A Charleston group is looking to add slow wines to your cellar. Slow wines are not wines you sip slowly, although you certainly could. They are “slow-minded, wines made with minimal intervention, no chemical fertilizers, made thoughtfully and following the Slow Food mindset of good, clean and fair for all,” said Kellie Holmes, co-chair of the Charleston Slow Wine group that is an outgrowth of Slow Food.
Although Charleston is not a wine-growing area, it is a wine-drinking area, and Slow Wine’s goal is to convince those drinkers they should be having slow wine.
“What’s happening in general is that more people are concerned about the quality of what goes in their body and that includes wine,” Holmes said. “They are consuming alcohol more selectively overall and, if you’re going to partake, why not drink a wine that you feel good about drinking?”
Co-chair Lauren Mowery was the impetus behind Slow Wine Charleston. As she made plans to move to the Holy City from New York, she wondered why Charleston didn’t have its own slow wine movement.
“When I got to Charleston, I reached out to see if they’d done any slow wine events. Those tended to be held only in states where wine is made, like California, but then I realized why wouldn’t we at least be able to organize tastings for consumers and buyers to educate them,” Mowery said.
“These growing wine-curious markets in which natural and organic wines are increasingly important should learn about the slow wine concept, especially as awareness of the slow food movement increases, too.”
For Slow Wine’s Nov. 7 Charleston event, the group focused on Italian wines and invited Marilena Barbera, owner of Cantine Barbera vineyard in Sicily.
A Sicilian Winery
Barbera’s winery sits on land that was given to her grandfather as a wedding gift. Her father continued growing grapes, selling to large co-ops, and then making wine himself as a hobby in the mid-1990s. By the end of the decade, he had turned his hobby into a business, and Barbera used her accounting degree to do the books for her father.
By 2000, her father had built his own winery and, when he died in 2006, Barbera took over.
“I started to get more involved in the production part of business, I started to work with the enologist consultant he had hired from Piedmont,” Barbera said. “I worked with the consultant for three years, then in 2009 was the first harvest without the aid of the consultant, and from then it was just me.”
Cantine Barbera is located in the Agrigento part of Sicily, known for its ancient temples. The grapes Barbera inherited from her father were mostly “international” grapes, but now she has converted her fields to only 15% international and 80% local grapes such as reds Frappato, Nero d’Avola, Perricone and Alicante, and whites Inzolia, Catarratto, Grillo and Zibibbo.
At that point, she was hooked and, at the age of 51, during the Covid lockdown, she got her agricultural degree online to further her wine knowledge.
“Wine is something that attracts you a lot, when you start knowing wine and working with wine, at some point it becomes a part of your life and difficult to let it go,” Barbera said.
To Barbera, slow wine is a way of life and making wine organically, biodynamically and with no chemical intervention, is not just about the wine, but about the land.
“The 2023 vintage is probably the smallest I have seen in my life,” she said. “Unfortunately, this will be the norm because of climate change, the soil losing fertility, balance and strength. The desert is moving from Africa to here. When it’s too hot, the vines stop their metabolism because they cannot breathe or absorb nutrients. The grapes do not get ripe, so you have dry, green grapes with no juice.”
This year, she will produce about 38,000 bottles. Last year, it was almost twice that.
Still, she’s staying put, despite the migration of larger companies to the cooler mountains.
“I am deeply connected to the place where I was born and where I am making my wines,” she said. “Growing grapes and making wine is more complex than just making a product. The capitalistic vision of business is consuming resources and abandoning places where there’s nothing more to consume. I do not agree with that vision.
“We need to strengthen and protect the resilience of marginal places and communities, because those communities protect the soil and the eco-systems that nurture everybody in the world and make life possible on this planet.”
The slow wine goal
Barbera’s goal, and that of the Slow Wine organization, is to educate wine drinkers to ask for slow wines, especially because there is no special labeling in the U.S. to determine which wines qualify.
That is why the group is holding its second wine tasting Nov. 7 and has invited Barbera to bring her wines and speak. A previous event focusing on American wines attracted about 70 people, both those from the beverage industry and consumers. This event, focused on Italian wines, is targeting mostly industry folk but will be open for enthusiasts as well. Slow Wine hopes to do two events per year.
But, of course, ethical wine is nothing without taste.
Barbera said she can taste the life in a slow wine.
“A slow wine can stay open for days and still taste like wine,” Barbera said, citing her use of indigenous yeast as one reason the wine remains unspoiled longer than commercial wine. “A slow wine is a wine that has a life, you can enjoy it very slowly and that means that this is a wine that doesn’t die because it has life inside, where microorganisms and nutrients keep the wine alive.”
Mowery said she wasn’t sure the difference in taste is all that evident to the lay person who doesn’t taste wines for a living, as she does.
“But, ultimately, it’s not just about taste, and it’s not just about ethos,” Mowery said. “If you can have taste and ethos in one package, that’s sort of the Holy Grail, isn’t it?”
Slow Wine Charleston hosts a wine tasting and discussion 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Nov. 7 at Obviouslee Marketing on King Street. There is a $25 suggested donation at the door and guests can RSVP to charlestonsc@slowfoodusa.org.
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