Vibing with beverage creator Rob Easter is like listening to a band with two bassists.
Known for his thirteen-year-old, ancient grains whiskey project, Modern Ancient, he recently leapt out of the box with a low-intervention, piquette from his Subversa wine project.
He calls it Chill Wine. It is a white rabbit kind of wine, blended and co-fermented with wine grapes Malvasia Bianca and Tempranillo Rojo, a mash of skins from wine grapes Picpoul Blanc and Grenache Rouge, as well as raw Prickly Pear Cactus fruit.
Whether you are chatting with Easter or drinking his wine, you will go down a rabbit hole and get caught up in which bass notes to ride, the high ones or the low ones, since both lines are laying down something strong. Easter’s mind seems like it is moving at the speed of sound.
Pretty soon you notice that you’re late for a very important date because you are either groovin’ to the multi-beats of his ideas and expressions or you’re in the rhythm of your own thoughts: “Am I tasting grapes or cactus? Grapes or cactus? Hmmmm, no matter, ‘cause it’s pretty cool.”
The way to follow is to take an “Eat Me” or “Drink Me” sort of approach and ride the wave like Alice, letting your meta self sort it out.
In America, most wine drinkers are influenced by the trend of wines crafted from single grape varieties, fermented with commercial yeast, and aged in new oak barrels. This style of wine is akin to ordering sweet tea with lemon at brunch on Mother’s Day, or the seasonal flavored coffee drink at your favorite drive-thru coffee shop.
Our brains like the familiar and yummy flavors it’s been trained to know; we want that comfort. We can all agree that comfort is nice and it’s okay to be comforted. By all means, drink what you like.
For comfort seekers, Chill Wine’s low alcohol content, stainless steel fermentation, and intersectional plant use will likely cause some chins to be scratched.
“I’m not a whiskey guy. I’m not a wine guy.” In an interview with Tucson Foodie, Easter explains, “I’m a plant guy.”
Easter professes to be in love with plants. His curiosity about them along with his non-binary approach to life is what allows him the freedom to imagine the unconventional marriage consummated in his Chill Wine.
Though Chill Wine is finding success on notable wine lists in Tucson and Phoenix, it might be difficult for conservatively-minded drinkers to take Easter’s wine project seriously. You can easily see how it would be simple to label Easter as a Mad Hatter of sorts. Due to his background as a music label producer and lead singer, some might even pass him off as a one-hit wonder “punk rocker” type.
However, for a growing number of beverage enthusiasts who follow the burgeoning RAW Wine movement, the simple and straightforward mission Easter espouses hits the nail on the head. Easter states that he wants to make “creative, naturally grown and fermented wines for Arizona that taste proper in the deserts of Arizona. The focus is on quality of agriculture, therefore adding none of the legally allowed chemicals/fake colors upon which almost all modern wine is so dependent.”
Chill Wine is for Bacchanalistas who trend towards diving deeper into low-intervention wine growing and equitable agricultural practices. Easter knows that his projects require drinkers to be curious and to suspend their judgments about the definition of good wine or whiskey.
While Easter hopes that mainstream beverage enthusiasts are intrigued enough to participate in drinking Chill Wine, his artistic temperament allows him to remain open to their reservations.
No hurt feelings if you don’t feel ready! Observing him, you know that he might be a real wild child, but tasting Chill Wine drives home that he is not marketing a gimmick or bucking a trend; he’s hellbent on fermenting something authentically centered in his interpretation of how Arizona tastes.
So, if he’s not concerned about it, why should you go on an Easter egg hunt (sorry, had to do it) to find a bottle of Chill Wine and try it with your friends? One reason is printed on the label.
We are instructed to “drink Chill Wine chilled while chilling.”
If you’re like most people, you could use a reason to chill out in the current high-stakes local and national political climate. Seriously though, some solid reasons to support this are that the fruit is completely locally sourced from the sustainably farmed Rhumb Line Vineyards, and the wine is made in collaboration with talented winemaker, Rob Hammelman and Sand Reckoner Vineyards.
Easter’s journey into winemaking is grounded by some tenured vignerons. Something to note is that not all wines labeled as being from Arizona are made from fruit that is entirely Arizonan because laws only require 75% of the juice to come from within the state. Some Arizona wines contain fruit flown in from as far as South America and Italy. Some wineries choose to buy wine juice from elsewhere to augment their local juice because it is expensive to grow grapes in Arizona.
At around $24 a bottle, Easter’s dedication to equity in pricing is also a draw since Chill Wine is 100% Arizona-raised.
Chill Wine can be found in Tucson at 5 Points Market, Anello, Tap & Bottle, Westbound, Zerai’s International Bar, and Crisol. In Phoenix, check out Sauvage, Bacanora, Belly, Bad Jimmy’s, Kid Sister, Neighbor Market, and Unfiltered.
Because Tucson Foodie exists to elevate your awareness of what is kickin’ in the food and beverage scene in Tucson, we are poised to bring you a Tucson Foodie Podcast to delight you during the hours you aren’t eating and drinking at one of our partner restaurants.
Rob Easter is one of our first guests. If you want to know even more about his lust for life, tune in when it’s time.
Sariya Jarasviroj’s tasting note for Chill Wine:
Light to medium bodied, medium ruby red in color, firm acid with a brisk finish, think refreshing notes of pomegranate and tart cherries, the first bite of a crisp Arkansas Black apple, undertones of fresh shiitake mushrooms, everything ambling on a laser beam. There is the gentle presence of some CO2 that gives the whole sip a little lift. A bit like going apple-picking while listening to Dumpstaphunk’s song “Justice.”
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