Redefining the Wine Lexicon: Q&A with Tsatsu Gbedemah
Natural wine has never been as accessible as it is now; learning to talk about it has also never been as easy. With dozens of wine clubs offering to ship bottle selections to your door, online classes, IG Lives, illustrated books, and podcasts, it’s simply a matter of choosing your favorite medium and studying up. Still, for anyone who feels like they’re far from conversing about wine with fluency, getting a grip on exactly how to talk about it can feel like a monumental obstacle. As with other unknowns in life, the only prerequisites for navigating this territory are curiosity and openness, two things fully embodied by Tsatsu (pronounced cha-chu) of Wine + Peace.
“Tsatsu never uses any unnecessary flourishes, and more importantly, he asks questions that cut through the pretense historically associated with wine.”
Tsatsu Gbedemah (he/him) became the Wine + Peace Director of Experience, or as co-founder Katy Decker refers to it, Director of Joy, just last January. He met Katy while working at a pizza shop in Montreal, where he’s studying hospitality with a food service and management concentration at LaSalle College, and won her over with his natural affability. Since joining Katy and Sam Decker, Tsatsu has hosted several IG Lives with some of the winemakers represented by the company, bringing a refreshing perspective to the natural wine community’s landscape because he’s fearlessly curious and humbly open when talking about wine—Tsatsu never uses any unnecessary flourishes, and more importantly, he asks questions that cut through the pretense historically associated with wine.
In a recent Wine + Peace IG Live, Sam and Tsatsu demonstrated the importance of texture over flavor through an apple tasting, concluding that because our minds are less primed to think about texture, we don’t consciously notice or seek it when picking out a wine to enjoy. These educational talks air every Thursday at 5 pm PST on Wine + Peace’s Instagram, and you can catch more of Wine + Peace on Clubhouse at the same time on Wednesdays.
Below is our conversation with Tsatsu about his introduction to wine and how he’s picked up the language around it in just a few months.
Wine Zine: What is it that attracted you to wine?
Tsatsu Gbedemah: I’m currently studying for a hospitality degree in Montreal and I had a wine stewarding class that I had to pass. My teacher was a sommelier here in Montreal, and he’d break wine down to us in a way that made it pretty easy to understand and he actually used a lot of Wine Folly videos and text, so that was my initial introduction to understanding wine. Coming from a family who doesn’t really drink wine, I didn’t have any understanding of wine or what it meant, so he was my first entry point.
WZ: Was there anything that made you hesitant about pursuing a career in the wine industry?
TG: After the wine stewarding class, I was really inspired to know more about wine. I would cook something and then buy a wine to pair with it, with my amateur pairing knowledge, but it made sense to me and it elevated the food I had been eating for my entire life. It opened this world of possibilities. I would keep doing that here and there, and then I got an opportunity to manage a restaurant here in Montreal, and I built the wine list there with the help of an importer. That was the first time I had an orange wine and was my first time with natural wines.
“I think because I am a newcomer, I don’t ask questions that don’t make sense to me. I ask entry level questions that I have at the moment and I don’t try to overcomplicate something that I already don’t understand.”
In 2019, I went to Raw Wine Montreal, and it was actually an experience that turned me off to natural wine because I felt like I was in this room of people who knew wine and I was an impostor, so I backed away from wine a little bit and I didn’t actively pursue it again until I met Sam and Katy and started working at Wine + Peace. Some producers were super technical, but I remember this one Greek producer who spoke to me in a way I could understand. I remember he was talking about filtering the wine with pine cones, and I could visualize that and I knew what it meant. And the way he approached wine was very relaxed and not like it was a super technical thing. When I tasted his wine, he allowed me to experience it, and it was so nice because at school, I had sometimes been made to feel like something I was saying was wrong, which can happen sometimes in an educational environment.
During the first IG live I did with Sam, when I opened the wine we were drinking and poured it, right away I got movie popcorn and butter. That’s just what I got and it was clear as day. He was drinking the same wine and didn’t get that at all and I remember telling him what I got and him telling me that just because he wasn’t noticing that, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t true. I felt like I was finally allowed to experience wine in my own way.
WZ: How do you think the way you talk about wine in the Wine + Peace IG lives makes it accessible to people, especially newcomers?
TG: I think because I am a newcomer, I don’t ask questions that don’t make sense to me. I ask entry level questions that I have at the moment and I don’t try to overcomplicate something that I already don’t understand. Sam does a good job of explaining things in a way that makes things very clear to me. With the winemakers I’ve interacted with so far, they can tell me about something technical and what it means, but they’re also willing to say that part doesn’t really matter as much as other aspects of the wine.
I also read Natural Wine for the People by Alice Feiring and that book helped me a lot, as well as The New Wine Rules by Jon Bonné. With Alice Feiring’s book, there was a part I really liked where she was outlining a guide for tasting, so she said if you’re tasting a white wine, you might want to look for tree, citrus and tropical fruit , and she gave you hints like that. But then she said “There are no right or wrong descriptors. Truly they are personal. Make them up—I do.” And it’s so funny to hear that from Alice Feiring, who’s a legend in the wine industry. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re not getting it and feeling like you have to lie.
“Don’t focus on learning the language that you hear most people in the industry using—rather use language that is familiar to you.”
WZ: Do you have any advice for people just starting to learn about wine, who are specifically trying to get a handle of the language?
TG: I would say just ask. If you don’t understand something, ask someone you’re comfortable asking. Books, people, podcasts are all great resources. We’re lucky to have all these resources around us, but definitely asking has been the best way to learn about wine for me. Don’t focus on learning the language that you hear most people in the industry using—rather use language that is familiar to you. I was once at dinner at a friend’s house and when I commented that I liked the wine but was unable to describe what made me like it, she said “It doesn’t taste wine-y.” Was that the appropriate terminology? Definitely not, but it made sense to me. Fast forward a few years, and I have come to understand that the wine from that night was a light- to medium-bodied red wine.
Words by The Wine Zine’s Newsletter Editor, Khiara Ortiz