This article originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 2023-2024 print issue of Quench Magazine.
Images courtesy of Sarah Heller MW
Sarah Heller is a Master of Wine born in Hong Kong. She went from art studies at Yale University to an internship as a chef in Italy and then moved into the wine world. Today she is impacting the industry through her poetic visual artwork.
Sarah Heller is quite similar to a grapevine. Strong, sensitive, and resistant at the same time. Just like grape vines, Sarah moves between continents and is a citizen of the world. “I see my role in the wine world as someone who builds bridges; between countries, markets and people,” she says during our meeting over Zoom.
The road to becoming a Master of Wine in 2017 at the age of 29, at the time the youngest Master of Wine ever, was everything but straight. She grew up in Hong Kong but was raised American by Korean parents.
“How was I as a child? You are the first one asking that. I was a dreamer, I loved to paint, and I could be drawing for hours, and I remember sitting in the back seat of our car during long drives creating novels fantasizing how my life would be,” recalls Heller.
Sarah did not have “tiger parents,” (a term rooted in East Asian culture) meaning parents who micromanaged her education and extracurricular activities with high and strict expectations.
“My parents were the first generation growing up in America and especially my mother probably had a more strict education than me. My parents wanted me to be happy, but when they saw my interest in the art world, I guess they were surprised and asked, ´Why do you use so much paper?´” she says, laughing.
Art and creativity would be the centre of her existence during her art studies at Yale. At university, it was the first time she had to take care of herself, which also meant starting to cook. “I love cooking; it is like art, it is creative, making something new from raw materials, and I got into it more and more and at a certain point, I decided to become a chef. The French culinary school was so expensive, and my parents told me I should get an internship somewhere,” she says.
Through her father´s contacts in Italy, Sarah secured an internship as a chef in a restaurant in Turin. “The owner loved wine, and he took me to wineries and opened the door to this magical world,” she reminisces. It didn’t take long before she was hooked.
“I probably relate more to wine producers than to chefs; winemaking is a slow process; there is more awareness that you are just a step in a long process; I feel the same about myself, that I am part of a complicated eco-system. Wine producers seem humbler knowing that they are a part of something bigger, but when it comes to chefs, it seems more focused on the person,” she says.
After the internship, Sarah returned to Hong Kong, working as a wine consultant. “It was a great time; Asia was excited about the opportunity to take ownership of its wine market and not always follow the traditions of other countries, understanding they could create their own Asian wine culture. At the time, wine education was not so big; it was more learning on the field,” she says.
One day a person, after a conversation, told her that she should get a proper wine education. “What he was saying was more or less, cut the marketing bullshit and get into it for real,” she explains. So, she did. Sarah quickly moved on to the highest education in the wine world and the Master of Wine program.
“I think there are few educations like the Master of Wine program structured with the expectations to fail. The passing rate is lower than 10 per cent on the tasting exam,” states Heller. The most challenging moment was after four years of studies when she had completed the program. Or she thought she had.
“I thought I was ready with the last step, which is a research paper. I had just become a mother for the first time when my mentor called and said that all my statistics were wrong. I had to leave my one-month-old baby with my husband for two weeks while I tried to figure it out; it was brutal.”
Sarah went through the MW program even though she did not know what she wanted to do in the industry and where precisely she should position herself. “It was so much pressure, people from the industry told me that is something I should know, but my role in wine has been and still is a work in progress since the wine world is so big,” she says.
In the last years, she has slowed down, emphasizing the idea of wine as a life-altering experience, something we should experience more slowly. “Today you should go fast, learn new things, do more things. I want to slow down, contemplate, and think of the significance of something, maybe live wine more like we live art. I want to take the time to understand what making a wine meant to the person that created it.”
Her visual art project was a reaction to the strict Master of Wine program. “It is necessary to have an academic approach to wine when we talk between professionals, but it is not romantic and in the end, romance is the main reason for working with wine. I did not go into wine to write accurate wine descriptions.”
Sarah believed there must be a way to express the magic of wine without using words. “I am not a musician, but visual art is something I could do. People learn through images, and since there were no standards, I had the freedom to work out a new way to communicate what I felt when tasting a wine,” she says.
Sarah’s art is a visual tasting note. She expresses her feelings when tasting wine through colour, shape, and finely lined details. Her work is intimate; seeing them feels like sneaking into something very private. They also give a sensation of movement, just like the energy you receive from an expressive wine. Sarah held an emotional tasting at Vinitaly this year, with famous Italian wines for which she had made visual tasting notes.
“I have been so excited to be able to create my vocabulary with this work,” she explains. What Sarah means is that the visual tasting notes are not made to be a tool for communication but more to communicate what a wine could be to her. She realized that references and languages were so diversified when working on different continents. “I thought my work could be a tool to get beyond that. Art was always separate from my work in wine, and I am so glad I managed to merge them,” she says. Her latest project takes it one step further, creating an abstract image starting from the tasting experience of another prominent person in the wine and food world. “It felt logical to do this because wine and food are all about sharing,” she explains.
All of the different languages, references and continents that are a part of Sarah also merge into her philosophy in her teaching at the Vinitaly International Academy Italian Wine Ambassador program.
“I was so happy to get the chance to teach Italian wine. Initially, I thought some pieces were missing, like geology, history and how grape vines came to a certain place. To me, it is important always to ask the question why and not only what,” she says.
Her goal is to break down details and complex information and make it possible for her students to grasp it without simplifying.
“In the following years, I would like to understand the US market better without losing my connection to Hong Kong and Asia, which are such a big part of me. Wine is a bridge, and I will try to follow that philosophy as I go.”
Åsa Johansson came to Italy from Sweden in 2001 because she loved Italian films from the ‘50s and ‘60s and wanted to learn Italian. It was love at first sight. Following a degree in political science and journalism at the University of Florence, she now writes about wine, food, and travel for Swedish, Norwegian, Italian and Canadian publications. Åsa travels back to Sweden on a regular basis to hold courses and seminars on Italian wines. Since 2019 she produces her own extra virgin olive oil, La Collina Blu, from the olive trees on the Tuscan hills where she lives with her husband Stefano and two children. Her latest project is Sweden’s first podcast about Italian wine.