Introduction

Why has German beer been so much more successful marketing-wise than German wine in foreign markets, particularly in the U.K. and North America? How does German law make it complex to navigate the country’s wines for consumers? What is selective harvesting, and why is it fundamental to understanding German wine?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with author Anne Krebiehl.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Giveaway

One of you will win a copy of Anne Krebiehl’s terrific book, The Wines of Germany.

 

How to Win

To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.

It takes less than 30 seconds: On your phone, scroll to the bottom here, where the reviews are, and click on “Tap to Rate.”

After that, scroll down a tiny bit more and click on “Write a Review.” That’s it!

I’ll choose one person randomly from those who contact me.

Good luck!

 

Join me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube Live Video

Join the live-stream video of this conversation on Wednesday at 7 pm eastern on Instagram Live Video, Facebook Live Video or YouTube Live Video.

I’ll be jumping into the comments as we watch it together so that I can answer your questions in real-time.

I want to hear from you! What’s your opinion of what we’re discussing? What takeaways or tips do you love most from this chat? What questions do you have that we didn’t answer?

Want to know when we go live?

Add this to your calendar:

 

 

 

Highlights

• How did Simon and Garfunkel help Anne learn English?
• What was Anne’s experience getting her first article published while working at Deutsche Bank?
• What drew Anne to shift from food writing to wine writing?
• Why did Anne want to work harvests around the world, and how did she convince wineries to let her join?
• What is Central Otago, New Zealand like, and what was Anne’s most memorable moment from the harvest?
• How do the landscapes of Piedmont, Italy, and Baden, Germany, differ from Central Otago?
• What makes Anne’s book, The Wines of Germany, different from other books about German wine?
• What is it about German wine law that can make it complex and confusing for consumers?
• What is selective harvesting?
• How did German wines become known to be sweet?
• Why has German beer been so much more successful than German wine?
• How does the central geography and climate of Germany impact its wine production?

 

Key Takeaways

• Why has German beer been so much more successful marketing-wise than German wine in foreign markets, particularly in the U.K. and North America?
  As Anne explains, when people of different nationalities, such as France and Italy, migrated around the world, they brought their wines which were associated with their food. In North America, German immigrants mostly started breweries, beer halls and Octoberfest events so the wine traditions were not exported in the same way.
• How does German law make it complex to navigate the country’s wines for consumers?
  As Germany became integrated into Europe, Anne says, they were compelled to bring their wine laws more in line with European wine law but this wasn’t necessarily the best fit. For example, they took what was practised in Greece and applied it across the board in Germany. Every wine village had to come up with new names for historic single vineyard sites. Consumers couldn’t tell if the new names referred to a single or a collective site when looking at the bottle on the shelf in the liquor store.
• What is selective harvesting and why is it fundamental to understanding German wine?
  Selective harvesting means harvesting only the grapes that are ripe, or at least to the ripeness you desire for the style of wine you’re making. The rest of the grapes are left on the vine to further ripen. So you don’t harvest everything all at once. That means there are a number of rounds of harvesting each fall.

 

Start The Conversation: Click Below to Share These Wine Tips

 

About Anne Krebiehl

German-born but London-based, Anne Krebiehl MW is a freelance wine writer and lecturer. She is the editor for Germany, Austria, Alsace and Grower Champagne for Vinous Media and publishes widely in trade and consumer publications. She lectures, particularly on German wine, judges at international wine competitions and is a panel chair at the IWC. She loves high-acid wines and her work often focuses on Pinot Noir, Riesling and traditional method sparkling wines. She has harvested and helped to make wine in New Zealand, Germany and Italy. Her first book, The Wines of Germany, published in Infinite Ideas’s Classic Wine Library, appeared in September 2019 and won Domaine Faiveley International Wine Book of The Year 2020 at the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers’ Awards.

 

Bonus Interview – Ottawa Independent Writers | Writer’s Workshop

Highlights

• The mistake in following a chronological series of events. There’s nothing that will put readers to sleep more quickly than a this happened, then this happened narrative.
• The mistake of underestimating the difficulty of navigating a dual timeline. While it can be difficult to try to weave back and forth, clumping together parts of your story by category won’t be satisfying to the reader.
• The mistake of believing that memoir is more closely aligned to non-fiction than fiction. A memoir is a true account but the techniques of memoir are all on the fiction side of things. It’s about plot, character development, climax and conflict.

 

About Ottawa Independent Writers

Ottawa Independent Writers (OIW) was formed in 1986 as a venue for people with a passion for creating fiction and non-fiction, for writing poetry and plays, and for stringing words together in a variety of other formats. We are a community for writers to share experiences and learn new aspects of their craft, serving the interests of all writers, from novice to seasoned scribe. We empathize with writers having trouble getting started and we celebrate with those whose works are published. Along the way, we help with the tools and techniques of our craft.

Although the emphasis is on writing, we also focus on the business of publishing, which includes editing, cover design, promotion and marketing, networking, keeping track of finances, and finding a publisher. Writers who need help in any of these areas can be connected with members who can offer advice, or they can be linked to outside experts. OIW’s members are involved in every aspect of the printed and electronic word.

 

Resources

• Connect with Anne Krebiehl
  • Anne Krebiehl’s Book | The Wines of Germany
  • Anne Krebiehl on Instagram @AnneInVino
  • Anne Krebiehl on X (formerly Twitter) @AnneInVino
• Ottawa Independent Writers
• Blake Snyder’s Book | Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need
• My Books:
  • Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce,Defamation, and Drinking Too Much
    • Audiobook:
      • Audible/Amazon in the following countries: Canada, US, UK, Australia (includes New Zealand), France (includes Belgium and Switzerland), Germany (includes Austria), Japan, and Brazil.
      • Kobo (includes Chapters/Indigo), AudioBooks, Spotify, Google Play, Libro.fm, and other retailers here.
    • Wine Witch on Fire Free Companion Guide for Book Clubs
  • Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines
  • Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass
• Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 200: German-Speaking Wines and Biodynamic Winemaking with Valerie Kathawala
• My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever

 

Tag Me on Social

Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:

• @nataliemaclean and @natdecants on Facebook
• @nataliemaclean on Twitter
• @nataliemacleanwine on Instagram
• @nataliemaclean on LinkedIn
• Email Me at [email protected]

 

Thirsty for more?

• Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
• You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
• The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.

 

Transcript

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 Why has German beer been so much more successful marketing wise than German wine in foreign markets, particularly in the UK and North America? How does German law make it complex to navigate the country’s wines for consumers? If you’re confused, you’re not alone. And what is selective harvesting and why is it fundamental to understanding German wine? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Master of Wine Anne Krebiehl, author of The Wines of Germany. And one of you, yes, is going to win a copy of her book.

By the end of our conversation. You’ll also discover how in the past, grape ripeness determined German wine quality because it was so difficult to ripen them, especially Riesling. But that’s changed dramatically recently. How picking grapes can feel liberating and beautiful. Why it’s a mistake to think that German wine is always sweet? And how wine is not only delicious to drink, but it’s also a subject where everything converges. Okay, let’s dive in.

Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast.I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.

Welcome to episode 295. As I mentioned, one of you is going to win a copy of Anne Krebiehl’s beautiful hardcover edition of The Wines of Germany that includes full colour photographs and maps. All you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’d like to win a copy of the book. I’ll choose one person randomly from those who contact me.

Before we dive in in personal news and update about the audiobook release of Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation and Drinking too Much. It’s now available to order from all the places. Yay! So that includes Audible.com, which is owned by Amazon, and that’s in every country that’s available. Kobo, which is the audiobook partner for Chapters Indigo and Coles in Canada, as well as Audiobooks.com, Spotify, Google Play, Library FM and wherever else you get audiobooks.

So I’m still reflecting on why I love audiobooks so much, apart from the fact that my eyeballs don’t dry out if I’m listening while lying down in the afternoon to take a break when my energy is lowest and you don’t know whether my eyes are open or not. Audio recordings for me evoke the theatre of the mind. I co-create scenes in my head with the author, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. It’s like listening to those old fashioned radio dramas. You have to imagine what’s going on, and I love that. That’s also why I often use audiobooks as a reward, either to listen to while I’m doing tedious tasks like housework or to tolerate the frustrating ones like traffic and long road trips. It really calms me down knowing that I’m not wasting time. I’m enjoying it because I’m wrapped up in a story or I’m learning something or both.

And then there’s the pure bliss of listening to a story while taking a walk, lying on the beach, or falling asleep in a hammock. And don’t worry about nodding off. Just go back to where you last remember and start over for more of that layered learning. Apparently our brains are still absorbing information even when we sleep.

If you’d like to be an early listener of the audiobook, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you at [email protected] I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide for the audiobook, e-book and paperback versions at nataliemaclean.com/295.

At the end of my interview with Anne, I’ve included Part Two of a bonus excerpt from a writers workshop I hosted recently. If you love hearing about the behind the scenes process of writing the book, as many of you told me you do, you can continue listening after the main wine related interview. If not, you can skip it. It’s gravy, not the main meal. Okay, on with the show.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:03 Master of Wine Anne Krebiehl shall correct me if I’ve just mispronounced her name. I meant to practice that. Anne was born in Germany and now lives in London, England, where she is a writer and speaker. She is the editor of Vinous Media’s coverage for Germany, Austria, Alsace and grower Champagne, and publishes widely in trade and consumer publications. She also lectures particularly on German wine and judges at international wine competitions, and is a panel chair at the International Wine Challenge. She has harvested and helped to make wine in New Zealand, Germany and Italy. Her first book, The Wines of Germany, was named the Domaine Faivelgy International Wine Book of the year at the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers Awards. And she joins us now from her home in London. Welcome, Anne. So great to have you here with us.

Anne Krebiehl 00:06:03 Hello, Natalie, and thanks for that fabulous intro. Cool to be here. Hello.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:08 Oh my pleasure. Easy to introduce you. Now let us know how you pronounce your last name.

Anne Krebiehl 00:06:14 It’s Krebiehl

Natalie MacLean 00:06:15 Krebiehl. Okay.

Anne Krebiehl 00:06:17 That’s the reason why my social media handle is AnneInVino. Because nobody can either spell or say my name, so.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:24 Haha. All right, well, fortunately I’m just calling you Anne from here on in. So thank you for that. Now, before we dive into your wine career, tell us about when you were a young woman. You were born and raised in Germany, and I may get the timeline a little bit, but I was intrigued. You landed in Manhattan, I believe, as an exchange student, and Simon and Garfunkel was playing on your soundtrack. So how did they help you and what were you doing in Manhattan at that time?

Anne Krebiehl 00:06:54 Well, I was a young exchange student, and I had learned such a lot of English from Paul Simon, and it was such an amazing moment just to be in that same place where that music was from, that I’d been listening to for years and learning English vocabu with that. So that was fabulous.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:13 Were you counting cars on the new Jersey Turnpike?

Anne Krebiehl 00:07:16 I was totally doing that. Indeed. And then later on, they’ve all come to look for America. That it’s just, you know, that’s just. Or even the Boxer, because I lived between Eighth and Ninth Avenue. So this it was cool.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:34 Oh, the 1 or 2 of you who may not be fans of Simon and Garfunkel, that duo had so many famous songs, including the lines were referencing now. So all right, we’ll get more on to wine. But now you along your career, your journey, at one point before you got into wine, you were working at Deutsche Bank and you had your first article published in the Financial Times of London, which is a really prestigious newspaper. But give us the back story. How did you pitch the paper? What happened? And what ended up being the topic of the story?

Anne Krebiehl 00:08:07 Well, I pitched the paper because I always wanted to be a writer who was published by somebody else. In fact, above my desk for many, many years, there was this quote saying, “there is a word for a writer who never gives up. Published”. And so (a) I didn’t have the technical news, the technical nose to start a blog. And on the other hand, I also wanted to have that sanction, that kind of approbation of being published by a proper publication. So I needed to pitch. And this was also well before social media. This was back in 2004. And I just wanted that validation. And I pitched and the editor, he was quite abrupt and rude to me, saying, oh, well. But first of all, he mixed my pitch. And then he said, and by the way, you need to know people much better who write for us. And for once in my life, I was actually really pissed off because it was so unnecessary to be so rude. And I said, well, if you tell me then how I get to know you better and what hoops I have to jump through, and he says, all right, then write me 500 words on why you should be writing for us.

And I said, thank you. And I did that. And then he came back and said, okay, that’s fine. Now send me, more suitable pitches with real topicality. And I did that, and then we met and then I got to write. So it was a fluke. But I must say that was also the time when – this was in 2004 – so newspapers hadn’t been decimated yet, magazines hadn’t been decimated yet. And he was an old school editor, and he was old school Fleet Street, and he had the guts to hire somebody like me who hadn’t been published before. I doubt this would happen today.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:58 That’s quite the feat. So you wrote about rationing during the wartime in the UK? Very food oriented kind of article. But what then drew you to wine? Why not continue with food writing? But you made the jump to wine instead?

Anne Krebiehl 00:10:10 Well, I am one of those people who read recipe books and cookery books like other people’s novels. And I’ve always, even when I was still in Germany, I loved flavour. I love to be in the kitchen. I am still to this day a passionate cook. However, I realized how crowded food writing was and at the same time, I had been bitten by the wine bug. Because wine is not only delicious to drink, it’s the subject where everything needs its geology, biochemistry, topography, politics, law, culture, language. Everything coincides in wine and it’s delicious. And so that completely turned me on and I felt I had found my home, my natural home.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:58 I couldn’t agree with you more. Like I love it. I often think you could do a liberal arts degree with wine at the hub because it relates to every sphere of human endeavour. And I think, as you’ve mentioned previously, there’s a bit of a higher barrier to get into wine writing because you have to have the knowledge. It is kind of huge, whereas not that you can lack knowledge of food writing, but it just seems an easier sphere to get into. I know how to cook or bake and I’ll write about it. But anyway.

Anne Krebiehl 00:11:25 Well, every single person on this planet eats every day and everyone has an opinion on food. And there are so many spheres of food. And yes, of course there’s huge expertise attached to this, but wine is still once removed. Not everybody drinks. Its a more specialized field, I think, for that reason.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:45 Yes, absolutely. So why were you drawn to work the harvests in several countries? And how did you manage to convince these wineries to hire you and let you help out?

Anne Krebiehl 00:11:57 Well, why the harvest? Because I was trying to pass exams. So I joined WSET started at the bottom and worked my way up, and once I got to the diploma at the WSET, there was a whole big module of viticulture and winemaking. And I realized, I basically don’t know this at all. And all my life I had only ever studied languages and literature and a bit of commerce, but I felt I was just I knew too little about science. I knew too little about this entire process. Because I wanted to pass my exams, I felt, and I also knew I wanted to go on learning, I thought it was just fabulous how better to learn than by doing it and by going there and at my first placement in New Zealand, and that is actually to do that coincided with me finally being able to leave my full time employment and starting out as a freelancer. It meant that, okay, finally you can go. You’re free of that kind of  being in that hamster wheel. And so that meant I actually had time to myself and I could just disappear. And it was in January, there are all of the Burgundy en primeur. And so I went to one of these tastings and the wine merchant asked me, so what are you going to do now? And I said, oh, I would adore to work a harvest in New Zealand. And it was overheard by a chef who is called Roger Jones, who is an incredibly. He’s a Michelin star chef. He’s now retired. Well, he’s retired from his restaurant, but he still is incredibly active.  But he’s one of those chefs who’s always been able to understand wine and make his own wine lists and champion wine. And he overheard this and he didn’t know me at all. And he came over and said, well Anne will you be at the New Zealand tasting? And because I see tonight you’re dreaming of Felton Road. And I was just okay, yes please.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:56 Wow. Felton road.

Anne Krebiehl 00:13:58 Exactly. So as you see, there were lovely and lucky coincidences in my life. And I was introduced to Nigel Greene. He just texted me the email address and telephone number of his vineyard manager and his well get in touch with Gareth. And that was that. And I did. And then I flew to New Zealand and I had the best time of my life, the best time in my life.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:17 That’s great. Why were you drawn to New Zealand first as opposed to any other region?

Anne Krebiehl 00:14:21 Because it needed to be in the Southern hemisphere because of the time of year.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:25 Right.

Anne Krebiehl 00:14:26 And of the southern hemisphere. I thought, oh my God. New Zealand is the remotest and they make Pinot. But of course, now I think I could have gone to Mornington Peninsula, I could have gone to South Africa, I could have gone to Chile. But for some reason I just like the idea of New Zealand.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:44 Absolutely. Describe what it was like that region of Central Otago. What does it look like visually?

Anne Krebiehl 00:14:50 It’s a very stark region. It’s pristine because, I mean, in all of New Zealand, there are fewer people than within the M25. And the M25 is the ring road around London.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:04 Okay. And there are more sheep, I understand, than people.

Anne Krebiehl 00:15:07 Still to this day. But you know, so there are vast and high mountain ranges, alpine heights, snow capped mountains. Turquoise blue glacial lakes. Sometimes the land looks really bare, almost like a moon landscape. And then you have these vineyards. And it’s an almost an extreme landscape. But everything seems so clean and there’s a sense of wilderness still. And that was even more so the case when I was there in 2009. I was back in Central Otago earlier this year and was surprised at the amount of development or the touristic development and so many new buildings in Queenstown, etc., etc. But then in 2009, it was still a bit more of a backwater and you really had to know that. It was just amazing and beautiful, just incredibly beautiful landscape.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:00 Sounds lovely. What was the most memorable moment while you were working the harvest there in Central Otago, which I should note for folks who are listening is in the South Island of New Zealand. But what moment did you take away from that, or key insight or learning that?

Anne Krebiehl 00:16:15 Was that how good it feels to be doing something that is real. And by that I mean getting up in the morning, going to a vineyard and picking grapes. That is a real thing. What I mean by that is that you must imagine that I had lived in London, got up in the morning, gone on to an overcrowded public transport system like thousands of other people, and then gone to an office. And as I worked for a bank, it seemed like all seemed so removed from life and so, like pen pushing and Excel sheets and and all of a sudden I was there doing something incredibly real that humans have done for millennia, just farming. It was like picking fruit that was grown to a particular purpose. And that to me felt liberating and beautiful.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:07 Absolutely. And of course, New Zealand and Central Otago specifically are renowned for Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. We’ll get to Pinot Noir later when we talk about German Pinot Noir. And we’ll come back and sort of compare it to New Zealand style. But let’s talk about you also work the harvest in Piedmont in northern Italy. What does that region look like? How does it differ from New Zealand?

Anne Krebiehl 00:17:31 It’s completely different because it is a traditional European region. So you have little villages and let me place it for you. So Piedmont is in the north of Italy, above the boot, south of the Alps. And literally Piedmont means the foot of the mountain. So it is in the alpine foreland. And so you can see again, you can see snow capped mountains in the distance. And it’s a landscape of gentler hills. And the grape that it is most famous for is Nebbiolo. And and Nebbiolo is the grape that is behind those famous wines Barolo and Barbaresco. And I worked in a village in the Barbaresco appellation called Treiso And what was different there is that I actually worked much less in the vineyard and much more in the cellar. But I also loved the food because there is, I mean, and this is Europe, where you have totally regional specialities of food. And being there in autumn, of course, meant I was there during truffle season, and so all they could afford was to buy a tiny little white truffle. But my car smelled of it for weeks on end.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:44 That’s wonderful.

Anne Krebiehl 00:18:46 So both food and wine combined into one. You know, that was just wonderful.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:52 That sounds great. And then was your third stage working in Baden in Germany for the harvest?

Anne Krebiehl 00:19:00 Exactly. So Baden happened in the same year that I did New Zealand. New Zealand was in the spring of 2009, and Baden was in Kaisertuhl the autumn of 2009, and Piedmont then followed in autumn 2010 and a little bit later. I also did a much shorter stint in the Mosel. But the Kaiserstuhl, still in Baden, is in Germany’s southwest, so we are now north of the Alps, and the Kaiser itself is a volcanic outcrop in the southern Rhine valley. And again, I was picking Pinot.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:38 Funny how that happens to a thread here. Hahaha.

Anne Krebiehl 00:19:44 Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:45 And that’s near the Black Forest, is it not? And where you were born and raised?

Anne Krebiehl 00:19:49 Exactly, exactly. So that felt very much like home and just beautiful because. So you have the Rhine Valley with this volcanic outcrop of the Kaiserstuhl. And east is the mountain range of the Black Forest. And to its west, across the French border is the mountain range of the village, and it’s actually also a very beautiful landscape with sort of coniferous forests. And yeah, it’s just beautiful.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:15 It sounds beautiful. You keep saying a German word. Kaiserstuhl. What is it?

Anne Krebiehl 00:20:19 Kaiserstuhl

Natalie MacLean 00:20:21 What does that mean?

Anne Krebiehl 00:20:22 Which means Emperor’s chair. Because it is a volcano that is extinct. And it erupted in a very flat like. . You have these two mountain ranges on the German and the French side, and then you have a really flat plane that is the Rhine valley. And in the middle of it is this volcano, which is like capped at the top. And of course, this is a feature in the landscape. And people said it’s the Emperor’s chair. I actually don’t know the etymology of the word.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:53 I love that. And is it on the French border with Alsace?

Anne Krebiehl 00:20:58 Yes, absolutely. Alsace is like a mirror image of Baden.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:02 In what way is it because the rift is like two sides of the same slopes.

Anne Krebiehl 00:21:07 Exactly. So you have the Upper Rhine Rift, which was initially a fissure in that surface, and then it broke to let the river Rhine through And then on either side these mountains were pushed up. So if you think you have geological layer upon, layer upon layer, and then you just used upset, then you have some parts of it bending this way, others that. And so you have that’s why a that’s why there is volcanic activity in that Upper Rhine valley. But also the Upper Rhine rift happened before that. And that explains why you have such a variety of soils, and you have sandstone mixed to limestone, and you like Jurassic limestone lakes to Triassic limestone, and then you have far older formations. So this explains the kind of geological patchwork in the area.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:59 Okay, great. All right then, let us focus on Germany. Tell us in a nutshell what makes your book, The Wines of Germany, different from other books about German wines?

Anne Krebiehl 00:22:10 My book is different, I think, because it. Being German and having done all of my wine studies here in the UK, I felt that I learned about German wine like any foreigner would. And yet I was German and I had a lot more to say because I also  in a lot of ways and education is also indoctrination. So every wine course, every sommelier courses starts with Bordeaux followed by Burgundy and then a bit of the Loire, a bit of Alsace. And then you move on to Italy. It’s Tuscany and Piedmont and, you know, you move through those regions. And then Germany, if you’re lucky, is treated separately from Austria. But a lot of the time they’re lumped together.

And then for most people, even after an education that is fairly professional, you still have this lump of Germany where you actually have four degrees of latitude for wine of where grapes grow, and you have one unwieldy, crazy law that nobody understands. And that is why many people actually stay away from Germany and back out of Germany with their brain, and they see the one eszett on a label and one umlaut and they freak out. And so I want you to bring context to everything, and I wanted to understand it myself. And so I needed to explain why there is this crazy law.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:38 Let’s talk about that first, the law. It’s all about ripeness, if I understand correctly. And why did that come about? And why is it confusing to people who are not from Germany?

Anne Krebiehl 00:23:49 Okay, Natalie, you must promise to stop me because we could talk about this until next week. So Germany only became a nation state in 1871. Before that, it was a patchwork of little principalities, church states, city states, little kingdoms, and duchies. And so you have a very short history as a national state. Of those national states, most of them did not have quality viticulture. Most of the time, like in most other regions of Europe, there was wine but it wasn’t treated as a precious thing, but usually planted in field blends. And it was made for quantity, not for quality. You know, this was actually the rule in most Europeans. And then over the course of the 18th century, a few quality wine regions emerged. Actually, much earlier in the Middle Ages, you had quality wine regions along the Rhine. Why? Because they had ready transport. And so Rhine wines were already famous in medieval times, and they were distributed to East and to England and to the Netherlands on the Rhine by the Hansa. The Hansa is a huge medieval trade association, and they of course traded, and Cologne was a major hub for wine trade. And then through conflict, especially the 30 years conflict, all of that faded and then was slowly built up again and came to the fore as quality viticulture, especially along the Rhine. And then how do I just get…

Natalie MacLean 00:25:33 … the Reader’s Digest version? (laughter)

Anne Krebiehl 00:25:35 Riesling emerged as a quality variety, but Riesling is so late ripening that it could only ripen in Germany at that time, which was much colder. In this very special site. And then people discovered selective harvesting, meaning you don’t just go into your vineyard and harvest everything in one go. No, you harvest at different levels of brightness. And you know, this week you only pick these grapes, two weeks later you only eat grapes. And that meant that they could come up with sort of wines that had different levels of ripeness. And it was only in the best years and in the best sites that you’ve got certain kinds of wines which were then immensely valuable and precious. So ripeness was the thing that determined the quality because it was so difficult to ripen Riesling in particular, and it would not ripen like it does today. These days in Germany ripens in a potato field. In those days, it would only ripen on incredibly well-drained slopes that are tilted towards the sun, and those were very precious to vineyards owned by the church or by the aristocracy.

And the ripeness was the defining factor. And therefore when the first laws were made, they all took this Riesling ripeness into consideration. However, then Germany was compelled by increasing European integration in the 1960s and 7os. In the 19.. well initially the Roman contracts that were precursors to the European Union meant more and more European integration. And Germany was then compelled to bring its wine law into line with European wine. And then they took what applied to Riesling, they applied it across the board. They told every wine village to come up with new delineations for their historic single vineyard sites. So some historic single vineyard sites were enlarged immensely. Then they also said, we have single sites like einzellage. We have collective sites like Großlage, but that was in a way, consumer deception and fraud because as a normal consumer, the nomenclature, the naming of these sites, you couldn’t tell whether it was a single or a collective site.  So the best example of this is like the … Piesport vineyard –  very famous for Riesling in the Mosel – is a single vineyard, but the collective site, which included vineyards from where you can’t even see the river Mosel and it’s like a vast site, is called …. Piesport. And then imagine on a shop shelf you have two bottles. One is called Piesport and the other one is Piesport…  So you can’t unless you know all of the single sites, you can’t tell which is from a collective site and from a single site.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:32 So it became very confusing. And they were mixing good sites or good sites were getting subsumed into larger not so great sites. And in terms of the nomenclature.

Anne Krebiehl 00:28:41 While riding on the coattails of an old glory.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:45 Right.

Anne Krebiehl 00:28:46 But this is just I mean, it’s far more complicated than that. And the history is more complicated than that. I just tried to give you a potted version.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:54 That’s great. And is that what lead the way or opened a door to some fudging in terms of sweetness?

Anne Krebiehl 00:29:02 Well, you must think that it’s only in an exceptional year. And people think that German wine is always sweet. But sweet wines in the past, in the distant past, were very, very rare because you could only get sweet wines that stayed sweet once they were sweet enough so that the natural yeast – because they only were natural in those days –  couldn’t finish fermenting. So sweet wines in the past were exquisitely rare. And then the sweet wines as we know them today only came into existence in a much broader field with sterile filtration. Sterile filtration is an invention of the First World War, which then took a while to find its application across industry not only in wine but in various other businesses. But it was a German company that pioneered this. It was the sites…. that enabled people to sterile filter sweet wines before bottling. What does sterile filtration mean? It means that any microbes in any use are filtered out. But the sugar stays. And if there was any yeast or bacteria left, you would have reactions, further fermentation, bacterial infections, all sorts of things. But sterile filtration enabled residual sweet wines to be bottled on a grand scale.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:28 And so you had these really sweet wines that did not have the complexity of the old wines.

Anne Krebiehl 00:30:34 Well, you didn’t necessarily have sweet wines, but what you could do is to add sugar. And that was what people did. And if you do that in a kind of subtle version like people that is just in Champagne and we know how well that works. That means adding sugar in Champagne. It means adding sugar for the second fermentation. It also means adding sugar in a tiny proportion, you know. And most Prosecco has like, I don’t know, ten, 11, 12, 15g of residual sweetness. But the Germans did is overdo it and overdo it in a grand scale. And so German wine became to be known as like sweet plonk.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:14 Okay. Yeah. And that’s one of the things that people misunderstand about German wine, the complexity of the German wine lore, or at least the obscurity of it. And as well as for North American anglo tongue trying to pronounce all those names can be another barrier, was there anything else that in terms of why German beer with so much more successful than German wine?

Anne Krebiehl 00:31:39 That’s a very, very, very easy question to answer because once you think about it, the answer is perfectly clear. So you know that in Europe, haute cuisine, fine cooking was always associated with France, and fine wine was always associated with France. So if somebody in London wanted to go and fine dine, that would have been French cuisine with French wines. Then, of course, especially in the United States, through the vast Italian immigration, you had numerous trattoria, restaurants, etc., etc. and even if this was a very down to earth establishment, they would have had a fiasco of guarantee. Meaning that straw bound bottle and people associated, even if that was just as well cheap plock. It was red wine and that was associated with Italy.

You now tell me how many German restaurants there are? There are beer halls. If there’s anything German themed, it’s Oktoberfest themed and people immediately think of sausage, sauerkraut and pork knuckle, which of course goes with beer. It also goes with Riesling. But that was not done. And the waves of German immigrants that came to the States actually started breweries. And, you know, beer is also far more affordable, etc., etc.. So beer has always been, funnily enough, while there was a lot of fudging in wine, the Germans are actually incredibly proud of their medieval law of purity that is written in their DNA, and that every German beer adheres to that. It is only what it is. Barley, yeast and water. And the universe. So proud of it. And that’s an ancient lore that somehow still holds true. But so that success of, you know. And then even later with tapas bars, the Spanish wines followed. So in a way other countries wines could piggyback on their food. For Germany, this didn’t quite happen just because of the little wholesome pork knuckle thing that is just exactly that be a whole thing, you know?

Natalie MacLean 00:33:49 Yeah, that’s a great insight. And and yet, conversely, I believe that Germany has the highest concentration of Michelin starred restaurants, especially around the Black Forest. But that’s not what got exported in terms of the cuisine to other countries. So it can be fine dining on its own for sure, but we just don’t see it or haven’t had a lot of it as we had from other cultures.

So let’s situate Germany on a map of Europe. Now it’s very central. You’ve mentioned maybe, I don’t know if there’s anything else you want to say about where it is in Europe and why that makes it special?

Anne Krebiehl 00:34:26 Germany is a vast country, and if you look at a European map, it sits smack bang in the middle of Europe. And it starts just north of the Alps, and it goes all the way up to the North Sea to the border with the Netherlands, and then to a border with Denmark. And Germany is a very long and it’s just a big spot in the middle of Europe. And it’s the first four degrees of latitude from 48, 49, 50, 51 are the ones where the vineyards and the wine regions are.

Natalie MacLean 00:34:59 And that’s significant. If I might just add, four degrees of latitude in total is about 275 miles or 440km. That is a huge span in terms of wine growing viability. The temperatures must change dramatically. Like maybe for comparison, what kind of cities and wine regions around the world are on some of the similar latitudes as German wine regions?

Anne Krebiehl 00:35:23 Oh, I should have looked this up, I don’t.

Natalie MacLean – That’s okay.

Anne Krebiehl – But for instance, you have Épernay and Reims in Champagne at a similar latitude, and you have Alsace, Colmar and Strasbourg in Alsace at similar latitude. That’s what I can think of immediately. But that brings me back to a point about the law, because everybody who learns a little bit about wine learns about the laws that apply to Bordeaux, and then the ones that apply to Burgundy, then you learn about, Piedmont and Tuscany. And they have very different laws. But in Germany, the same law applies across the board. And that’s one of the problems. That’s why I use the word so lumpy. It’s such a lump of things. And all of the real diversity gets lost because this thing about people have no hesitation buying a German car or a German washing machine.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:21 That’s true. Top brands.

Anne Krebiehl 00:36:23 Exactly. So the Germans are trusted with all the technical engineering stuff, but usually pleasure that’s not something people think the Germans can do. But I can tell you, as a southern German, where we actually know how to live and we know how to cook. Hello. You know, there’s quite some lifestyle there.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:44 That’s true. We get into old stereotypes of efficiency and German engineering. And let’s just be blunt, but the wines can be deeply sensual, as we’ll get to in a moment with Riesling and Pinot Noir.

Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Anne. Here are my takeaways. Number one, why has German beers been so much more successful marketing wise than German wine, especially in foreign markets, particularly in the UK and North America? As Anne explains, when people of different nationalities, such as those from France and Italy, migrated around the world, they brought their wines which were associated with their food. They opened restaurants featuring both in North America. German immigrants mostly started breweries, beer halls, and Oktoberfest events, so the wine traditions were not exported in the same way.

Number two, how does German law make it complex to navigate the country’s wines for consumers? As Germany became integrated into Europe and says they were compelled to bring their wine laws more in line with European wine law. But this wasn’t necessarily the best fit for the country. For example, they took what was practiced in Greece and applied it across the board in Germany. Every wine village had to come up with new names for historic single vineyard sites. Consumers couldn’t tell if the new names referred to a single or collective site w hen looking at the bottle on the shelf in a liquor store.

And number three, what is selective harvesting and why is it fundamental to understanding German wine? Selective harvesting means harvesting only the grapes that are ripe, or at least to the ripeness that you desire for the style of wine you’re making. The rest of the grapes are left on the vine to further ripen, so you don’t harvest everything all at once. And that means there are a number of rounds of harvesting every fall.

In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Anne, links to her website and books, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now no matter where you live. You can also find a link to take the free online food and wine pairing class with me, called The Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them Forever at nataliemaclean.com/class. That’s all in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com/295

Email me if you have a sip, tip, question or would like to win a copy of Ann’s book, The Wines of Germany. I’d also love to hear from you if you’ve read my book or are interested in listening to it at [email protected]

If you missed episode 200, go back and take a listen. I chat about German wines and biodynamic winemaking with Valerie Kathawala. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Natalie MacLean – What do you mean by German speaking wines?

Valerie Kathawala 00:39:52 It’s wines from countries where German is either the main language or one of the main languages. More broadly, it’s a certain mindset, a certain shared tradition, and values of grape varieties. Winemaking approaches, geography, climate that these regions Germany, Austria, this little corner of northern Italy and the eastern part of Switzerland all share.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:16 Is there a style that runs through them? Is it like the edgy acidity or?

Valerie Kathawala 00:40:22 These are all cool climate regions and acidity is a hallmark native grapes that maybe don’t shine on the international stage quite as brightly.  It’s this commitment to craft and tradition at a very high level so far less industrial winemaking and far more small growers who’ve been working this way for generations.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:51 And now here’s Part Two of the bonus excerpt from the writers workshop I hosted recently. We explore topics such as the mistake in following a chronological series of events. There’s nothing that will put readers to sleep more quickly than a this happened, then this happened, then this happened kind of narrative. Number two, the mistake of underestimating the difficulty of navigating a dual timeline. While it can be difficult to weave back and forth, clumping together parts of your story by category won’t be satisfying to the reader either. And number three, the mistake of believing that memoir is more closely aligned to nonfiction than fiction. A memoir is a true account but the techniques of memoir are all on the fiction side of things. It’s about plot, character development, climax, and conflict. Dum dum dum. All right, I’ll publish the final part of this workshop next week.

You also won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Anne Krebiehl. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell one friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about the wines of Germany. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on their favourite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a crisp German Riesling.

Natalie MacLean – All right, this is mistake number two. Following a chronological series of events. That’s your to did list, right. This happened. And this happened. There’s nothing that will put readers to sleep more quickly. You need to start in medias res, like in the middle of things. You’ve probably heard that term. And that is what often they mean by a propulsive narrative, something that drives the story through and you just can’t put the book down.  It’s the way most movies start with the big car chase or the big explosion or whatever. You’ve got to establish the hook first, right. And then you’ve got permission to maybe step back in time or go to a quieter moment but you’ve got to get there first.

So my memoir, I started it in three different places. At first I started in this place, I’m checking my email one last time before midnight, before heading upstairs to bed, when a Google alert pops up with the headline Natalie MacLean World’s Best Wine Writer or Content Thief, which is a bit of an anchor drop or mic drop whatever. But the problem with that is that you don’t know me, you don’t know the stakes, you don’t know why or what happened. You don’t need to know all the back story by the way. You don’t need to have everything filled in, but you need to have a few details. So this start was the third start and then we revised it. You want to get in humour or something first to get the reader on side with you.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:01 So I talk about I wake up that morning with a big hangover, but I’m a professional, a wine professional. I can handle it. Breakfast with the family, normal life because you want to compare normal life with what’s going to go wrong. Because you need to establish the stakes. While I’m shopping, I pretend I’m a red nosed superhero. Interfere with a young couple trying to choose a bottle of wine. My instinct kicks in just as a doctor would clear a crowd to use a defibrillator on someone who’s collapsed from a heart attack. I want to say, please stand back everyone. I can help these people. I’m a trained sommelier and I helped them pick a wine for dinner. So overstatement, whatever. But if you’ve ever heard of the book Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. Get it. I liked the original and he’s talking about movie scripts, but a book to me is a movie script. You write in scenes, but first the hero or the villain needs to save a cat, meaning he needs to – he or she, they – need to do something that gets the reader onside. So these little snippets that I was sharing first and they were very quick, starts to build a rapport before we go to the dungeon.

All right. So then I return to that headline, World’s Best Wine Writer Content Thief. And then. I’ll just read this little bit. It’s 3 or 4 paragraphs, but I think I can keep coming back to it as a concrete examples for the next stuff we’re going to talk about. I think it’ll be worthwhile. Content thief. The text quivers as I try to register what I’m reading. What is this? Where did it come from? My heart pounds. I click through to Pallet Press, a large American Wine and Spirits website. There’s a long rant about me with phrases that burn into my retinas. Copyright infringement. Intellectual theft. What the hell? Their words merge and blur. Those so offended is a who’s who in the world of wine journalism. Brings discredit upon any of us. Scourge of journalism cannot be tolerated. This simply isn’t a nasty comment, I’m being accused of the one thing a writer dreads most stealing someone else’s work. Doctors lose their license for malpractice. Lawyers are disbarred for misrepresentation. Writers get their careers canceled for copyright infringement. I earn my living online since that income from my books has long since dried up. Those of us who work online can’t simply turn it off anymore than a brain surgeon can operate outside a hospital. The difference is that online there are no separate workplaces. There isn’t even separation between work and home. Everyone eventually knows everything about everyone.

11:44 p.m. I’m on my second read through the article, and I realize that everything I’ve written over the past 13 years, all those words are now fiery cinders flying up around me as my professional reputation burns, hand shaking, I start to write a comment below their post, then I stop. Pain ricochets inside my skull. What can I even say? I can’t see through my tears anyway. Closing my eyes, I wrap my arms around where I’ve been gut punched, rocking silently. Oh my God. I stumbled to the kitchen to get water, spilling half of it on my chest. As I gulp, the glass slips and smashes on the floor. Shards scatter in all directions, throwing the pieces in the garbage. I notice the blood. I wash my hands quickly, ignoring the fragment in my palm.

Okay, so let’s just keep going, because that’ll be an example that I’ll come back to as time clicks here. So you need to be invested with the main character first. Save the cat as we mentioned. Immediacy without filters. That’s one thing you want to get at with memoir. One, to put the reader in the situation so that they’re not looking at you, looking at the situation. It’s a subtle difference. You want them to feel that you are you in the situation. You don’t want to say, I noticed or I noticed that there was a blog post about this. You don’t want to editorialize. You want to get rid of the filter words like I heard, I felt, I saw, I thought, I decided try to get right to the core of what you’re saying. The more you can make the reader feel like they are right in the scene with you, I’ll come back to that.

After 98 edits, I went through nine passes on my manuscript. The first one was to eliminate the filter words. You can’t get rid of them completely, but look for them. They’re tells that say that you can probably tighten something up and make it have more impact. Sensory details. When I’m talking about this, reacting to this, the text quivers as I try to register what I’m reading. It’s I’m not saying I’m so upset that it appears that the text is waiver. I’m just like, oh, I’m gut punched. Overused words. If you read it out loud, you will get rid of them. So one pass words for that because you will have favourite words and you don’t even realize you’re using them. You can also use software like Grammarly or Pro Writing Aid to pick that up, but nothing replaces reading out loud.

Dialogue tags. I said I heard I he said she said, now you can’t avoid them all the time, but the more you can put an action rather than he said. Like for example: there’s no way I’m doing that, Cameron slammed the door instead of there’s no way I’m doing that Cameron said as he slammed the door. You can get rid of a lot of dialogue tags by just putting the quote and then some sort of action right beside it, and the reader will know who said it. Also, dialogue is very propulsive because it has a lot of white space and whenever you can have lots of white space the reader feels like they’re really motoring through your book. And that’s very satisfying.

Our short chapters doesn’t work for everything or every genre. Get rid of your ly words. Those are adjectives. Quietly, slowly.

Timelines. I had to go through it for timelines because when you’re dealing with different timelines, it’s easy to get confused. Present and past tense.

Sentence rhythm. Like in that little excerpt I read you. I had to go through that and try to vary it between short, punchy, even sentence fragments and then maybe a longer sentence that would explain something. And I always, in every chapter at the end, go look at your first sentence of the chapter. Look at your last sentence. They don’t have to tie up like a perfect bow, but it’s neat if they have some connection.

So you do want to get it all out there. Don’t do these nine passes at the beginning. Writing while editing is like driving with the brakes on. Just let it go, get it down. And then when you feel you’re ready, start editing. Great piece of advice I got from my writing coach. Think about every chapter has three scenes, like a movie script. And in fact, I wrote my book in scenes. There’s plotters and panters. Plotters plan their whole outline of their book. They’re so organized. Panters just start somewhere where inspiration lands and go for it. I’m a panter. Even though I’m organized in my life, I’m not in my writing. If I were doing a painting of the Atlantic Ocean, I’d start with the seagull in the corner somewhere because I like seagull. Oh, that looks cool. So get your scenes down and use a tool like Scrivener to keep everything organized, and then you can start moving and manipulating.

Natalie MacLean 00:51:48 A scene starts when you open the door. What’s happening? Who’s there? What are the smells? How is the light hitting your character? What are the sounds? All that. And it ends when you close the door. So think of it like a movie director. You can use one detail for placement or time. So when I went through all of this sort of opening and then I wanted to back up. And so the way I did it was through a bottle of wine. Of course, I backed up in time by referring to a bottle of wine. I’m so I’m in the present situation. Then I’m remembering, oh, gosh, the last time I drank this bottle of wine was at the beginning of the year. So it gives you permission, a bit of a segue to go back in time. You’ve started in medias res and but you’ve got to get back there somehow, because you’ve got to do a whole story. That can be a great technique.

Time placement can be like, as I was moving through the book, I had to let the reader know, where are we going? Okay, the lilac scented wafted in the window, or whatever little cues as to where are we? Because the story is in your head and it all unfolds neatly in your head, but in the reader is going, I wasn’t there.  Holy smokes, where are we? What time of year is it? Where? Give me an anchoring point.

Light up our sensory brain when I’m talking. Just that instance I gave you the blood, the pounding, the different parts of our brain light up when we talk about sensory detail. Just like wine, you should be talking about sight, smell, sound, touch, taste, feel like all of the five senses, right? With what we did with wine. See how it all loops back? You should be doing with your memoir. If you are writing a memoir about something that took place a long time ago, go back to that place. You will be surprised at how much will light back up for you because you’re in the situation, the smells, the place. It can really help. And if you can’t get there physically, Google maps, the street view, you can go back to the old street where you grew up in British Columbia. Now, the houses may have changed, but it’s just a nifty tool to use if you want to get the memory jog going.

Natalie MacLean 00:54:04 So every event must move the story forward or develop the character. One of the two. Ideally both. I would have instances of saying the same thing three times because I like the three little stories. They were all different. And then my editor would say, yeah, they’re all lovely. Now choose one because you’re making the same point three times with three different stories, so choose one. That’s how you tighten everything up. Every story must yield a new tool or insight or reflection that the reader can use in their own life, or a new tool, or some something that is practical and useful. Think about every scene or event as critical. You would not understand the book either the story of the characters without it. Test every scene that you put in the book and resist the thing I’m weakest I love to do is tying things up with a big red, shiny bow. It’s all better now, and so resist doing that, even though you want the reflections in what you did with your mess to be packaged up nicely for the reader, it doesn’t have to end happily ever after. It can be happy for now, or there’s still some things I’m working on or whatever.

Natalie MacLean 00:55:16 People realize not everything is perfect. Oh yes. And then the final encounter. I just wanted to compare the opening scene, because I also I talked about the first sentence in the last sentence of the chapters, but also the opening scene and the final chapter. How do they compare? This isn’t the actual final chapter, but it’s the climax. It’s near the end.

I think in the interest of time, I’m just going to summarize, but essentially I meet the men online who were trolling me at an in-person wine tasting for the first time. I’d never met them. They didn’t know me, but we met in person and I was able to weave in a lot of things their Wizard of Oz things about their keyboard courage and the little men behind the green curtain. And this is not a man bashing book, by the way. Lots of wonderful men in my life and they’re in the book. But in this case, for these men, it was a great encounter that came at the end, and I’m happy to talk more about that in the Q&A, if you like.

Natalie MacLean 00:56:19 But I think we’ll just keep going because we’re on mistake number two, but the rest are shorter. Don’t underestimate the difficulty of a dual timeline the now and then, trying to weave it back and forth as well as you may have. Okay, here’s what happened at the end of the year, at the beginning of the year, and you’re going back and forth, but then occasionally you’re going to want to weave in historical scenes. So just again, tools like Scrivener can help you keep things in folders, because the other thing you don’t want to do is clumping and shoveling parts of your story. You don’t want to say, okay, here’s all the divorce stuff. Here’s all the online mobbing stuff, because that’s not satisfying for the reader either. You’ll lose them. You want a nice weave of things going together. Therefore you need segues and ways to put them together. All right. Okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:57:20 And the next point, a memoir about divorce only wouldn’t have been publishable for me. I’m not a celebrity, but with the novel I had: the A story was the mobbing.The B story was the divorce. But the two of them made it interesting enough for a publisher to want to take on the project. I already talked about clumping and shoveling back story. You’ll do that at first, and that’s okay. Work it, massage it, whatever. You’ve got this starter dough over here and this starter dough, but in the end, you’re going to need to braid them together in a way that weave seamlessly because you just can’t have these big clumps. All right.

Next, the mistake number four is believing that memoir is more closely aligned to nonfiction than fiction. So it is a true account. But the techniques of memoir are all on the fiction side of things. So it’s about plot and character development and climax and conflict. And that’s why I found it such a gargantuan project, because I was used to non-fiction. So I thought, this is nonfiction, I can do this. I was like, no, you need to become a fiction writer. But telling a true story.  There’s lots of courses, and I’ll mention some of those at the end, and resources and books and tools for you. But just keep that in mind, that memoir and fiction, they have far more affinities than nonfiction. I already meant mentioned Save the Cat story beats. If you don’t know what those are read Save the Cat because there’s certain story beats you should hit. Probably some of your previous speakers have talked about that.

Humour versus misery memoirs. I already mentioned that I think you need to have both. I don’t think it can be just one long downer. Normal life to contrast the dramatic moments and up the stakes. Even in scary horror movies, we love it when there’s a release of tension and someone makes a joke, it’s finally we can breathe. You need both.

Natalie MacLean – You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at nataliemaclean.com/ subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers

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