A lawyer quits her job and goes to Argentina

The story of NR1 and NR2 begins on a cold London night in December 2023. I was a seasoned corporate lawyer, commuting between Brussels and London and very much stuck on the hamster wheel. After hours, I dabbled in wine – I served it, I studied it, I wrote about it and of course, I drank it. That night, I had escaped the office to meet my London wine friends. Over a mediocre Pinot Noir (blame Brexit), we discussed the meaning of life, and tipsily concluded that in the end, life is all about connections: connections with people, connections with places, connections with nature.

Pondering the idea of connections on my walk back to the hotel, I received a message from an Argentinean number. If I was available to speak now? It was Emiliano Turano – a winemaker in Mendoza I had written out of the blue with no real hopes of an answer, after a mutual friend had connected us. No better time than now, I thought and picked up the phone. I was pretty late to get into a harvest team at any of the bodegas since harvest was starting in February, but this Emi sounded confident: he would find me a spot and I would experience what winemaking in Argentina was like. I just had to be patient and trust him – a recurring theme in our friendship as it would turn out.

I hung up filled with excitement. What had seemed like a frivolous idea just minutes ago, suddenly lay before me as an open path. A road that I could walk if I would just put one foot in front of the other. So I decided to trust a kind stranger on the phone (do not try this at home), quit my high-flying lawyer job (10/10 would recommend), packed my bags (what does one even wear to harvest) and took off. I landed in Mendoza on 16 February 2024, with a suitcase that broke under the weight of all the wine I packed, the hope I would not become a next true crime podcast subject, and the nervous excitement you feel when you know there’s only one way and it is forward. 

With Emi's help, I joined the harvest team at Corazon del Sol, a boutique winery in the Uco Valley in Mendoza, Argentina, specializing in high altitude wines from Rhone varietals (think: Grenache, Syrah, Roussanne & Marsanne). The team was led by Luciano Bastias, head winemaker, who picked me and my broken suitcase up at the airport. He quickly realized “Spanish – Good” was relative, and I quickly realized Emi had connected me to the best harvest and winemaking team a rookie could dream of.
 
Stay tuned for Chapter 2 – An Argentinean lunch takes a turn