hi. i’m lizze.
Lovely glass of 2023 ‘Gossamer’ Chardonnay from Kontos Cellars in Walla Walla, 2024
Hi there! My name is Lizze Sustaita and I’m breaking my 4-year writing hiatus to write about something I’ve come to love quite a bit in the last few years—wine! I’ve been working behind the bar for about 3 years and the most crucial thing I’ve learned about wine is that it’s a story—and I am nothing if not a storyteller.
Last I wrote professionally was as a journalist for my small, hometown newspaper during the 2020 terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. As I’m sure you’ve surmised, I was not a fan of being a pandemic journalist. Or even a frontline journalist. Or really, even a journalist. No, I wanted to be an actor, performing great epics on the stage…but trying to work in such a subjective field left me feeling untalented, unhappy, and most importantly, unemployed.
Yours truly, captured by photographer William Muñoz, perfecting the art of the pour. Or something like that. Winter, 2023
So, I moved back to my hometown after uni and was soon offered a position at my local newspaper! I thought it was the beginning of a beautiful career as I just needed to shift my love for storytelling to a more impartial format. No problem!
For about a month. Then in March 2020—exactly one month into my new career—we all suffered from one big, worldwide problem.
I went from writing about father daughter dances and children writing songs to writing about hybrid-learning for school, health updates from the Washington Department of Health and the Center for Disease Control. Oh, and the crime beat (although I did enjoy writing about a prison break that year. It’s funny how some things stay the same regardless of a pandemic).
The longer I worked those beats and the longer the state of global health remained unprecedented and uncertain, my faith in humanity all but disappeared. The faith I had in myself had also diminished. So, when my publisher finally gave me the big C, I took that as my sign. I decided that was it. I hung up my cap and I returned to the ol’ actor’s fallback: hospitality.
Steve Saxton as Valere and myself as Marianne in Voltaire’s ‘Tartuffe,’ La Trobe University, 2017
Little did I know how much this move would change my life. And it was love at first swirl, sniff, and sip.
I was raised in central Washington, so agriculture and by extension, the wine industry, has always been around me. My dad grew up picking cherries, cutting asparagus, and gathering blueberries. He and I would also thin apples in the summer together while he regaled me with army stories and “Hey, at least we’re not picking blueberries.” Hell, my mom even did a stint with Chateau Ste. Michelle and absolutely loved it!
However, it wasn’t until I was finally behind the bar myself that I realized just how much this industry suits me.
I found myself learning about terroir and fermentation processes. I began slowing down when drinking wine and really thinking about the aromas, the taste, the mouthfeel. Instead of a way to get shitfaced, wine became a story that I had to uncover myself, a story I could tell others. Wine became my new script and I, an actor again, performing soliloquies in the form of tasting notes.
It gave me a zest for life again and the wonderful people I’ve met in the tasting room has changed my life for the better. This blog is dedicated to them. Specifically Gwendolyn Elliott. Without whom I might never have made this blog at all.
Setting bottles up for wine club’s Spring Release, 2022
Let our glasses never be empty! Salúd!
