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Matt Crutchfield Wines
Matt Crutchfield Wines was born from the boom/bust cycle of construction and a chance encounter with a skin contact Chenin from Cédric Garreau. When Matt lost his construction job he applied for a part-time position in a nearby tasting room in the Shenandoah Valley. This led to a working tour of natural wine bars in Charleston and then to a harvest in California with the esteemed Merry Edwards. And suddenly everything clicked: the deep community forged in harvest, the chemistry of the cellar and the brutal manual labor of crafting wine made Matt feel whole.
There’s something profoundly grounded and calming about Matt; and the people he works for and with don’t want to let him go. Gentle, powerful, kind and focussed, the gravity of his personality pulls people toward him. Not far from Merry Edwards is RYME, where Matt would drop by regularly to taste. So when RYME needed an assistant winemaker, they approached Matt—and took him in like family.
They also took him to school, throwing over 20 different varietals at him his first year. And Megan, RYME co-founder and winemaker, encouraged Matt to make his own wine from the beginning, asking him what varietal he’d start with: Chenin. Megan connected Matt with the local Chenin expert, Mike Lucia of Rootdown wine. From there, Matt wove a connective thread between that first glass of skin contact Garreau and the incredible mentorship he’d received to create something very much like himself: liminal wines that live on the edge of the very familiar and the very new.
Matt Crutchfield is not just making wines that are different: he’s making a difference in wine. As Matt points out, there are not many people in the industry who look like him, and one of his goals is to change that. It’s the way he’s affecting that change, however, that makes Matt so unique: he’s doing it through love. The people around Matt love him—you can feel it when you’re in his presence. Yes, Matt is making wines that are both outstanding and different, but it’s the bonds he’s creating through his wines that define Matt Crutchfield and his important role in our local community.
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3358791-0
