Conversations in good taste
I sit down with Crushable's Laura Milnes to discuss how wine was always meant to connect people - not divide them
This piece is inspired by and written in collaboration with Laura Milnes, owner of the Toronto-based Crushable Wine Club.
The wine world, like any other game, is a game of judgements and hierarchies. There are educational trophies to be won (e.g. WSET). There are storied institutions that stake their claim to divinity in history and God (e.g. Dom Pérignon). There are massive, soulless corporations which make the grape equivalent of Wonder Bread, and package them with similar finesse. There are plucky young startups. There are superstars. There are charlatans.
At a quiet, clandestine location in downtown Toronto, Laura talks me through the twists of life that have led to her current vocation. Like myself, she is what many would call “unemployable”. And like myself, it is a badge that she wears with a certain degree of honour - because it is clear that she also takes great pride in her work. She has been fired from too many jobs to count, and I am starting to understand why. She balances a straightforward, attentive openness with a tone that says, “I have no tolerance for your bullshit today, or any other day”. It’s a tone that is familiar to me. It’s a tone that, when worn by a woman, causes society to shift uncomfortably in its seat.
After being fired from the last job that she ever took, Laura called an emergency session with her therapist. “I was expecting to be prescribed some sort of anti-anxiety or anti-psychotic,” she jokes. Instead, her therapist told her to just go be an entrepreneur.
A glance through her reviews will give a sense of the offering that Laura has created. Her grasp of wine is never in question, and many clients appreciate her relatively niche knowledge of Canadian wineries. But a deeper comb through the comments will reveal the true secret sauce that she has stumbled upon. “I felt like I was having a few glasses of wine with a life long friend.” “It’s like she was a friend we hadn't seen in a while”. “The best rent-a-friend ever”. Wine tastings are often a one-way transaction, where hefty institutions impress their clout upon their customers with manufactured precision. (The more you have paid to be in the presence of said clout, the more sophisticated of a consumer you are - obviously). In such an industry, the insane act of actually treating people like people becomes a genuinely viable form of differentiation.
Which is odd, because this brings us back, full circle, to what hospitality was meant to be about. Beyond literal sustenance, the social function of food and drink has always been to connect people. (After all, why do so many first dates happen over dinner?) Nobody ever invites a friend over to drink wine in silence, and there’s only so long that you can go on about terroir.
Laura admits that she sometimes worries about whether her curiosity about other people’s lives could be considered manipulative. I ask her whether she genuinely finds their stories interesting. She says yes. In fact, she reveals that her appetite for other people’s stories is very much driven by self-interest, but not in the commercial way that you might think. “I’ve always endeavored to be worldly”, she says. “The universe just threw me another person who lives in this way that I never knew existed. It just keeps expanding my purview, you know?”
Many clients tell Laura that her tasting sessions start out as interesting forays into wine, but end up feeling strangely therapeutic. They have sobbed over breakups. Discussed diagnoses of breast cancer. Shared the secrets of a lasting marriage. Laura has borne witness to all of these things, with people who were, a mere hour ago, strangers.
I ask her where else clients can go to find the value proposition that she provides. “Who do you think your competitors are?”.
“I dunno. Maybe a…shaman?”
We laugh, but there is truth to this statement. A shaman interacts with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, often for the purpose of healing, aiding, or divination.
It is also true because Laura herself is best described as a bit…deadly, in a Circe-meets-Queen-of-Sheba kind of way. The word dionysian isn’t quite right, because the whole experience that she has curated is decidedly female. In the same way that shamans are ornamented to evoke something powerful and somewhat dangerous and otherworldly, Laura seems to have figured out that her job, in a certain sense, is to be larger than life - and it’s a role that she has embraced with gusto. Cézanne’s painting, The Eternal Feminine, comes to mind. Who really holds the reins? Is it the entertainer, or those being entertained? Lines blur.
Her tasting room is similarly full of life, and Laura has come a long way since the days of hosting tastings in her own apartment. Behind a heavy red entrance door lies a curious space which cozily weaves together two aesthetics that don’t usually touch: one part hunting lodge, one part artist’s studio. Her tastings unfold on a heavy walnut table, of the sort that you might find in a ski chalet, or perhaps a freemason’s hall. A deer antler chandelier casts a warm glow from above. The other source of light in the room is a gold candelabra, dripping with white stalactites. Each layer of hardened wax encases one more evening of words, emotions, and memories, known only to the people who were there that night.
My favourite piece of art in the studio is a simple line drawing of a wine glass. It’s flanked by two curved lines, and a drop of red wine hints at a navel - a playful double entendre. My second favourite item is a vase in the shape of a woman’s bust, a sort of headless Venus de Milo (or the statue from Fleabag, if you’re of a more British bent). Laura knows that the product is her as much as the wine itself, and she wields her own appearance with a similar piquance. Red leather skirt. White cowboy boots. An intensely present gaze, framed by a cascade of blonde waves. She stands a solid 6’1” and wears heels without apology. If being understated is one strategy for going about life, Laura has clearly decided that this is a strategy for other people.
One could argue that Laura’s approach, like everything else in her life, is unconventional. Or you could argue that it’s the buttoned up, didactic, harshly arbitrary face of the wine industry which has lost its way. Perhaps Laura is simply going back to what wine has always been, and was always meant to be: a mediator of human connection. Which is just a fancy way of saying: let’s get a little bit tipsy, and get to know each other.
Laura Milnes is the owner and creator of the Toronto-based Crushable Wine Club. Find her on Instagram at @crushablewineclub, or book a tasting with her at crushable.club.