05/11/2026
Did you know there is a day each November when the year’s grape harvest is officially declared w**e and poured for the first time?
It is called Martinmas, the feast of St Martin, patron saint of w**emakers, and across Austria, Hungary and Slovenia it still marks the moment the new vintage is opened and last year’s w**e becomes old. It falls close to the astronomical midpoint between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, and for centuries it was the last great feast before winter, held at tables lit against the early dark.
My work as a naturopath begins with the soil, because the health of the land shapes the nutrients in our food and, over time, the health of our bodies. Natural w**e is one of the clearest ways I know to taste that connection. The small producers I have chosen farm without synthetic chemicals, keep cover crops, wildflowers and insects living between the vines, and let wild yeasts from the vineyard carry the fermentation.
Many of them also follow the biodynamic calendar, timing their pruning, picking and bottling by the phases of the moon and the movement of the planets, so each bottle carries a record of its soil, its season and the sky above it.
On Friday 13 November I am setting one candlelit table at Wellness & Wilde on Walton Street to mark Martinmas. We will taste four natural w**es from small Central European producers, a pet-nat, a young white, an orange w**e and a red, each poured slowly and explored through a different one of the five senses, with roasted chestnuts and seasonal food alongside.
I created The Slow Pour because so many of us reach for a glass to switch off at the end of the day, and I wanted to offer an evening where that same glass draws us back into the present moment and into a closer relationship with the land it came from. No w**e knowledge is needed, only a willingness to slow down at a table of other women.
The evening is for women only, and you can book your seat through the link in my bio or at luma.com/9d1qz3cb.
