That Continuous State: A conversation with publisher of Melbourne magazine Veraison
Moira Tirtha on why we need better “conversations in wine”
Natural wine has a problem, and Moira Tirtha knows it. Probably, you’re wondering: Which problem are we talking about here?
The too-white problem? The marketing-heavy problem? The nobody-knows-what-the-fuck-natural-wine-is-so-they-just-grab-the-cutest-label-problem?
All of the above.
Natural wine’s problem is in Melbourne, where Tirtha lives. It’s in the Adelaide Hills, where I live. It’s everywhere.
And Tirtha’s answer to the problem—at least their first attempt at addressing it—was to start a design-forward, completely approachable wine magazine.
Hey, it’s not every day that you find a good quality, print magazine about natural wine . . . That was a joke! Seriously though, having founded, published, and edited my own indie mag for four years, I was crushing hard on Veraison, which Tirtha launched in 2020.
What most struck me was the way the publication employs contemporary ways of storytelling to highlight inequality and lack of diversity in wine.
Veraison communicates so much of what it wants to say in the form these stories take. The magazine does have some traditional essays and feature writing. But it’s really refreshing to open the pages of Veraison and get to be a kid again (but a kid who can drink wine) with a “choose your own adventure” format, taking you through Melbourne’s wine scene, everything from classy bars to scummy dives. And a story that details a person’s “day in my wine life,” with slightly blurry iPhone shots, presented as little squares on the page alongside random commentary about what they drank? Reading Veraison feels like a conversation with a friend.
Which is nearly exactly what it is: Tirtha chatting with colleagues and friends (one might say: mates) around Melbourne’s wine culture—trying to figure out what to drink in a world where natural wine has become too status-oriented (and pretty expensive), venting their frustrations about the disheartening whiteness of the industry—and delving into nasty labor and land-ownership issues at the heart of all fermented grape drinks, no matter the style.
Kind of the wine mag we all need, no? Well, the good news is: Tirtha and their team are taking Veraison to Substack this year, so you don’t have to be down under to enjoy it.
Wanting to meet the magazine’s maker, I met Tirtha at a spot they suggested called Sleepy’s, an all-day café (which is a very Australian thing) on a bustling main street in Melbourne’s Carlton North. The night before, Tirtha had been working the floor at Carlton Wine Room, a much-loved Melbourne wine bar with an extensive list. I also knew that previously they were the wine buyer at Manzé, a Mauritian restaurant focused on natural wines.
Over glasses of an Italian skin-contact white wine that neither of us had tried before, we delved into conversation about how Tirtha plans to push back against wine’s various problems, starting with a master’s program in international development. Our chat flowed easily until Tirtha excused themself to squeeze in an afternoon lap-swimming session before heading to the Taylor Swift concert. You gotta love Melbourne life.
LA MESCITA: So, you’re in graduate school. What’s the master’s program about?
MOIRA TIRTHA: I’d just come off writing Veraison Volume III, which was about underpresented voices in wine, and I was hearing all these stories about racism and I was like, what is anyone at an institutional level doing about this? I sat down with [the national organization] Wine Australia—and they’re like, oh we just don’t have funding, there’s not really any research that shows this thing is happening, but also they’re not doing any research that would show that it’s happening.
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