative to being more positive, from ... pain to pleasure. And then, of course, it also became more complicated too, because ... I was experiencing the romance of wine and wine drinking. But then ... learning about all of these systems of power ... my relationship also went from romance to reckoning.” ([49:08], Meg Bernhard)

Key Timestamps

• 02:54–05:59 — Bernhard’s journey to wine; initial experiences in Spain
• 06:50–13:58 — Learning wine language; subjectivity and class in tasting notes
• 14:50–19:08 — Gender power dynamics and exclusion in wine making and service
• 19:39–25:13 — Structural and ecological time in vineyards; defining terroir
• 26:12–34:46 — Climate change impacts across Spain, France, California, Vermont
• 36:24–41:00 — Wildfire smoke’s impact on wine and labor
• 41:17–45:14 — Adaptation strategies and philosophy of natural wine growers
• 46:06–50:03 — Personal relationship with wine: from binge drinking to deep appreciation
• 50:42–53:30 — Intended audience and accessibility of the book
• 53:30–56:21 — How working on the book reshaped Meg’s view of wine and place
• 56:42–58:19 — Future work: grief, loss, post-pandemic themes

Tone and Style

Meg Bernhard brings a thoughtful, reflective, and deeply personal perspective, while Dr. Miranda Melcher guides the conversation with curiosity and clarity. The discussion is candid, insightful, and accessible—echoing the book’s own aims to open up wine’s stories to all.