Back in 2015, I started this blog as a way to keep myself active and involved in wine as I tried to find my place in it. A few months prior, I took a “sabbatical” (read leap of faith) and traded Toronto for Porto. I decided to name this blog Bottled Bliss because, being a fan of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, I was quite inspired by his notion of bliss or rapture in his “hero’s journey.” Every one is the hero/ heroine of their story, Campbell argued, but only a few people are truly living up to that story and fulfilling their purpose. It seemed a fitting name because wine, while fascinating on its own, became a vehicle in which to explore these stories of personal growth and transformation.
Indeed, I’ve always been inspired by individuals who leave the stability and certainty of jobs they know so well to create their own projects in wine. It’s not an easy business; everything takes time. For those who were not born into wine, without the right family and business connections, taking a leap of faith is incredibly risky; getting your wines into the right hands is one thing, understanding the complexities of the market(s) another, but building strong relationships, from vine to bottle, is the lifeline of the whole operation because the wine world is a tight knit one. And if you’re a foreigner (and a woman), the obstacles can be even greater.
All of this leads me to my next interviewee in the monthly series of Badass People Doing Badass Things in Wine (And Other Beverages): Jade Gross. Jade is a Chinese American chef and winemaker based in La Rioja. I met Jade a few years ago when I was living in La Rioja and have been following her evolution ever since.
Jade is someone I admire as she epitomizes the heroine in Campbell’s framework. She has taken not one, but two or three leaps of faith and has landed in the wine world with both feet firmly on the ground. Her path is not a linear one, having traded a career in social sciences for a hands-on, skills-based one, and a life in a large metropolis for a small town of a thousand people.
Jade was on her way to become a human rights lawyer, having finished her masters in London, when she realized there was something else she wanted to do, she just didn’t know what. With the help of a friend who nudged her to honour that calling, she applied to a culinary school in Paris and quite by surprise was accepted.
She did not come from a family of cooks, chefs or anyone in that industry but began carving her own path. After culinary school, she interned at Alain Ducasse three star Michelin restaurant in Paris, at Celler Can Roca in Girona, and at Mugaritz in San Sebastian where she was eventually hired as chef de partie. Two years after graduating from culinary school, she was offered the position as chef de cuisine with another colleague. A year later, just when she was getting restless once again, she was offered to be part of the research and development team. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, she told me, so she stayed.
After seven years working at Mugaritz, Jade left: “The last year there, I knew I needed to change but I didn’t know what I was going to do. But I left. It was pretty scary, but I found myself back at that time when I finished my masters in Human Rights and I knew I wanted to do something, I didn’t know what it was and then something just popped into my head.”
In 2019 she began her own project, Jade Gross Wines, in San Vicente de la Sonsierra, La Rioja, under the guidance of winemaker Abel Mendoza. Last year she released her first wine, Jade Gross red (tempranillo), which has been followed by Chiguita by Jade Gross and Peace, Love & Garnacha.
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
BB: Coming from the culinary world, how was the transition into wine and winemaking in particular?
JG: The wine industry is very much parallel to gastronomy. At Mugaritz I met Abel Mendoza and Maite Fernandez, his wife, who are winemakers in La Rioja. We started a friendship. The year I left [Mugaritz] I told him, I want to learn about wine. I think he thought this girl doesn’t know what she wants to do and she says something like this but she’s not being serious about it. I completed WSET Level 2 and 3 back to back, and I told him, yes I want to start something. He helped me meet a grapegrower where I buy the grapes from. He helped me find a place to make wine.
BB: Why did you choose to start your own project instead of, say, working as a winemaker at a winery?
JG: I wanted to make something of myself and try to be my own boss. Because, even though at Mugaritz I was head chef and part of the R&D team, you can always hide behind the brand or the company you’re representing. I wanted to challenge myself again by not only changing but by putting my name on the forefront.
I don’t know if it’s just proving to myself that I can do it. Although I’ve told you all these things, I don’t consider myself a person who has a lot of confidence so I think it’s a good way to put myself outside the comfort zone. And it’s something that I learned at Mugaritz, to push yourself and see how far you can go whether you can achieve that or not. For me I wanted to challenge myself and I think this is the biggest challenge so far.
BB: Definitely. It’s a huge challenge not only to make wine but to do the rest: market it, sell it, make the project grow, so yes, it’s a huge step. Also, congratulations on [buying] your vineyard. That sounds so posh.
JG: No, no it’s not posh. It’s pretty down and you gotta get in the rough. It’s funny, because I grew up in large cities – New York, Hong Kong, London – these are big cities, so now coming to towns where there is a population of a thousand compared to a city of eight million, obviously it’s a work in progress. Not only getting the wine project there, but people see what you’re doing and I don’t look like I’m Spanish. I don’t know if being female was so hard but I’m sure there are certain comments that people say where you’re like, I know you’re saying that just because I am a woman.
I think it was important for me to do it. It is exciting yet at the same time I’m learning as I go and I have to be patient with myself and also the people who are going to be consuming the wine since I’m learning in the process of winemaking. I’m going to have to learn different winemaking techniques but the problem is then you have to sell this product. Cooking, for example, if I’m going to cook a dish I’ll try cooking it today. I’ll try it or someone will try it and if it’s not good enough I can try making it again tomorrow. The challenge with winemaking is that I’m doing the same thing but the result is a minimum of eight months to a year later and then people will try the wine and judge whether it’s good or not. For me that’s the most challenging thing, because I’m learning in the process. And I also have to experiment in different ways or I’m never going to understand it so I’m trying to find my place in all of that.
BB: That’s an important point. How has your background, being a chef, being quite meticulous, and then also tasting, how have you been able to take those skills into winemaking?
JG: My last year at Mugaritz really helped me in terms of experimentation but also to find new ways of thinking. In winemaking there are some basic processes that you want to follow but I always try to question it because I want to know is this really necessary or how would it react if I don’t do it. Obviously people in the winemaking business, if I ever ask them, they say no you have to do this because so and so, and obviously that’s because they’ve been doing it longer.
At the end of the year, you’re using a product that you either harvest yourself or working with someone who will pick it at its optimum ripeness and you do hand in hand work throughout the year. In the culinary world you don’t always go fishing with the fisherman who gives you the salmonete but you do work hand in hand because you know what you’re looking for in a particular product. That also pushes them to do better because they know their product is good and it can be better with your feedback. That was my experience at Mugaritz, which I translated to vineyards.
In terms of tasting, I’m not an expert tasting but I know when something is off. At the end of the day it’s practice. Tasting in food and tasting in wine can be very similar but in wine we also try to find defects. Maybe because I was working in the [culinary] industry longer it’s more innate. With wine, I would need more years. In [wine] tasting I would find a lot of flavours or odours that weren’t in the [WSET] diploma tasting wheel. I think being a chef is a plus.
In terms of being meticulous, yes I’m meticulous which is a good and bad thing. Good because I want everything to be organized and detailed. But being meticulous is not a good thing in wine because you’re open to nature not only in harvest but anything can happen in the winemaking process, which is very similar to cooking because if you overcook something it will be too dry. Or if you forget to add salt it will be too insipid. In the wine world you have to be open to a lot of variables and that’s something I have to learn to accept because, being very meticulous, I don’t accept errors and I’m very serious about it in the kitchen where you have to work in a team and you have to organize them. And you have to say ok, you have to be very clean, you have to cook it this way–there’s always a reason why you cook things a certain way. And I was always very meticulous and very serious about it. I guess you could say perfectionist. In the wine world, you have to be very open.
I’m not trying to make the great wine but I’m very hard on myself in that sense. I don’t know if it’s because I’m starting something new and it’s a new challenge, or I’m trying to prove it to myself. I also don’t want people to laugh at me for this whole career change or think I’m trying to say, “I’m this new great winemaker.” No, I’m not saying that. I just want to have my own space to do my own thing but being meticulous is a little bit like my handicap, I could work on it. Abel [Mendoza] likes to say, “you like to control the things that you can control and you’re very hard on yourself when there are outside variables. What can you do? It’s done.”
BB: The culinary world and the wine world are both male-dominated industries, how has your experience been in these industries in terms of leadership? Because you were jefe de cocina [head chef] and now you’re calling the shots for your wines, you’re working with local growers, how has it been for you in that sense?
JG: I was fortunate enough that in Mugartiz that wasn’t much of a problem. I can admit that in other restaurants that I’ve interned at, yes, there’s a lot of bad treatment. I don’t want to say I was a victim but I feel like I fueled the problem by not saying anything because I was scared, I was young, I was just beginning. Coming fresh off a master’s, you’re at university every day, you go do an internship at a high end restaurant, you have no idea what’s going on and you hear all these things and you’re like, do I say anything? Do I not say anything?
When I went to Mugaritz, they were more scared of a female leader than a male leader. Or maybe it’s because I never smiled (laughs). They always thought I was very angry but that’s because I wanted to get things done, and it’s a lot of pressure because at the end of the day if something goes wrong in the dining room or the kitchen, even if it wasn’t your mistake the person to blame is the head chef. But it didn’t matter if you were a man or a woman.
In the wine industry, in Spain there are more female winemakers and in France as well. In La Rioja there are as well but… we haven’t met yet (laughs) so I have to meet them. But it’s true that when I did start making wine there would be some locals that would be surprised. Being an outsider, and physically you can see that I’m not from here, and I think that also added to being female, which made it even more difficult. I think they just assumed that I would come in, say that I’m making wine and have someone do it for me. Or buy a vineyard but I actually never step onto the vineyard at all.
But I think this past year, they’ve seen that when the bar opens at 6am I’m there getting my cafe con leche and all the older men are there having their coffee as a group and they see me. Then I come back at the end of the day, all muddy, and two years later they acknowledge my presence! It’s been two years! But I’m also very quiet. I don’t want to cause any problems. Like I said before I just want to do my own thing. But I feel like now they’re acknowledging my presence because they see that I’m working with different grape growers, that my wine came out. So it’s like swimming against the current.
BB: I can’t imagine it being easy, particularly at the beginning because you’re mixed race, because you’re Chinese-American, it’s a very traditional area, it’s rural as well so it’s kind of like you have a few points against you there if you’re looking for the hello with your cafe con leche in the morning.
JG: Yeah, exactly. Now they sort of know my name, they give me the nod from far away, which is okay because at least they acknowledge that you’re there. It’s very interesting because in any town with like a thousand people and you have an outsider coming in and they’re like, who is this person? Maybe they’re judging the book by its cover.
I can only speak from my own experience, but in the culinary world what I lived was much more intense than what I’m living now. I don’t know if what they’re judging is based on a newcomer who has no past experience, you add the female, you add the mixed-race. I don’t know if they’re judging my abilities or saying that I’m making Rioja wines and they’re like, how can a Chinese person be making wine in La Rioja–and that it’s actually drinkable? I don’t know. But in the culinary world, the day to day was more intense.
Everything in the wine business is long term, even the winemaking. Like I said, by the time someone judges you’re wine it’s been a year or two years. In cooking everything is very fast; you get a dish, you eat it, you get the next one, so I think that everything that I lived was much more restricted to a period of time and now the same thing but more long term. But I really feel like it’s not as intense. And I just feel like they were judging me on physical abilities. ‘Oh you can’t carry as much. Oh you can’t do this’ or whatever. But because I’m so stubborn I try anyways and then if I realize I can’t do it then I give up but if not, I’d rather break my back doing it than not trying.
BB: Rioja is undergoing quite a few changes, we’re starting to see new faces – albeit in smaller projects, what is your version of Rioja? Or how do you see yourself fit in this prestigious wine region?
JG: For me it’s really important, as one of the pillars of the project, to create a socio-economic relationship with locals, local grapegrowers from different areas of La Rioja, not just Rioja Alavesa or Rioja Alta. For example, I can go up to Alto Najerilla which has different soil, different terroir, different altitude. I think it’s really important for me, through this experimentation, to create a network and to really understand the diversity that Rioja has. I think people who are not serious, serious consumers only see one facet of Rioja and it’s really important to show my appreciation by demonstrating its diversity.
I would like to show my perspective as an outsider while also respecting tradition. At the end of the day it has been work in progress, not only learning, but also in relationships; that they slowly welcomed me into their club, if you will, and I just want them to be happy with what I make.
I never really thought I was going to make wine and I never really thought I was going to make wine in La Rioja and so I feel that they are leaving me a little space to do my own thing and that also means a lot.
BB: What has been the most challenging part of this whole process?
JG: Everything (laughs). I can’t say everything, right?
I think every year there has been some new challenge that I had to confront myself with. The first year I had to meet the grapegrower. When you come from a town and you like to stay with your own [people] and now you have this girl who wants to make wine, now she wants to buy my grapes, I don’t even know how she makes her wine, does she even know how to make wine? So, I think it was building relationships with people.
Another challenge was figuring out what I needed to do because I really didn’t know. I had the WSET but the day to day is not exactly what the WSET says in its books. I learned a lot of course, but there was always something happening that you can’t look up in a book: establishing the price [of grapes], meeting the people, finding the place to do it. No one gives you a pamphlet and I’m not sure if there is a winemaking for dummies, so I asked a lot of questions. Everything I did I had to question because I wasn’t sure. And that’s only normal because I didn’t have that experience.
Now, the second year–the more I know, the more fears I have because with more knowledge you have, the more you are aware of the variables. In the first year I was so focused on the general picture and now I’m looking into each and every process and every detail that happens, which brings up more questions than answers.
Every year there is going to be a different challenge. Every year is a learning process.
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Jade’s wines are currently available in Spain through Unicorn Wines, in Sweden and in Hong Kong.
You can follow her on Instagram @jadegrosswines or visit her website for more information https://jadegrosswines.com/
Bottled Bliss 