Gwendolyn Elliott

Being awarded the Allen Shoup Memorial Wine Writing Fellowship was the external stamp of approval I needed for clearing a few lingering distractions from my professional plate: Things like a good salary, incentives, and a suite of stock options loaded into a comprehensive benefits package.

It was a risk to leave my cushy job in marketing, but I didn’t fully realize at the time that making that kind of gamble was one of the oldest moves in the wine playbook—for anything to have worked out for anyone, anywhere, in the history of wine, risk was part of the deal.

The thing was that I had little to bet on—only the thought of reviving my old freelance writing life, a few shifts at a local tasting room, and the idea of a possible (mostly unpaid) writing fellowship.

Fellowship in hand, I would have the chance to see if the bet paid off. I built a website for myself, and starting blogging about wine. I launched a monthly wine column for the local paper, and took on other assignments, too. Working in the tasting room and at tasting events, I learned more about local vineyards and winegrowers and the history of winemaking in Washington state, doing my best to impart the most salient facts to guests and visitors. A familiarization trip through the Columbia Valley appellation, organized by the Wine Commission, helped to crystalize all that I was learning. 

I finally got around to reading, in full, my personally signed copy of Ron Irvine’s “The Wine Project,” a history and fact-loaded tome about wine in Washington state.

In 2012, when I was working at Seattle Weekly, Ron was voted “Best Winemaker” in the paper’s annual “Best of Seattle” awards, and I wrote a mini-profile about him and Vashon Winery, his little garagiste on Vashon Island. In addition to waiting tables for years at Tulio Restaurant—with its Wine Spectator award-winning wine list, and wine education for its servers—Ron, with his personable way of talking about wine, and habit of spontaneously citing poems he wrote inspired by it, was an instrumental force in my growing discovery and love of wine. I loved his rustic wine garage and all the quirky characters from Vashon who would stop by as we tasted through his wines—lots of pinots from the Puget Sound and Maury Island, and some wonderful cool climate whites, such as chasselas. 

Toby and I always arrived by bike—wine was our reward for the brutal one mile climb from the ferry terminal to the top of Vashon Highway. One time, when we told Ron about an old grapevine growing in our White Center backyard, Ron gave us a chasselas cutting to try to propagate. I’ll never forget the ride back to the ferry that day: clutching my chasselas cutting, its roots swaddled in a damp paper towel, and a friend of Ron’s, also on bike, who joined us, because few things beat riding bikes in the shade of Vashon’s massive tree canopy on a hot summer’s day, made a little more exciting after a few glasses of wine.

Wine, for me, has been a lens through which so much has come into focus in my life—and I know how ironic this sounds, given wine’s intoxicating effects. But the fact is, the object I see most often, and most clearly, through the lens of wine is connection. It would be impossible to recall all the times I’ve found myself, usually through a series of friendly questions, discovering multiple points of connection with complete strangers. What other force than wine, for example, would bring a couple, guests at a local BnB I had just profiled for Visit Walla Walla, into the tasting room on a rare day I was working, who, I would learn, also received a chasselas cutting from Ron? 

Chance, perhaps. To me, it couldn’t be anything other than wine’s mysterious way of inviting us all to come together and find common ground.

The fellowship has not been without its challenges—the single biggest for me has been placing articles in traditional media. (I fully expected this, as I write in my first blog post.) I thought the fellowship, or even my nifty connection to Kyle MacLachlan, who kindly put in a good word for me at a major wine outlet, would help kick open the door a little. I believe it has, but the reality is that the wine media landscape remains volatile, and every year, with the constant layoffs, downsizing, and consolidation, it gets worse. 

I wonder how future fellows will think about this—or if they’ll even think about it at all! Maybe they will already have their own brand, platform, and reach. Or a more robust social media presence, or skills in podcasting or video, to approach storytelling in a different way. 

At some point, probably soon, I’ll have to take another risk and invest more in figuring out just what the hell my “personal brand” is and get to marketing it somehow. I’ve been putting off doing this because I’m a ‘90s kid, and because I’m a writer, and because there’s a huge part of me that struggles with how to present myself authentically without “selling out.” (This bit of food for thought from the New York Times really hit close to home on the topic, if you’re up for some side reading.)

I’ve also watched my bank account slowly diminish from its well-padded days when I worked in marketing for a tech company—not enough to declare any state of emergency (and thankfully the support of my wonderful Toby and his salary have been more than sufficient during this time), but enough of a “personal market correction,” so to speak, that I’m (again) reminded of just how little the creative set is of value in the larger cultural marketplace. 

Even still, it has all been magnificently worth it. As a liberal arts undergrad, B.A. in hand and zero career prospects, I became somewhat comfortable with risk, and built my editorial career on intuition, persistence, relationships, and luck. In marketing, I made more money than I ever thought I could as a writer, but ultimately, I found the work hollow, disingenuous, and void of meaning. 

While things are still up in the air for me, I can assuredly say, with the full love and support of my husband, and my wonderful family, friends, and colleagues who know how happy I have become tinkering with, thinking about, and trotting down this dusty road—full of new friends, interesting stories, and wonderful wine—that betting on my love of Washington state wine, and my love of storytelling and writing, has been a risk worth taking.

As Sean Sullivan notes, poignantly, in his totally-serious April 1, 2025 piece titled, “WHO says that living leads to dying”: risk is a fact of life, and in life, there is a 100% chance of death. So why not roll the dice every now and then?

Yet in risk, there is hope, too—the idea that there is more, and maybe something different, or better, somewhere out there. In the face of a changing climate, grape growers have it. In the face of changing tastes, wine makers have it. As a writer, I guess I have to say that I have it, too.

I hope I’ve been able to demonstrate my enthusiasm for Washington wine and my gratitude for the fellowship, from my perspective as someone who genuinely wants to grow as a writer, a person, and a lover of wine.

I hope I have been able to contribute meaningful stories about Washington wine and the people who make it, and to continue doing so. I’ve had encouraging glimpses here and there.

After hosting them in the tasting room, I followed up over email with the couple who had been gifted one of Ron’s chasselas cuttings. I wanted to share a few more things I thought they might find interesting. 

Their reply contained this beautiful sentence: “You reminded me of how miraculous it is when the threads that connect us get revealed like a spider web on a dewy morning.”

My roots dig deeper. My shoots reach for the sun. I’ll be out there, looking for the strands to spin.