Yooie Chang, yooVIN distribution

An interview with Yooie Chang, author of The French Colonization of Algeria and the Untold History of the French Appellation System

Yooie Chang

The Vinguard: What made you want to work in the wine industry?

Yooie Chang: I became interested in wine because it gave me an avenue through which I could relate to people. Being autistic, I am often overwhelmed and confused about the challenges of starting and maintaining a conversation. However, wine touches on everything. It was a lens through which I could continue learning about the world and also find creative ways to share that knowledge with others.

TV: What kind of work do you do in the wine industry?

YC: Formerly, I was a sommelier, and now I am attempting to make a change into micro-distribution. Rather than holding massive amounts of inventory, I hope to secure a few cases from producers whose work I admire and find placement for them in Chicago.

TV: What are some things that make your experience as a wine professional unique?

YC: My experience being neurodivergent, Asian, and femme-presenting has made my experience unique because trust from others that I could be a source of knowledge was very difficult to earn. Since my first unpaid wine job at Sepia, it took me about 6-8 years to get paid for my labor in wine. Often, I worked serving jobs after serving jobs while doing cellar work and other forms of wine-related labor for free in efforts to secure a wine position at these restaurants. On the flip side, when I was working at Everest, I think guests responded positively to me because of how I presented. Chef Joho is a well-respected person in the industry, so to have his stamp of approval created the necessary condition of trust between myself and the diners. Approachability is very important to me, so I often used humor and analogies to make wine knowledge more "down-to-earth" (a small pun here 🙂). Because of feeling so frequently out of place in the wine industry, I worked really hard to make no one feel awkward or self-conscious about wine. If someone likes a song, for instance, they like it! They don't need to check in with someone to validate their preferences. So, in addition to answering any wine-related questions, I tried to help guests feel empowered about their palate.

TV: Why did you take an unpaid job? Can you explain why it took so long for you to get paid for your labor in wine? 

YC: I knew I wanted to work with wine, but I couldn't find places that would hire me to work directly with their wine program. So, I would find a restaurant whose wine program I admired and inquire about any job openings. Typically, it was for the position of a food runner or a lunch server. At Sepia, I would work as a lunch server for 2-5 shifts and pick up any food running shifts at night. Meanwhile, I was learning a lot about wine by doing the inventory and creating the order sheet for the wine director's approval twice a week, as well as receiving new wine and organizing the cellar. I remember the pastry chef often yelling at me for not coming in at 9am to sign for the deliveries, thereby adding to her workload. All the labor I was doing for wine was for free, but it didn't matter to me because I desperately wanted the experience and believed in my heart that if I could keep studying wine, I could find a career in it. It was challenging, though. I didn't know it at the time, but under the wine director at Sepia, I was learning how to do his job. However, no place would hire me to work as their sommelier. Was it racism? Sexism? Ableism? Many femme-presenting autistic individuals frequently have experiences of being infantilized because of how we present and because people eventually catch us being socially naive. Me being Asian certainly didn't help. I remember being utterly devastated that so many people found me "dumb" working in restaurants despite the fact I had given up the opportunity to go to graduate school in philosophy. Academia wasn't really for me, neither was a 9-5 job, and retail seemed too boring. Being undiagnosed autistic, the years after college were a confusing time in my life. There are many aspects of restaurant work I enjoyed. It allowed me to feel a sense of social camaraderie that was previously absent in my life. However, the conditions of that camaraderie were dependent on making myself as small as possible, of never being too demanding, of being willing to say yes no matter what. This is a very common autistic experience, especially for those who are femme-presenting and are non-white. It taught me a lot about oppression, though. Now I hope to keep giving voice to all the exploitation I witnessed, not just towards me but toward hospitality workers as a whole during those years. Sort of an Orwellian Down and Out in Paris and London move except from a queer, race-conscience, disability-centered perspective.  

TV: If you had the perspective of the person you are now, would you have done anything differently? Or, what advice would you give someone who is in a similar situation? 

YC: A common word that comes up throughout my life is patience. I believe I am a patient person, but during that time in my life, I found myself becoming increasingly desperate, almost cornered, by my situation. I wish I knew then that other people's perception of me was none of my business. I wouldn't have internalized the belief in my incompetence and pushed myself until I was nothing but a brittle shard of pent-up rage and despair. Looking back, I still learned more about wine at Sepia than I did in a lot of other places, and I'm grateful for the access it afforded me.

To someone else in a similar situation - never forget your self-worth. Never let others define for you who you are and the limits of your ability. Always remember other people's perceptions of you are distractions. Stay focused on improving your craft, watch, learn, and when it's time, strike. Plotting and waiting can look the same from the outside, but from the inside, they're completely different.

TV: Why did you think it was important to write about the connection between the creation of the French AOC system and their colonization of Algeria? 

YC: I’ve always rebelled against the way certain time-conditioned belief systems are taken to be immutable truths. The AOC is one of those systems I think many people have put too much faith in without questioning its biases and flaws. Part of wine's appeal is the relationship it can have with people's subjective realities, our creativity. Therefore, what does it mean that its authority in the wine industry is inhibiting the creative growth of those who want to make wine outside of its model? Why do we let it control our relationship to wine and define what is or is not good? It's simply a construct. Does it still serve the interests of the wine industry, or is there a better way?

It also felt highly unjust to me that France used Algeria to produce all this wine when it benefited them, but then as soon as it felt the heat of competition, it created a whole system of laws to exclude it. The story between France's appellation system and Algeria is about power and how those in power will use words to shape reality and create laws based on that false reality. In this instance, it happened on a geo-political macro-level scale, but the same weaponization of words towards individuals can occur on a micro-level in social relationships. Words create perception, and reality is more than we want to admit perception. As a person of color, as someone who struggles with an invisible disability and is queer, it is really important to me to resist and undermine the forces of dominant narratives that continue to shape the reality of which I am a part. 

TV: What do you enjoy most about writing?

YC: It’s a socially acceptable form of info-dumping. Being autistic, the way I communicate is not the same as others. Writing is a way for me to navigate that difference and to overcome my fear that I’m a bad communicator because I express and learn things differently. 

TV: What’s the hardest part about writing?

YC: Overcoming my fear that I’m a bad communicator, haha. It can be challenging to understand what works and what doesn’t work. Often, I feel it’s a fight with myself. 

TV: How do you win this fight?

YC: In the beginning, I drank copious amounts of alcohol to escape the persistent self-doubt and fear of failure. Maybe that’s all procrastination is - the fear of one’s failure. So we avoid doing the work altogether to avoid that possibility. We can't fail if we never try. Now, I'm comfortable with my own words, so I prefer being sober when I write and rely on a daily routine to keep giving shape to my thoughts. Practice makes permanent!

TV: What’s the best thing you’ve read in the last 6 months.  

YC: Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World. 

TV: What did you like about it?

YC: I enjoyed it because it helped me appreciate how brief and beautiful is our time on earth. For much of my life, I was so uncomfortable in my own skin. I am perpetually fighting feelings of exhaustion, being overwhelmed by sensory stimuli, and a nagging thought that I’m not built to exist. The book helped me understand all the labor and time of not just living things but natural forces that went into creating our beautiful world - the miraculous transformations weathered by mountains and various soil types. It gave me an appreciation for the existence of inanimate life forms and how the breath of life isn’t as great of a division as I thought between the living and the non-living. 

TV: What do you drink while you write?

YC: Whiskey. Quick and easy :)