Born in Chennai, India, and raised between India and Atlanta, Georgia, certified sommelier Ashwin Muthiah turned his back on the traditional wine industry after becoming disillusioned by its pretentiousness. Boasting 160K+ followers on Instagram, the Florence-based wine educator helps people to learn about the millennia-old beverage in a fun and approachable way via his profile and wine courses.
How did you fall in love with wine?
I wasn’t having fun in tech and finance. At the same time I was having some health trouble (now resolved), but I believe our bodies are intelligent. I came across this article called Screw Finding Your Passion, and it struck a chord. The premise was that you don’t need to find the things you’re passionate about; you already know them. I landed on wine and took some certification classes, quickly discovering that I didn’t like the way things ran in that world. There are 10,000 varieties of grapes on the planet, but 20 varieties account for 99% of the wines we drink. As I collected certifications, I also collected resentment. I still get intimidated in certain settings and I’ve dedicated ten years to studying wine: can you imagine the average person? In 2018, me and my wife, Savannah, decided to travel abroad to learn how wine and whisky are made. We lived in Georgia, where wine was born. I ended up writing a book about it and shot a documentary, called In Pursuit of Flavor, both currently unpublished. Then we lived in Italy for three months and in Scotland for two, making whisky. We kept leaning towards this vision of making wine more accessible. You don’t have to spend a ton of money to enjoy wine. You just need some basic understanding of how your palate works.
What can people expect from a tasting with you?
Every time that a regular person is interacting with someone in the wine world, it’s a transaction, and that’s not a good environment to learn. I don’t sell. I just want to help you understand what you like. Most of it is very information-light and knowledge-heavy, the opposite of a winery, where they tell you a bunch of facts that you have no context to understand. I want to give you a compass to navigate any wine you drink. For example, if you have a really full body and it’s sweet, that means it was probably harvested late because there was a lot of sugar. I also try and teach people how to pronounce things because if you can’t pronounce it, you won’t order it. Many wines from countries like Georgia are impossible to pronounce for the western tongue. People are so taken aback by grape varieties they have never heard of. I love Xinomavro, an indigenous Greek wine, Nebbiolo-like, but wilder. There have been tastings when I’ve poured it and people have asked “Is it a Pinot Noir, a Cabernet? Which one of these is it?” It’s a light bulb moment when you find out there are actually thousands of grape varieties.
What excites you about wine right now?
White wines from Hungary are some of the best in the world. There’s a lot of indigenous grapes grown on volcanic soil, which can age very well. Georgian wines, of course. You have to approach them with an open mind because there’s very little intervention, so things can go a bit wrong. It’s a country of three million people and they have 100,000 registered wineries. There’s no country in the world where wine is more deeply rooted in the culture. We have been drinking a lot of wines from Sicily. And then I have qualms with the philosophy behind Champagne because they blend across producers. The thing I find most beautiful about wine is this concept of liquid history in a bottle, and you are erasing all that to have a consistent product. Philosophically I’m opposed to it, but it tastes so good.
Your thoughts on natural wine?
I’m into natural wines, but it’s forced people to choose sides, which is unfortunate because natural wine lives on a spectrum. You could not do a single thing: pluck the grapes, throw them into a pot, come back a year later and hope to find wine. There’s beauty in how ancestral that method feels, but it’s a spectrum and you might land somewhere in the middle. You might allow for indigenous fermentation, but try to control the temperature. I love the idea of wine having fewer ingredients because they are not required to disclose nutritional values on the label. It’s great that we’re becoming more aware of non-sustainable methods, but I’m not so dogmatic that I’m against traditional winemaking.
At the end of the day, wine is made by farmers. Would you agree that often something gets lost between the grower and the bottle?
What you’re talking about is important. There’s an information asymmetry between winemakers and consumers. A handful of players want to keep that asymmetry, it gives them power. This toxic culture affects what gets made. They are planting Chardonnay in Georgia, which doesn’t do well there, but they hope that someone will recognize it—it’s a bit sad. In fairness, it’s hard to hear directly from the farmers because they tend not to be spotlight-seeking. But the less diluted the farmer’s message is by the time the bottle gets to you, the better. Or that’s my semi-controversial opinion, at least.
