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What would you sacrifice for the perfect vintage? Can ancient pagan rituals and biodynamic winemaking create something truly extraordinary—or terrifying?
In this conversation from the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast with Natalie Maclean, award-winning author J.F. Penn discusses the inspiration for her folk horror novel Blood Vintage, set in the vineyards of Somerset, England.
We explore the dark side of viticulture, from poisonous plants and blood sacrifices to the hard realities of small-scale winemaking and the mysterious practices of biodynamic agriculture.
J.F. Penn is the award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horror, short stories, and travel memoir. Jo lives in Bath, England and enjoys a nice G&T.
- New Zealand wine memories. Pinot Noir tours in South Otago, including Mount Difficulty and Peregrine Vineyard, paired with wild venison and legendary Bluff oysters
- The birth of Blood Vintage. How a tour of Woodchester Valley vineyard, frost candles, and a note in the ancient Domesday Book sparked a dark story
- English wine’s climate change renaissance. How warming temperatures are making England’s sparkling wines competitive with Champagne.
- Inside biodynamic winemaking, inspired by a visit to Limeburn Hill Vineyard, Chew Magna, Somerset. From burying cow horns to dynamisation rituals and creating a self-contained ecosystem
- The dangers and romance of viticulture, and for more on this, check out the interview with Caro Feely, The Taste of Place.
- Folk horror and the ‘terroir’ of terror. Exploring the question at the heart of the book: What would you sacrifice to create (or taste) the perfect vintage?
You can find Blood Vintage on all platforms in all formats now.
This discussion was first broadcast across two episodes on Unreserved Wine Talk with Natalie Maclean in Oct 2024 [Blending biodynamics and suspense; Wine and folklore]. You can also watch the full interview on video.
Transcript of the interview
Natalie: Jo (J.F.) Penn is an award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of horror, thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, and travel memoir, as well as short stories. She’s also an award-winning podcaster. Her podcast is amazing, by the way—The Creative Penn. I listen to it every week, and you should too, if you have any interest in books or reading.
She has a Master’s in Theology from the University of Oxford, and her latest novel is called Blood Vintage. It’s a folk horror story set in an English vineyard. I just finished reading it and it’s wonderful, Jo.
You are joining us now from your home in Bath, which is nestled in the beautiful countryside of Somerset, England, about a hundred miles west of London. Welcome, Jo. I’m so glad you’re here with us.
Jo: Oh, I’m so excited, Natalie. An excuse to drink wine with a friend!
New Zealand Wine Experiences
Natalie: Before we dive into your book, tell us about the Pinot Noir tours and festivals in the South Otago region that you attended while you were living in New Zealand.
Jo: I lived in New Zealand for six years, from 2000 to 2006. It was one of those mid-twenties “go backpacking, fall in love, stay, get married, get divorced, get remarried” stories. You understand?
Natalie: Oh wow, you were busy!
Jo: Yes, exactly. But I did a Pinot Noir tour in South Otago, and it is quite a famous region for the Pinot Noir grape. I wanted to tell you about two particular vineyards. One is called Mount Difficulty, which is a wonderful name in that region because the mountains—the Remarkables—are really high and it’s a pretty hardcore walking region, skiing region in the winter. And the other one is called Peregrine Vineyard.
It’s a beautiful region for the nature, but Peregrine have created this incredible architecture. The roof of the winery is shaped like the wings of a peregrine falcon, and I particularly remember that tour. For people who don’t know, it’s out of Queenstown in the very southeast of New Zealand. So it’s really far south. Gets very cold in the winter, but highly recommended.
And you are the best at pairing, but I was going to pair it with New Zealand wild venison, which is something you get a lot of around there. Have you tasted the New Zealand Pinots?
Natalie: Oh, I love them. New Zealand is better known for Sauvignon Blanc, but I think the Pinot Noirs are even more spectacular. They’ve got this nervy, edgy acidity that I love. It’s almost like the wine vibrates in your glass, and it’s so food-friendly because acidity is to wine what salt is to food. It brings forward flavor. Gorgeous wines, absolutely.
Jo: Since you mentioned the Sauvignon Blanc, I also wanted to recommend a very specific New Zealand oyster as a pairing with that, which is the Bluff oyster. And I think you like oysters, right?
Natalie: I write about them, yeah. It’s the one thing I can’t get past—it’s a texture thing. But anyway.
Jo: Okay, for people who love oysters who are listening, I love oysters. I’ve eaten oysters all over the world, and the Bluff oyster in New Zealand has a very short winter season, but it is incredible to me. It is the best, and I have a vivid memory of drinking a Sauvignon Blanc with a Bluff oyster—maybe a whole dozen oysters—on Lake Wakatipu in the winter sun. So I highly recommend that pairing as well, and it’s very hard to get them anywhere else in the world.
Natalie: Oh wow. I’ll have to make a note of that. My husband likes oysters, so we’ll do that. I love that. Great evocative image there that carries through with your book.
Introducing Blood Vintage
Natalie: So let’s set the stage for your book, Blood Vintage. You did a serious amount of research into biodynamic winemaking and winemaking generally. Before we talk about that, maybe share the overview of the book story with us, please.
Jo: This is the back of the book. Blood Vintage is a special edition, so I shall read it for you:
The perfect vintage requires the darkest sacrifice.
In the rolling hills of Somerset, England, an ancient evil ripens alongside the grapes of Standing Stones Cellars. Rebecca Langford never expected her architectural career to lead to the secluded rural village of Windbridge Hollow. But after a violent clash with eco-activists, she flees the chaos of London, desperate for a new start.
She seeks refuge at Standing Stone Cellars, a vineyard renowned for its award-winning wines and mysterious history, nestled in the shadow of ancient oaks and standing stones that have watched over the land for millennia.
But this vineyard is no sanctuary. From the primal fires of Beltane to the chilling shadow of Samhain, Rebecca finds herself ensnared in an ancient cycle of sacrifice and rebirth. The disappearance of her fellow workers, amidst evidence of blood rites, forces her to confront a horrifying truth: Standing Stone’s exceptional vintage is nourished by more than just sunlight and soil.
As the veil between worlds grows thin, Rebecca must make an impossible choice: embrace the dark legacy of the vineyard and secure her place amongst its guardians, or risk becoming the next offering to the insatiable horned god that demands his due.
Blood Vintage is an atmospheric descent into folk horror where the line between sacred and profane blurs with each sip of wine. Lose yourself in a world where pagan ritual and modern ambitions collide, and discover the terrible price of belonging in a place where the very earth demands blood.”
Natalie: Ooh, I love that. That is such a great description that really captures it—so atmospheric, so dark and brooding, and yet, bonus for us who love wine, wine is running right through it, woven into it.
Wine Pairings for the Book
Natalie: Before we dive into that, I’m itching to get there. You selected a wine to pair with your book, as have I. So let’s hear about yours first. What is it?
Jo: Yes, the blood vintage itself would be the Samhain wine from Limeburn Hill Vineyard. We’re going to come back to that, but that’s really hard to get. So I’ve gone with the Pinot Rosé from Woodchester Valley, which is where the original idea came from. I love a rosé, and we’ll obviously talk about where this has come from. I have my glass ready. This has been chilled. Woodchester Valley, Pinot Rosé—and I read about it, it’s 100% Pinot Précoce, the early Pinot Noir.
Natalie: Oh, lovely. I love a rosé. I’ve chosen a more brooding, darker wine for you and your book. This is from Italy because we just don’t get many English wines here in Canada. But this one, the label has a woman and her hair is in flames because fire is a metaphor, but also the sun. Stars are all around her.
It comes from the Donna Fugata winery in Italy, which means “fugitive woman” or “woman on the run,” which I think Rebecca is a little bit—from her architectural career and she’s escaping out to the countryside with the vineyards. Anyway, lots of metaphors, but I love the labels on this.
So let’s have a sip to get going here. Cheers!
Jo: Oh, you have a goblet there!
Natalie: Yes, my special glass. I bought this 20 years ago. I was in Prague with a friend of mine. It was winter, and I saw these glasses. I drank a lot more red wine at the time, and I was like, this is perfect, I love these. And this is one of those times where, you know, I’m backpacking—do I really want to take glass anywhere? But we had such a lovely trip, and these memories of drinking together are important. So that’s the story of the glass. I know it’s not perfect for rosé, we’re not going to get technical here.
Natalie: But for those who want to know, an ideal glass is clear and has a big enough bowl so that you can swirl it. But I love the goblet. Very atmospheric, very apt. Very blood vintage!
Jo: Very gothic. That’s lovely.
Natalie: Okay, tell us what drew you to this story in the first place. Where were you? Oh wait, I haven’t had a sip yet. Okay, yes.
Jo: Oh, it’s really tasty. It’s very strawberry. You are much better at these tasting notes than I am, but I can definitely taste strawberries.
Natalie: Strawberries, absolutely. That is the essence of a good, fresh rosé. It makes your mouth water. It’s like fresh berries, sunshine, and the opposite of the mood of your book. Although your book is not a downer, it’s just very gripping and thrilling.
The Origin Story at Woodchester Valley
Natalie: So tell us more about where this idea came to you.
Jo: Yes, Woodchester Valley is a small vineyard. Most of the vineyards in England are smaller, although they’re getting bought up as many of these things do. But this is a small one, and the Cotswolds is in the southwest of England. It’s an area of outstanding natural beauty, which is a distinction of certain areas, and you would absolutely recognize it. It’s the kind of chocolate-box England with the green rolling hills—lots of green because it does rain—but also sunnier. There are lots of stone buildings, cows wandering around. It’s pastoral, but also enough hills.
I went to Woodchester Valley with my dad and my stepmom. My husband drove, so my dad and my stepmom and I drank, and we went to the vineyard. It was July, so the grapes were tiny little green bits—they weren’t full yet. Excuse my language, which is not perfect.
Natalie: That’s okay. You’re a fiction writer, not a wine writer. So that’s all good.
Jo: I describe it better in writing than in spoken words. But anyway, we went there for a wine tasting. And one of the first things they said was this area of vines was south-facing and it was beautiful. And they told us about the frost candles—the bougies, I think they’re called—where in the winter, they get these beeswax candles that are very good for the environment. They put them in amongst the vines to stop the frost and to stop them killing the bud break, I think it’s called.
And I was like, oh my goodness. In my mind I could see the frost candles and I had some story going off in my brain. So that was one little thing.
And then we walked past the crushing equipment and the bottling thing where they do the pétillant naturel, I think it is, and they turn the bottles. And I was like, oh, that could explode.
Jo: And then they told us about this ancient part of the vineyard that they own where we couldn’t visit. And I was like, ooh, I’ve got to know about that.
And it turns out—this is owned by a female vineyard owner, Fiona—she found a mention of this area in the Domesday Book. If you don’t know, it’s an 11th-century document that was essentially a tax record so they could tax people on land. And there’s a vineyard in this area from the 11th century. And so I was like, oh my goodness. And then of course, the Romans brought vines to this area. So in my mind I was like, there has to be some ancient ritual in this place. That’s where it came from.
Natalie: Oh, that’s marvelous. And you were already painting a picture with all those visuals and the mystery, the history, everything.
The Rise of English Wines
Natalie: So say a little bit more before we continue about the rise of English wines. Of course, climate change means a lot of marginal wine-growing regions are getting warmer and therefore it’s easier to ripen grapes. As I said, we rarely get them here in Canada yet. Hopefully we will in the future. But how large is the industry? What’s going on?
Jo: Yeah, what’s going on? Basically, as you mentioned, climate change. They told us this in the Woodchester tour—that the climate here now in the south of England is the same as the Champagne-growing region in France. So it’s English sparkling wines that are winning the awards, and in fact, in blind tastings, they’re often beating out some of those French sparklings.
And what’s also interesting is French vineyards are buying up land and vineyards here in England because as climate change happens, they’re looking for new vineyards.
But I did look up the numbers. It’s 8 to 10 million bottles out of the UK and around 800 tiny vineyards. And I looked up Canada, so you are 60 to 70 million bottles. So we are like a sixth of the Canadian output, but obviously you’ve got a much, much bigger country.
Natalie: We do, yes.
Jo: But compared to New Zealand, obviously New Zealand is a tiny country and has a huge wine industry, and it’s a lot bigger than both Canada and England. So I’m hoping that over time, one of the benefits of climate change might mean more English wine. But now if you go to English pubs, wine bars, you can buy English wine, it’s in the supermarkets. So I hope that you can get some over there.
Natalie: That’d be great. And I’ve heard they’re even planting vineyards in Scotland these days.
Jo: Yes, there’s one, a biodynamic vineyard in Wales as well, near where I am.
Jo: But just to come back to the Romans, because I think this is really interesting for people and why the spirit of the land is so important here—the Romans brought vines here between 43 AD and 400 AD, 1,600-2,000 years ago. And in fact, where I live in Bath, it used to be called Aquae Sulis. We have a 2,000-year-old Roman bath in the center of my city. So the land where I stand and where these vines are and where the book is set have this ancient history that’s now coming back to life.
Natalie: Yeah. All the ancient relics being discovered and buried in some of these vineyards and so on.
The Performance of The Bacchae
Natalie: So back to your story at Woodchester Valley. They mentioned you couldn’t go in that part of the vineyard, which of course immediately sparked curiosity and probably the desire to go in that vineyard. You said it also reminded you of a performance of The Bacchae. Tell us about that. What’s the connection?
Jo: Yeah, so that night—and of course my dad and me and my stepmom, we drank a few of the wines, we tasted in a proper way and no spitting—that night I remembered, it’s funny how these memories come back to you. I remembered a performance of The Bacchae, which is an ancient Greek tragedy, again, many thousands of years old. And in it, Bacchus—Greek god of wine and fertility and all these kind of wonderful things—and in it, the worshipers of Bacchus in a ritual, they go mad essentially, and they rip apart a man instead of a deer.
And this kind of gave me another thought about these sort of pagan rituals that go on around wine. And again, in our Western society, we have Christianity and Judaism, both of which use wine in religious ritual. So using wine in religious ritual as a sacrament is normal for most people. But in terms of taking it further into where you are on a different plane of consciousness, I just thought this was super interesting.
Also, the fertility stuff and the vines and wild nature. I love wild nature. I think it’s fascinating. You’ve been in these vineyards all over the place, and it’s the wild sections that I find really interesting because they might be all manicured in places, and then there’s these kind of bits that are fascinating. And it’s a perfect symbol.
Natalie: For the balance in life between restraint and thinking, and the wildness, the fierceness of nature and the body—the mind versus the body. All the metaphors are working for you in this one. That’s fantastic. And where were you watching that play? It was back when you were a high school student, right?
Jo: Yes. And I think that’s why it’s funny when these memories emerge, and there’s a kind of human brain thing, isn’t it? You think about something and it sparks something else. Yeah, I studied Greek, ancient Greek and Latin and classical civilization when I was 14 to 16. And then I went on and did theology, and reading ancient Greek was very useful.
But we went to see this performance at an actual replica of a Roman amphitheater, and it was performed in ancient Greek. And I still remember it very vividly. It was at another school, and it’s one of those occasions where you think if I was watching it now, I’d be very cynical and I’d be like, that’s a bit crap, like school kids doing a performance. But in my mind and in my memory, it was so powerful to see what happened in this ceremony. And so it really stuck in my mind.
The Dangers of Winemaking
Jo: And I have another podcast called Books and Travel, and I interviewed a vintner, Caro from Chateau Feely in France, and she was telling me about all the different ways that you can get injured and die in a vineyard. And that kind of came into my head as well, that all these things mush together when you are a writer and they pop out at different times and one thing sparks another.
Natalie: And wine itself is all about the smell, and smell is tied to memory. It’s going to touch off like a spark point, bringing you right back to a place or a time. It’s very powerful.
Okay, you just said she was talking about all the ways to die, so wine lovers also have grim imaginations, especially if we’ve got a bad bottle or something. But tell us about all the ways you discussed with Carly about the ways you could die in a vineyard, so we know what to watch out for on our next trip to a winery.
Jo: I think she was talking about how people—it was the idea of blood. You can get cut on quite a lot of these equipment, pruning things. And the machines that go through the vineyard, if you use them, and the shot—the glass. Even the glass and shattering of glass, the bottles. Sparkling wine can explode in the cellar. And in fact, that was one of my rewrites—the exploding of the wine that gets turned in the riddling rack, I think it’s called, isn’t it?
Natalie: Yeah, it is.
Jo: Which is cool. And then in those wine barrel rooms, one of those could slip, and some of those are super heavy barrels. You could definitely get crushed under one.
Natalie: And people have been known to fall into vats and not drown, but actually asphyxiate because it’s all CO2, and it’s quite deadly to be around a winery. I never thought about it that way, but you’re right. And the bottles, they can explode because they’re under pressure. The bubbles create the pressure. It’s 90 pounds per square inch—the equal of city bus tires—and it’s going under a second fermentation, adding more and more pressure under that glass. So if that’s not solid, you get exploding bottles for sure.
Jo: Yeah. And it’s very interesting because obviously I’m an author and I sit at my desk and I don’t have much that can kill me in my day job. But I just love researching all this. And I think one of the things that really came home to me in doing this research and going to vineyards was it’s such hard work. It’s seriously hard work. There’s this romance about, “Oh, when I get rich I’ll just have a vineyard or whatever.” And it’s so much work. And then also so much investment in all the equipment and all the things you need. And I think that really impressed upon me how difficult it was, but also how tired these people must be during the harvest time and all that. And yes, be careful out there in your vineyard.
Natalie: Absolutely. And we share a personal trainer, so this is just bringing to mind the hard physical work of a vineyard. I always thought you could design a workout program around wine, so you’d have abs of stainless steel.
Jo: I’ve got a bit of a workout here on my arm. That’s biceps, right?
Natalie: Thanks, Dan!
Discovering Limeburn Hill Biodynamic Vineyard
Natalie: But so you live an hour’s drive away from one of England’s few biodynamic vineyards. Tell us about that.
Jo: So this is really special. Limeburn Hill Vineyard, biodynamic, and it is certified. And I know you’ve had someone on the show to talk about biodynamics quite recently. In fact, I was listening to that earlier.
But essentially this is in the Chew Magna area near me. It’s again limestone. The Romans were working in that area. So again, very ancient land. It has 3,000 vines, hand-planted. It’s run by a couple, Robin Snowden and Georgina Harvey, and I went and spent a day there. I did a course on biodynamic wine growing, and it was full of wine people. And then I was like, “I’m writing a novel.” And Robin was very patient with me, especially when I said, “Oh, where do you bury the bones?” He was like, “Okay, I’ll show you.”
The Wines Named After Celtic Festivals
Jo: But I think what’s—first of all, their wines are pétillant naturel, I think that’s it. It’s a lightly fizzy wine, fermented in the bottle. And their wines, they have three wines named after those festivals: Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain. So these are Celtic festivals. And so I saw, and one’s a white, one’s an orange rosé, and one is the red—the Samhain, the winter wine, which I think is Pinot Noir.
And so I went there and I saw these wines and that gave me ideas. But then also they explained what biodynamics is and the Rudolf Steiner method of really just the holistic view of the vineyard as a contained ecosystem. And they were taking this very seriously.
So they had wild bees because it’s all the natural yeast in the area. There’s no extra stuff they do. They have these little sheep that run around eating things—lamb mowers. Wildflowers. And I was just super impressed by, again, how much work this is, but also the ecosystem of the land. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful, a wonderful day. And again, the sort of romantic idea, but he demonstrated the biodynamization, they call it, which is a stirring thing where they stir for a minute in one direction and then the other direction. And he had the books out with all the sun and the moon and the planting and the energies that go into it. And this was all just fascinating to me.
That is Limeburn Hill Vineyard, and they do tours and courses and things. Again, their wine is very hard to get. It’s served at a lot of independent restaurants, cafés, and things like that. But they’re fascinating.
And I should say there was no sacrifice.
Natalie: Yeah, I was going to say—
Jo: No blood sacrifice, no “You can’t go into that part of the vineyard, that’s where our former tasting-room staff members are buried.”
Natalie: Right!
Jo: But they did honor the land. They had an area which was a kind of sacred area, a sacred grove. And obviously there is the place where they bury the horns, and there are some preparations with skulls and things. So there’s just some weird stuff going on in biodynamics. But fascinating.
Understanding Biodynamic Preparations
Natalie: Yeah, absolutely. So just say a little bit more, if you remember it from your course—they bury the bull’s horns and the skulls and put things in them?
Jo: Yes. So I do remember, Preparation 500 is the cow horn. So each of these preparations are made from animal parts—stomachs, bladders, intestines, skulls. And then you fill them with manure or certain plants like yarrow, chamomile, different things. And that should be growing on your land as well. So it’s all a contained ecosystem.
And then you basically bury the horns in the winter, or the skulls you put in a wet place, like under some running water. And then after a certain amount of time, it gives you some stuff like compost, and then you put that in the dynamization and you turn it into a tea, and then you spray it on either the roots or the leaves or whatever you need.
They also use quartz. And if anyone listening is like, “Oh, she’s butchering this,” what’s so fascinating is you might think, oh, that is just weird, strange stuff. But when you think about the vineyard as an ecosystem and the real terroir, the sense of place that they’re trying to put into every single drop of the wine, why would you bring in something from the outside? And then the natural way of making these sprays and these treatments.
And Robin was saying very much that you go out and you get to know the vine, and you look at it and you’re like, okay, this needs some more moisture, or this needs some more whatever. And then you use the preparation that will go with what the land needs. And it can take a long time to get the land back up to what it should be.
In fact, he said there were no worms in the soil when they started.
Natalie: Wow, so it’s dead, the vineyard—
Jo: The microbial life was just dead.
Natalie: Yeah.
Jo: Exactly. And it took them several years, although I think he said it was quicker than expected, until the earth is just chock-full of worms. It’s like the vines had to go to rehab and get off their drugs—their fungicides and pesticides.
Natalie: Had to detox. Yes, that’s the thing.
Jo: And they planted that vineyard, so I guess they got the vines and put them there. But I just thought that was fascinating because the idea of the land itself is what I’m so fascinated with—how we feed the land to make the land then feed us. And this is something that just really interests me.
Tasting Biodynamic Wines
Natalie: Absolutely. And for whatever you believe with the astrological signs and some of the aspects of biodynamics, I think it can’t be faulted overall because it means that those who engage in those practices really have to pay attention, as you say, to the land. They really have to look at each vine almost individually and say, what does this need? And the more closely you pay attention to vines and winemaking, the better your wine will be, as opposed to mass harvests and mass spraying. Some vineyards that are not even organic, which is a step down from biodynamics, are sprayed 25 times or more over the course of just one vintage. I’m all for biodynamics.
Jo: I did want to ask you on this because I did taste—I did some tasting, I was driving, so I did spit—and it was very unusual. It was a very unusual wine. And of course every single bottle is different, not just every vintage is different. And given you are a better taster than me, how would you describe the difference between a biodynamic-tasting wine and the wine I’ve got here, the Woodchester, which is not?
Natalie: So you have regular wines, and then you have organic, you have biodynamic. Everything that organic wines are, biodynamic must be, plus there’s not going to be as many sulfites—preservatives—in organic or biodynamic as regular wines. But I think we exaggerate just how sensitive we might be. It’s only about 5% of the population that are really sensitive to sulfites, and a glass of orange juice on average has more sulfites than a whole bottle of wine.
So one major difference will be the sulfite content. But apart from that, I think in a blind tasting, I’m not sure that I could say that’s a biodynamic and that’s not—unless I was comparing a really mass-commercial wine that’s made like breakfast cereal. But then they’re going to be at two very different price points, and you’d have to control for all the factors. You’d have to have the same grape, the same region, and compare this vineyard wine biodynamic to that one that is not. But I doubt that I could really differentiate them, other than I would hope the biodynamic—they can be funky and a little weird.
Jo: Yes, funky is a great word.
Natalie: Sometimes. And then you start to veer into another category that’s not defined at all, at least legally—natural and raw wines, which are not the same, just like all stallions are horses, but not all horses are stallions. I can pick out sometimes more obviously what is a natural wine because it will have no, zero preservatives, and sometimes they can get quite funky.
Jo: Yeah. I do remember it being interesting or funky, like you say. I think you have to be very open to new things to try. It’s not, “Oh, here’s my favorite rosé,” or “Here’s my bottle of Prosecco on a Saturday night” or whatever. That’s not that kind of wine.
Recommended Reading on Biodynamics
Jo: But I did also want to mention a book called Voodoo Vintners by Katherine Cole, which is about Oregon’s biodynamic vineyards. And I used that heavily in my research, and again, fascinating. And the Demeter USA is the certification board. It’s incredible how high the standard is. There’s a lot of places using biodynamics, but they’re not certified because it’s such a high standard. I just encourage people, because again, I’m not a taster like you, a super taster, but to try these different wines. It is very interesting and supports the vineyard, which again, it is very hard to have a business as a small vineyard.
Natalie: I think it is. They’re generally small family farms, and there’s no economy of scale. There’s a few big conglomerates in each country. But the other thing is that they say on average, organic viticulture costs you 15% more, and then biodynamic another 15% on top of that because you can’t resort to pesticides, fungicides, and insecticides. Yeah, it is definitely worth seeking them out.
Wine Tourism Opportunities
Jo: Also, I was going to say on this, both these vineyards—so Limeburn Hill does courses, they do weekends, they do hen dos and stuff like that, but Woodchester has accommodation as well, so you can stay there actually in the vineyard. And so I think that’s really nice, and I enjoy that. I can spend more money in a vineyard by doing activities. So I think that’s actually something to consider. It’s not just—you don’t have to just go and do a tasting. You can actually do tours or stay places. So yeah, I enjoy that.
Natalie: Absolutely. Wine travel is just burgeoning because, as you say, you can taste the wine, but often there’ll be a restaurant attached to the winery or restaurants locally that’ll do wine and food pairings for you. There’s all sorts of things to do from spas to ballooning to biking to things for the kids—not the wine, but—
Jo: No, start your kids’ tolerance early.
Natalie: I did not mean that seriously!
What Surprised You Most in Your Research?
Natalie: Okay, so that’s really interesting. So what was the most surprising thing that you learned about biodynamics or winemaking or wine itself while you were writing the book?
Jo: Again, I think I’ll come back to how hard people are working. And how badly wrong it can go. I think when I wrote the scene about the frost in the vineyard, I really understood as I was researching that this can destroy a huge proportion of a crop. That there are things that can go horribly wrong that can just destroy the whole thing.
And I know that can happen with other farmers, but often other farmers have other crops going on, and these vineyards, they really only have the one. And so it was incredible to me how on a knife edge and how you have to look after them. Or it might be a swarm of insects, or it might be something—a flood. There’s so many things.
So yeah, that was interesting to me. And also, again, how much variability. I think as someone who enjoys wine but has perhaps just taken it for granted—I can just go and get a bottle of rosé or whatever—and then you see the variability between the areas. So again, these vineyards are about an hour and a half apart in a car. So in the big scheme of things, they’re not that far away, but they’re really very different. So again, that idea of terroir really came home to me.
But I certainly am taking viticulture a lot more seriously now than I did before. And I hope in the book, it’s not a book for viticulture people, it’s the setting. But I do care very much about my research.
Natalie: No, you do it so well. But you are right. People have that dreamy vision of owning a vineyard, but really it’s fancied-up farming. It’s hard work, calloused hands and sunburnt and all the rest of it. It’s not just what is portrayed on wine labels and wine advertising. It really is grassroots hard work.
The Social Aspect of Wine
Jo: Yeah. The passion of it is incredible, but also it makes you think a lot more about what wine is. And I know you talk about this, that there’s a lot of myths and there’s a lot of bad stuff that goes on and a lot of amazing stuff. But at the end of the day, it’s like having a glass of wine with a friend or as part of a group or your family. My family are drinkers, so wine plays a big part. And in fact, Woodchester is just down the road, so we do get wine from there. And that’s what it’s about. It’s about the times we have with wine for most of us whose job it isn’t. But I think that’s what it comes down to really.
Natalie: Absolutely. It’s the drink of conversation. It’s meant to be consumed slowly. It’s why we don’t serve wine in shooter glasses and just knock it back. Although sometimes maybe you feel in the mood for that, but really it is about communion and joining people together over conversation.
Exploring the Concept of Terroir
Natalie: You’ve mentioned terroir a few times, and in the version that I had, I counted 17 mentions. So what does terroir mean to you? You’ve said sense of place—maybe you can expand on that.
Jo: It’s a unique sense of place based on the geography, but also what’s under the earth. So I learned a lot about the limestone that this area is on and how that affects the soil. I didn’t know anything about soil before this. The weather—so the rain, what happens with the sun, what direction the slopes are on. You don’t buy a piece of land without considering where you are planting the grapes and what you feed the soil, obviously.
And I loved it—Limeburn, they just let the wildflowers grow. And by the third season of wildflowers, they had some ridiculous number, like 40 different types of wildflowers growing in amongst the vines that these little sheep were going around and eating and then pooing, and that was the whole thing.
And you say in your book, Wine Witch on Fire—your wonderful memoir—that terroir is like a writer’s voice. And I love that as a metaphor because it’s distinctive, it’s personal. If you know a writer and you get to know their voice, then it’s, yeah, this book, Blood Vintage, it’s a J.F. Penn book. And if you like it, you’ll like my other books because that’s my voice. And terroir, it’s just fascinating to me. And super tasters like yourself can tell where a wine is from and maybe even what fields and what particular types of grapes, and that’s just incredible.
Terroir and Terror
Jo: But also terroir sounds a bit like terror. And I did look this up. They are not from the same etymology. It’s terra as in earth for terroir, and for terror, it’s from terrere, which is “frightened.” But they sound pretty similar.
Natalie: Yes. And you’ve been able to weave them in so nicely together in the book. I always thought that because we talk about sometimes in the wine world, “terroirists,” which always sounds like “terrorists.” What are these people doing, making deadly Cabernet or whatever? There’s no real hard and fast definition, but they often are deep into the land and they make tiny bits of wine or amounts of wine. Sometimes we call them “garagistes,” which started in France because they have their winemaking facilities in their garage because their amounts were so small. So it’s more sort of a wine warrior status—I am really a purist when it comes to terroir. Nothing should interfere with it. There should be no intervention, although you have to get the grapes to ferment, so there has to be a little bit done.
Jo: That’s quite funny because I did say to Robin at Limeburn Hill, “So where do you get all your cow horns? Because I don’t see any cows.” And he did say, “We do have to order those from the biodynamic store.” But everything else, they had the patches of yarrow growing and chamomile and all the different herbs and all the different plants were all growing there. And so they tried very much to keep everything within the ecosystem. And then even they do make a spirit from the grapes, the final press or something like that, the skins. So they use everything they can. It’s a real commitment to this thing.
The Sensual Nature of Wine Writing
Natalie: It absolutely is. Again, I’ve said this a few times, but your writing is so sensual. You could easily be a wine writer, and beyond the whole string of grapes and descriptors, it’s very evocative. How did you really dig down to get all of that? Or is it just part of your toolkit? You’re such a sensual, visual writer.
Jo: I do take a lot of photos, so I have a lot of photos from those vineyards. But I also do a lot of visual research online. And also I mine sites like yours for words to describe stuff, because I have not been in a vineyard at dawn when the frost comes. And I do feel like that scene, I spent a lot of time on that scene because I was like, this is so important.
And also I do think there is a magic, and Rebecca, the main character, has just arrived from London where she doesn’t even see the stars because of the lights of the big city. And she’s there, it’s the middle of the night, they’ve rung a bell like “We have to save the buds.” So they’re putting out these candles and she’s looking up and there’s the stars. And I was like, I have to capture this. And so I spent a lot of time—there’s a lot of images online of vineyards with frost candles, and they did show me some at Limeburn Hill.
And so I think for me it’s very much about research and then it’s about point of view and taking it further. But at the end of the day, it is fiction. And of course some people were like, “It is not romantic at all to put out the frost candles because everyone’s crazy and it has to be done quickly and it’s scary.” And I do romanticize it. But I do think the sensuality is, as you say, the sensory detail of the writing in a vineyard in particular is so important because people like yourself as well—you’re taste people, you’re smell people, you’re sight people. And so that’s, I guess, what I’m trying to write.
Natalie: Absolutely, and you did.
And back to those candles, some other wineries use windmills, but just raising the temperature even one to two degrees can save vines when it’s that marginal and the frost has come. So it is very much like that. But the windmill wouldn’t have been as evocative.
Jo: No, that’s true. Yeah, that’s mechanical and machine-like.
Natalie: But yeah, the bougies, I can imagine the smoke and everything else. It reminds me of that movie, A Walk in the Clouds with Keanu Reeves. I’m probably mucking that up as well, but they were talking about the vineyard catching on fire.
Jo: I do have some fire in the book!
Natalie: Yes, you do. Absolutely. Fire’s a good metaphor too in the book.
Inspiration from Drops of God
Natalie: And another inspiration was the television show Drops of God, which is based on a book of the same name. Is that a show or a book that you would suggest we read as wine lovers?
Jo: Oh, you have to watch it. Maybe if you are a wine person it’s not as good, but as a non-wine person, I was like, it was amazing. So basically also, it’s French-Japanese, so it’s partly in French, partly in Japanese.
And essentially this wine critic—someone like yourself who’s been writing about wine for a long time—has a huge wine cellar and has collected wine their whole life. And it’s very prestigious and it’s worth millions, this wine cellar. And there are two people, so there’s his daughter and then his student, his kind of apprentice. And they have to do a competition.
So there are five bottles and they’re allowed one taste, and then they can come back a week later and have one more taste, and then they write the name of the wine, the year, the vintage, all that. And then whoever wins three out of five wins the whole collection.
But each week they’re flying around the world, looking at all the vineyards, trying to work out—they’re tasting the soil, they’re examining all the crops to try and work out what the hell this wine is. And of course, they’re all really obscure, and then they have to get the year as well. So it’s a fascinating sort of wine mystery.
But at its heart it’s also about family and about culture shock and about just those things that wine can smooth over. So the Japanese and the French vineyards is really interesting. So yeah, Drops of God. It is fantastic. Absolutely recommend it.
Natalie: I haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll have to put that on my playlist. It’s beautiful as well.
Jo: It’s Apple TV, so it is beautiful.
Natalie: Excellent. Oh yeah, they’re always shot beautifully.
Understanding Folk Horror
Natalie: And another inspiration, of course, is folklore itself, because I wasn’t familiar with folk horror. Maybe you can tell us a bit more of the folklore aspects of the book.
Jo: Yeah, so folklore is more the traditional beliefs and rituals and little superstitious things that happen around a certain area. So again, it’s all terroir-based and it’s rooted in the community. It’s rooted in the physical location.
So for example, here in the Southwest and in fact in England, we have May Day bank holiday, which is the 1st of May, which is a Beltane fertility festival. And children dance around maypoles with ribbons. And maypoles are just these very large phallic symbols, let’s say, where beautiful young ladies are meant to dance around them with ribbons—obviously fertility symbols. There’s a lot of bonfires. People jump over bonfires.
And then we have Morris dancing, which is a sort of folk dancing where people dress up. And I put this dark Morris dancing troupe into my book where they wear crow feathers and black hats, and they wear slashed black makeup. And sometimes they’re hitting—they hit sticks together. Sometimes blackthorn logs, which have spiritual meanings, or sometimes Brussels sprouts.
Natalie: The vegetable?
Jo: Yes, the vegetable! They hit together sticks full of Brussels sprouts and they fall around. It’s very weird to do with the vegetable. Yes, it’s very odd. And every single Morris dancing area has different rituals and different things.
Ancient Symbols in Modern Britain
Jo: We also have the Green Man, which is a face of, again, a fertility god covered in vine leaves or other leaves, oak leaves. And it’s in a lot of our cathedrals, so thousand-year-old medieval cathedrals have the Green Man in Christian places—the fertility symbols.
And then the horned god, the Wild Hunt, because we have a lot of stag hunting back in the olden times here. So I think it’s really interesting.
But I was looking up where you live in Ottawa, right? So one of your folklore stories is about the Wendigo, the spirit of cannibalism. Did you know about that?
Natalie: No! My God, I hope my neighbors aren’t practicing that, but it’s interesting.
Jo: Yeah, it’s very interesting. The Wendigo from the First Nations people—it often comes from the older indigenous peoples. There’s also the Loup-garou, the French-Canadian werewolf, which is also in your area.
So if people are interested, these stories, they’re so ancient and they emerge in modern culture. So even that Limeburn Hill names their wines after pagan festivals that are still celebrated by neo-pagans or just reflected. Samhain is the 31st of October, it’s Halloween, so the veil is thin. It’s the time for winter to come in. The dead are honored. This happens in every culture. It’s just they’re called different things. But yeah, folklore is fascinating. And because it’s so specific to place, again, I wanted to bring that in and again, the terroir.
Natalie: Yeah, absolutely. And of course you live in Bath, which is where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, so your city has a horror pedigree. So what is folk horror? Because I think yours was the first horror book I read, and I think of slasher movies like Friday the 13th, very gory. But what is folk horror?
Defining Folk Horror
Jo: Oh, I’m thrilled that you read it because a lot of people say, “I don’t read horror, so I’m not going to read that.” It’s like people saying, “I don’t like Chardonnay, so I’m not going to drink that wine.”
Natalie: Open your minds, people!
Jo: Not all Chardonnays are alike.
Natalie: Yes!
Jo: But yeah. Yes. But it’s the idea of folk horror. So again, we mentioned folklore, and then horror is so wide, it’s a very wide genre. So I’m more of a supernatural horror type of person. It’s a lot more about suspense and slow burn kind of feeling. You are in this really quite eerie situation. And is that a blood sacrifice, or is that something normal in this area? That kind of thing. It’s this feeling out of place. It’s an outsider coming into an isolated community feeling, “I don’t know if this is right or not”—the pagan festivals, the wine, all of that.
But to me, the horror that I also bring to it, and this is an interesting question: Is it worth giving a human life? So is it worth sacrificing a human life to the land? The human life is so short and this land lives so much longer than us and produces something so wonderful. So the blood vintage is so wonderful. Is it worth the sacrifice to make art? Basically.
And this comes up across human history—is it worth sacrifice to make art? And this is what I come back to in horror. And perhaps the real horror is sometimes we might say yes.
Natalie: If it’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, the famous Pinot Noir from Burgundy, I’ll kill anybody to get it!
So I love that. But we also as artists, writers, whatever, give up a lot of our lives to create what we do. We’re perhaps not out there as much as other people and so on. So there is a little small death, sacrifice going on with if you want to create anything decent. But yeah, no, that’s a great question. I’ll be thinking about that over the weekend: Is it worth it?
The Heart of the Story
Jo: Well, I think that to me, the real horror and the question at the heart of the book is: What will she choose? Because you’re basically offered being part of this community. She doesn’t have a community, she doesn’t have a family, and she’s offered a part of this wonderful vineyard with these amazing things going on. And a lot of it is amazing, right? It is just wonderful. And then it’s what will I give to be part of this? And what will I give to make this wine? Or what will I give to drink this wine?
Like you said, sometimes this feeling—this isn’t wine, but I went to see the Queen’s diamonds in Buckingham Palace years ago, and I never—I’ve got a little diamond on my ring, but I never understood why people did what they did for diamonds, never understood it. And then I went to Buckingham Palace and I stood in front of one of her collections of diamonds and I was like, “Oh my goodness, I want that. I would do anything to have that diamond.” And I just felt that need. I want that.
And I tried to put that in the book, the sort of addiction. I know it’s a very difficult topic in the wine world, but what will we do for that one more taste?
Natalie: Absolutely. Absolutely. People chase all their lives after certain tastes, and it’s why they get suckered into buying fake bottles for hundreds of thousands of dollars. They’ll do anything because they actually just want that, especially the first taste—to recall your first evocative taste. Yeah, absolutely.
Jo: Yeah. I think it’s very strong. And I also didn’t really understand the collectors. Drops of God is very good on why people collect wine and why they appreciate that. But it’s also, again, we came back to earlier, why do you drink wine with a friend or whatever? And perhaps it’s the experience that we are looking for rather than that taste. It might be taste, again, for people like yourself who are super tasters, but for me it’s, I want that experience again. And of course you never can capture it again.
Natalie: That’s what makes us fools till the end. We keep chasing after it.
Jo: Oh, it’s just one more glass, one more taste away.
Natalie: I’m still enjoying this wine, by the way.
Jo: Excellent, excellent. I can’t even tell the level on that goblet. Very discreet.
Poisonous Plants in the Vineyard
Natalie: You also mentioned several poisonous plants at the Standing Stone Cellars property, including hemlock, henbane, monkshood, and nightshade. And one character says that the land needs them to feed the soils and grow the vines, and that the monkshood alkaloids seep deep into the soil, creating the slight bitterness that adds to the complexity. Nightshade contributes a deep, almost smoky note to the red. I love that idea. Did you make that up, or is that based on viticultural science?
Jo: The fact that you have to ask me is awesome because you know all this stuff. As far as I know, I made it up because I needed some poisonous plants for another particular occasion in the book.
And so I thought, but I think—as I said about the wildflowers at Limeburn Hill and the yarrow, the patches of yarrow and all the things they had growing to be part of it—why wouldn’t you do that in some way? And those herbs like hemlock and henbane, they’re used in small amounts. Poisons are used in small amounts to bring people, again, to a different level of consciousness. I guess you could say that about alcohol as well. In smaller doses it’s effective, and in larger doses it can be difficult. But that’s where I got the idea from. If you’re going to plant yarrow, why wouldn’t you plant henbane or nightshade?
So I don’t know. Have you heard of people using the darker plants?
Natalie: I have not. The most popular one is over in Australia. They have eucalyptus plants, which have a very strong oil, and you can taste the eucalyptus, the minty green, kind of in a pleasant way in some of their Cabernets or Shiraz. But I haven’t heard of the poisonous plants. So that would definitely take a darker turn of mind, I think.
Jo: I loved it. But I think the idea of the flowers and things growing is that some of the whatever’s in the nutrients go into the soil, right? And then the vines pick things up from the soil. So it wouldn’t necessarily be the poison in the wine, but I can’t see why that wouldn’t be a technically possible thing. So maybe there’s a listener who would love to tell us.
Natalie: Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s why they have the cover crops and all that. You want to encourage—the more diversity of plants you have, the more rich and diverse your soil will be microbially, and the more different insects and species. There’s a winery in Quebec that has like a hundred thousand different plants and insects and bees because they planted so much as an experiment, and they have this sort of wild nature all around it. It all definitely contributes for sure.
Architecture and Vineyard Design
Jo: Yeah. Actually Rebecca, the character in the book, I have her as an architect, and one of the reasons was because I wanted to redesign the vineyard to bring in more of this stuff. So we see these vertical walls, vertical plantings, and I thought that would be awesome on the side of a winery where you could, in the tasting room or something, there’d be actually crops up the side and change the water courses. And so I was really interested in how the plans for the vineyard would work. And of course in the book I have a labyrinth planting, which I think is very unlikely, but I thought that was quite cool.
Natalie: Yeah, no, there is a winery that has a labyrinth. But also I’m just working on a piece right now on wine and architecture, and the Antinori Winery in Tuscany, Italy has something like—it’s 11 hectares, I get acres and hectares mixed up—but the vines are growing on the roof and sides, the Sangiovese, so it looks like it’s wrapped in this green cloak and the winery’s rising up out of the land itself. So it’s really cool.
Jo: That is wonderful. I love architecture. I’ve got architects in so many of my books. I think in another life I would’ve been an architect.
Natalie: Yes, you have so many passions. That’s what makes you a great writer. You pursue them.
And I was impressed with just how much you dove into the winemaking and even in our exchanges leading up to this, beyond the book itself. So that’s what keeps you going.
The Most Difficult Part of Writing
Natalie: What was the most difficult part of writing this book?
Jo: I did love the research, but it got really difficult. And in fact, the biggest change I had to make was the description of the grapes at the different times of year. I had to even change when the book started. I had it originally starting in February, and my beta reader said, “You can’t have frost candles before bud break. That doesn’t make sense.” So I had to change that.
But it was really interesting and difficult to try and do all of that research and get it right. But also with biodynamics, I was having to try and work out, what kind of moon do you need on what kind of fruit day? And what day of the month would this be? And then what would the grapes look like? And then what?
So there was a whole year I had to map out—the viticulture year, the pagan year, the biodynamic year. There was a lot of trying to get things right. And again, I have to apologize in advance. I’m bound to have got something wrong, but I really did try.
Natalie: That’s okay. That’s hard. Between that and the whole architecture thing, you’re ready to open your own winery.
Jo: Oh, when I’m rich, I’ll just open one.
Natalie: Oh, that’s right. Sit back on your beautiful veranda in your white flowy dress and your Chardonnay.
Jo: Absolutely!
Final Questions
Natalie: Alright. Wow, time just flew here, Jo. Let me round up with a few last questions. If you could share a bottle of wine with any person in the world, who would that be and which bottle would you open with them?
A Meeting with Carl Jung
Jo: I am very much inspired by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. So I studied psychology of religion, and his work has inspired my fiction. So Stone of Fire and Crypt of Bone have a lot of Jung in them. But also my nonfiction book, Writing the Shadow, which is about tapping into the shadow, the dark side. And there’s a heck of a lot of shadow in the wine industry. You and I will have to—
Natalie: Oh yes, we’ll get into it. Yep.
Jo: We’ll talk about that. But yes, so Carl Jung—obviously now dead—but he wrote about wine as a metaphor for transformation of base into gold. That was one of his many things.
Natalie: I did know that.
Jo: The repressed self. Okay. Yeah, the repressed self. A lot about mythology, a lot about folklore. But I was like, what do you drink with Carl Jung? So I actually had a look. Where I would want to do it is he has a tower. He did a lot of stone carving, again architecture, at his tower in Bollingen on Lake Zurich. So I looked for some wine in that region, and there’s a wine called Chasselas. Maybe, you know, is that right?
Natalie: I wouldn’t dare correct your pronunciation after all we’ve been through, even for wine terms. Yes, Chasselas. But it is the Swiss grape. I think it’s a bright white.
Jo: Yes. So it’s a white wine. And I would put that with a cheese platter, maybe raclette, which is the melted cheese that you have in that region. And I would ask him, because I’m turning 50 next year and I feel like I would like to ask him about the challenges of midlife. He had a bit of a breakdown and he wrote this thing called The Red Book, and I’ve got a copy. It’s this huge oversized book. And he did paintings and he just wrote journals and he was just deep in midlife crisis.
And so I love that. I think it’s really interesting. We think of him in academia, but he was just very—I want to use the word sensual, and I don’t mean sexual—he was just deeply in life. So yeah, Carl Jung. There you go. Could have a session while you’re at it.
Natalie: That sounds great. I love that.
And as we wrap up, is there anything that we haven’t covered that you’d like to mention?
Encouraging Wine Exploration
Jo: I think I would encourage people—I’ve listened to a few of your episodes and people are so good at describing wine. And as someone who is just a normal wine person, I think I’d really encourage people to try different kinds of wine without being scared of it. And I feel like sometimes when normal people like me listen to wonderful writers like yourself about wines, we feel maybe a bit stupid in a way. “Oh, I can’t try that,” or “I can’t taste that.”
But what I’ve discovered, I think, by visiting these smaller vineyards is just try some stuff that’s a bit out of your comfort zone. And it might be super, super interesting, like the orange wine. I’d never tried these sort of volcanic orange wines. And even if you can’t describe them very well, it doesn’t matter.
I think supporting the vineyards, supporting the viticulture industry is just as important as supporting the authors and the artists and the writers out there. And it’s a difficult time for everyone, and hopefully we can all support each other. But yeah, I absolutely loved writing this book. I love delving into the wine industry, and I appreciate all of you a lot more.
Natalie: Great. And my advice would be parallel to yours: Try something outside your reading genre, like folk horror. I was pleasantly surprised. It was like the funky Chardonnay I had never tried before. It was great. I loved it. It expanded my horizons.
Where can people best get in touch with you, Jo?
Jo: Yes, so jfpenn.com/bloodvintage is the book. Since you’re listening to a podcast, if you want to write, The Creative Penn podcast—Penn with a double N. And Instagram at jfpennauthor. You can find lots of photos that also go with the book, including those vineyards, which I hope people will check out.
Natalie: That sounds like a lot of fun. Great, Jo, this has been fantastic. I loved it. I can’t believe how fast the time went, but thank you. Next time it has to be over a glass of wine in person. Maybe in the part of the vineyard where we’re not allowed to go because it just rebels that way.
Jo: Thanks so much for having me, Natalie. That was great.
Natalie: All right. I raised my glass to you. Cheers!
Jo: Cheers!
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