​The Amongst Vines project was initially ignited by the desire to discover what makes each wine so special. I wanted to stop looking at wines from the consumer's point of view and go beyond the fine wine aisles in stores, so I decided to embark on a journey to find out more about winemaking. 

 

In 2013, I was getting out of a 2–year creativity drought and then destiny took over. I was working a charity event in LA and a gentleman approached me and with no delay, we started a conversation that led to my passion for wine, then he mentioned that he and his brother had been making wine for the past few years in Paso Robles. I was very excited to hear that and we kept on conversing about different things and at the end of the event we exchanged phone numbers and kept in touch. Two weeks later, he extended an invitation to join him on a trip to Paso Robles for the culmination of harvest, I did not hesitate and accepted his invitation immediately, and we left for Paso Robles that weekend.

 

It was a short, but fulfilling trip to the wine country. I fell in love with the vines, wines, the wineries, and the small, but beautiful downtown of Paso Robles.  Since then I have visited every year during harvest and I have been photographing the work involved in making wine. It is indeed driven by a passion for the land and the vines. During harvest, the viticulturist, the winemaker, and the workers meet in the vineyards before dawn to pick the most grapes they can before noon, after the winemakers have the quantity of grapes that they need, they head over to the winery to start the pressing process. The viticulturist stays in the field with workers if more winemakers want a particular varietal of grapes, otherwise, they call it a day.

 

In my project, you see a variation of lighting that portrays the work involved in winemaking, which is not a one-day thing. It is a repetition of tasks, day after day and year after year, and the greatest thing is that once you have the first bottle in your hands and you look back and say “We are finished”, this is only the starting point; the beginning of a long journey ahead.  

 

This applies to everything we do in life. We spend a great amount of time finding our passion and a greater amount of time preserving the passion.

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