Behind the Bar with Nathan Ratapu
Photo Credit: Matthieu Gauchet
Earlier this year, when a story flashed by on Instagram that Rerenga Wines was hosting an event to celebrate its first birthday and that everyone was welcome, I knew I’d have to swing by. Rerenga Wines is one of my favourite wine shops in Paris. It’s different from any other Parisian cave (wine shop) I know, in that it’s more than just a shop: it’s a space designed to encourage the sharing of ideas.
Located a stone’s throw from Gare de L’Est, Rerenga Wines carries a wonderful selection of wine and books that have been selected with great care by founder Nathan Ratapu. Here you’ll find natural wine bottles alongside literature on a wide range of topics from agriculture to feminism and anti-racism. In offering this selection, Nathan invites people on a journey of education and discovering, all while paying tribute to his Māori ancestors.
I recently sat down with Nathan to talk about his pathway in wine, his experiences of setting up a shop in France and the intersecting questions of wine, society, gender and race.
How did you get into wine?
Nathan: I grew up in New Zealand. My family moved to Gisborne because my grandmother ran a horticultural picking contracting business. She and basically all of my dad's family were agricultural labourers who would pick varieties of fruits and vegetables and one of their main jobs was picking grapes, mostly for large scale domains and producers. My parents moved there to take over my grandmother's business and to try to act as intermediaries between the big producers and these contract labourers who were being extraordinarily exploited. The thing is that, when I was a kid, I was very aware of this and my parents also had a very strong feeling against these people.
That meant we were talking about wine, but often very much in a negative sense, because these big wine producers were the largest form of exploitation against my own family and all of my grandmother's friends. I would see just how broken down they were at the end of the day, how much it was also fueling their own alcoholism because this was basically their form of compensation: producers were using wine as a means of appeasing them, rather than providing them with any actual form of security.
Fast forward until the end of university and I'm living in New York, working for a completely different business. I was in film and television and I was desperate for a new form of education. There happened to be a wine shop that was very near where I lived that was doing classes every week. It was this amazing wine shop that I stumbled upon by chance, having no particular interest in wine but just thinking maybe I could go in and see what it was like.
I fell completely under the spell of meeting these producers, meeting these wine professionals who were teaching wine. It was really like a whole new world of study and as a means of telling stories that was extraordinarily compelling to me at a time when I was working in a business where I thought that I could be telling compelling stories, but wasn't.
And so, bit by bit, I became hooked on learning about wine regions and wine producers, and particularly this connection between the people making the wine and what was in the glass: the intersection of stories that were coming from culture, from gastronomic tradition, and questions of nature, the environment, terroir, and everything that is magical about what goes into winemaking. I gradually fell out of the previous business that I was in and, after visiting a number of winemakers in France and having a little career crisis, I decided that this was what I wanted to do.
It really wasn't until I started working in wine and I had finally gone back home to New Zealand and told my parents what I was doing and they were like, ‘Do you not remember?’ that I realised that I had clearly blocked out this other part of wine. After I had that revelation, I wasn't sure whether or not I could actually work in this business. That took me a while to reconcile.
I then discovered people in New York beyond the stories of the winemakers themselves; I met a community of people who were engaged in asking questions about labour rights and deeper questions about winemaking, wine tradition and wine as a professional space that were bringing in a lot of other questions that I was also really invested in.
I realised, actually, there is this dynamism that is present in the wine world that is part of a mission of change: if I could get on board with that lane of it, then maybe it would be a good means of me paying respects and engaging a part of myself that I really wanted to explore.
Photo Credit: Matthieu Gauchet
Ginger: How did this shop come about?
Nathan: I moved to France with my husband in 2019. I had previously been running a wine shop in Brooklyn and I really had wanted to have my own shop. One of the benefits of living in France was – even though I have a love for winemakers around the world – a great number of the winemakers that I represented in New York live here. The ability to actually go meet these people and provide an even more authentic and transparent story of what they're doing is just the dream.
After working in a restaurant and trying to figure out what the lay of the land was in France, COVID happened. That’s when I realised, actually, that it was the moment to go back into wine retail. I found this space and, as I was conceptualising the space, I thought about how I wanted to sell wine and the fact I also wanted to be tackling questions and bringing to life these other things that, to me, are so connected to natural wine in particular: questions of social injustice, of equality, of how we can craft a better world, of how we can also get back to the basics of what wine is, of removing the elitism of wine and thinking about it as an agricultural product and all that comes with that relearning of what wine is.
So I thought, why don't I try to bring together two things that I really love – literature and wine – as a hybrid bookstore-wine shop? It would allow me to host events that can bring people together who are very much interested in those questions, but who are maybe not necessarily natural wine drinkers or wine drinkers in general.
I wanted to provide them with a safe space in which they can critically engage in the conversations and community that they are already a part of, but give them a chance to discover wine and potentially bridge this gap.
Ginger: In my eyes it's super unique. I don't think I've been to any other wine / book shops. Sometimes you see wine shops with a few zines and wine-focused literature, but nothing like here where you’ve got almost half and half and where you’re addressing broader issues that overlap with wine.
Nathan: I know places in the US that are doing it. There's a really great place called Paradise BB in Miami that is truly a full-on bookstore-wine bar situation which also similarly focuses on questions of social justice.
In France, it's interesting. For instance, when I opened this wine shop, I had caviste experience and so that translated to people when I tried to broach the topic of opening a shop and getting funding. But, people are very much guided by their métier (profession) here. To even be able to sell books was such a bizarre thing because when I would go to these distributors and ask them if I could just apply to purchase books they would respond like, ‘but you're not a libraire (bookseller), you haven't done a formation libraire’ (bookseller training).
There really was this idea that if you open a bookshop, it's because you have this long history of staging and working in bookshops and then you can launch a project in that field. It’s the same thing if you want to run a wine shop or if you want to open a coffee shop. There's that purity and understanding of a particular space and a métier and so I think people still have a hard time with the blending of two. I still get people today who just don't actually believe that they can buy books here. They just think it's décor. It's very amusing.
Ginger: I'm guessing you spend a lot of time explaining the concept
Nathan: Yeah, there are some people who just have their blinders on to it. I do get a lot of people who walk past and ask, ‘Why are there books in the window? Are these just subjects that you're interested in?’ And I have to tell them that yes, but that this is also merchandise they can purchase here.
I will say that most people are actually very okay with it. I get very few people who push back in ways that are quite negative; I think it just confounds people. I hope that the more events that we have in this space, the more that people will realise those two things can be here together. What's great is that there are now people who fully take the concept to its zenith and buy a book and a bottle of wine together to have either the accord, the experience or simply because they want to enjoy the two things at once.
To me this is really a kind of queering of the notion of wine and the delineation between wine and cider and questioning whether we have to have specific categories for things.
Ginger: Well, that actually leads on quite nicely to my next question. I was going to ask you about your book and wine pairings. What makes a good book and wine pairing and can you maybe tell me about some of the ones you've done before?
Nathan: Totally. For instance, today, with my collaborator Amélie, who helps with communication, we did one about the new cuvée militante of Vins & Volailles called Self Love. The label examines questions of how do we – especially women – take care of ourselves, and the question of destigmatising masturbation and sexual self-gratification, both independently but also in couples and relationships. There happens to be a book called Jouir, which examines the history of female ejaculation and destigmatises that, so it was just the perfect pairing. And the wine itself too: it's 100% Syrah, it's by Justine Vigne, a winemaker who has created a cuvée that is meant to provide this comfort. You feel this enveloping warmth in the wine: she puts you in a place of comfort where you're choosing your own self-pleasure and that also links in nicely. It’s a very obvious pairing.
Other times I've looked at female winemakers who I feel are really combating the system and paired them up with literature that's also bringing to light questions of the routine injustices that women can combat in the workplace.
Photo Credit: Matthieu Gauchet
Or take something like S(C)IDERATION, which is a cuvée from Domaines des Grottes. It's not necessarily a co-fermentation but basically Romain takes Gamay, ferments it until it's tranquil and then does a méthode traditionelle by relaunching the fermentation with apple juice coming from his own orchard.
To me this is really a kind of queering of the notion of wine and the delineation between wine and cider and questioning whether we have to have specific categories for things. This can be paired with books like Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble or Queer Zones or things like Stone Butch Blues, that are looking at questions of gender identity, questions of sexuality, of queer as a political structure.
Ginger: Can you tell me a bit about how you choose the wines you sell here? Because there is a whole process to it, I know.
Nathan: It's an ever-evolving one but it's still guided by primary principles for me. At the beginning, the majority of the winemakers that I was working with were people that I already knew. And, you know, it was an aspect of me wanting to tell the stories of people that I really love and appreciate, more so than a question of selecting wines by region or trying to have a bit of everything, for example.
Being a cave that has options that are inclusive means variety. Obviously, it's a question of price point and it is also a question of taste – because I don't want to just sell my wines that are my particular taste from a flavour profile point of view – but it's about making sure that you feel represented on the shelves, right?
To me, that is a very active process of saying that I'm going to have a significant number of female winemakers, I'm going to have winemakers who are actually actively interested in doing the work of deconstructing prejudice in their lives and who are actively trying to protect their workers, who are providing and fostering a more inclusive environment for wine professionals so that we can also get to a point where there's more diversity in general in the winemaking world.
It’s not just a simple formula of me meeting a person of colour who makes wine and me then selling it. I am actively searching for winemakers that represent a diversity that reflects the diversity of the consumers and supporting projects by people who might literally be banished and ignored because of systemic injustice and bias. To me, that is about representation.
Then it’s also a question of going to meet these people, so that I can get to know them to really authentically tell the story of what they are doing.
There are a lot of winemakers whose wine speaks for itself but, if you really want to go that extra distance, if you really want to form a relationship between your clientele and the people, you have to offer more than just being able to say a wine is funky. To the extent that someone wants to know information, you should have that information there for them. Some producers that I work with insist that I come and visit them, that I spend time with them and I really respect that.
I do a lot of tastings, I do a lot of salons, but I also try to remain really loyal to the people I already work with. I will only add something new to the shop when a vintage is done and there are no wines from that person. It becomes an organic thing where things are complemented. And that’s really it.
I sell a decent amount of international wine too, probably more so than the average cave in Paris. There really are a lot of exciting things happening in Catalonia and in Italy, for instance, and I think it’s fair to offer those things to people and to open their minds up to the possibilities.
Again, it’s that process of deconstructing norms and going hey, it’s not just about appellations and these traditions but about why do we think these things? When you decide you don’t like wine from Spain, why do you think that? What’s trained you to feel that way? Maybe I can pull you out of that mindset by offering you something from someone who is really compelling and who has a story just as interesting as a winemaker from Alsace, for example.
The thing is that I feel like there is a very specific way to sell wine in France. There's a distinct image of what a cave should be and how it should operate, even in the natural wine space.
Ginger: We already touched on it a bit earlier, but, since you’ve had experience in both France and the USA, I’m keen to hear how you would define the wine industry in France. What's your perspective on the wine industry here?
Nathan: What's interesting is that it's very decentralised in some respects and still quite centralised in others. The allure for me at the beginning was that I could just go and see these winemakers and then, if you form a relationship with the person, they'll sell the wine to you and I can go back to the cave and I sell that wine. I do work with some intermediaries and agents like, for instance, Maha from Vins & Volailles and there are a lot of winemakers who now prefer that, just from a question of ease. I'm not prejudiced against one or the other as long as I'm able to tell the story and provide the wine to people at what I feel is a fair price.
The thing is that I feel like there is a very specific way to sell wine in France. There's a distinct image of what a cave should be and how it should operate, even in the natural wine space. I do think there are more and more natural wine caves that are trying to buck those notions, but people do expect a certain sort of experience in a cave.
In New York for instance, I really don't think that's the case. Every cave is very distinctive. There, there's this idea that you have your brand, you have your identity and you can be an unabashedly queer cave or a cave that specialises just in wine from one particular region. I think that's because wine is viewed differently.
Here, wine is very much a quotidien thing. It's not an agricultural product but at the same time, it's not necessarily in an esoteric space that wine often exists in where it's sort of a folly on which people will spend a ridiculous amount of money. Here, I have clients that come and they buy a single bottle, maybe three times a week, and it's extremely situational. They’ll say, 'I'm cooking this, I'm doing this: this is what I need.' It's like going to a butcher.
And I feel like, in a way, selling wine is different here: the way I have to craft the stories, the way that I have to approach customers is different to the very sort of poetic space that I could be in in New York where people were looking for fantasy and fun. The criteria that they were searching for was personal pleasure. I don't think either is better or worse, but it's different.
The last thing I will say is that I think that the internet has changed things dramatically in the natural wine space. Different producers can pop off on social media thanks to influencers and it can lead to a monoculture to the extent with which you go to a lot of caves and it's the same selection. All the references are there. People go looking for those things and you can’t get them off that. It's a shame. That exists in the United States too.
Natural wine has become really a commodity that is, in many ways, no different to major fashion brands. And that's okay. However, I do think that, in the long term, it's going to continue to pose problems, because it's a scarce object.
I would like for people to go, 'Okay, if I can't get this, then I will try to discover something else.' I would like for them to try to also ask more questions about what the wine is and who the winemaker is. Who is this person? Why are they doing it? What does it mean? Where's this person within history and space? To me, caves that offer those kinds of knowledge, those kinds of questions are more compelling.
Ginger: In some ways it’s just a repetition of what happened in conventional wine with rating systems, where people would see the rating and then they feel they must buy that wine. Social media is just a new format where people feel that if a certain person is drinking a specific wine, they must too.
Nathan: Oh exactly. I mean, good for those producers. But we do have to think about whether we are trying to promote a new system. Are we trying to revolutionise? Or is this just becoming a buzzword?
In Māori, Rerenga really is the idea of flow, of constant movement: we're constantly bringing our past into our present into the future. I want Rerenga to always be doing that: always challenging and also always bringing people in.
Ginger: You recently won Le Fooding’s award for the best caviste. For people who aren’t familiar with it, do you maybe want to explain what that is and how that experience was for you? Afterall, it's a pretty big accolade in France.
Nathan: Yeah it's kind of crazy, but I'm really proud of it. It was a really nice thing to happen at the beginning because again, you know, we are a kind of different shop. It's a very atypical shop for Paris. I didn't know how we were going to be received. I didn't know if we were going to get a lot of negative press from people who were just also very judgmental of us having an overt political position by being anti-racist and anti-sexist.
Le Fooding has existed for over 20 years: it's a food magazine and also an online review site that looks at restaurants, bars, hotels, and very, very recently wine shops and other food businesses. It provides a very accessible guide; it’s a sort of counterbalance to the Michelins of the world in language that feels more plain-spoken and more accessible to young people. They have taken a very concerted pivot toward, I would say, more inclusive language and examining systemic problems within the restaurant industry in the last few years.
To be a part of this year's magazine – in which they really were broadening the scope and, at the same time, trying to bring people's attention to very necessary questions – was really great. It made me feel like there is a demand for this, that people really appreciate it and if that can continue to inspire other people to go in that direction, then, amazing. It's a great group of people to be a part of and I encourage people to look inside the guide because it really does, I think, try to offer everybody an entry point to food and drink in Paris and also everywhere else.
Ginger: With Le Fooding, you also know that their reviews are very fair since none of it is comped. I find that important in a day and age of very blurry boundaries when it comes to the objectivity of reviews.
Nathan: Oh yeah. Honestly, I had no idea that this award was going to happen until two weeks before. They asked to do an interview with me first, just about the history of my experience in wine and the principles. I thought it was really just going to be a featured interview about the shop but they were really impressed by the intentionality of what we're trying to do here and by the things they purchased. That's all I can ask for.
Ginger: Since we're on the topic of major moments in Rerenga's young history, how was it celebrating your first birthday earlier this year?
Nathan: It was great because we didn't actually get to celebrate the opening when it first happened. And finally, you know, we got to say: we’re here. It was a really intense first year – as for everybody in the past two years – between several waves of COVID, things reopening and then Omicron. So, to see how many people were here to celebrate the shop and to see a variety of communities here – people from the book world, people coming for the wine, people discovering the shop for the first time – was really amazing.
I think we're going to continue to keep building on that momentum and trying to open the space up because I really see each year as a kind of milestone: how have we gotten larger, in terms of how have we expanded the community? Have we found new ways to offer the space up to people? Have we found new ways to dynamise what we're doing and what we're offering and how we're encouraging people? It's been part of the mission from the beginning. In Māori, Rerenga really is the idea of flow, of constant movement: we're constantly bringing our past into our present into the future. I want Rerenga to always be doing that: always challenging and also always bringing people in.
Photo Credit: Matthieu Gauchet
Ginger: Do you have anything specific coming up? What's in the diary?
Nathan: We’ll be doing a presentation with a new maison d'édition (publishing house) called Ròt-Bò-Krik. It’s a maison d'édition that is particularly interested in questions of decolonialism and indigeneity. They've released a few books about Guyane which I think are really, really interesting. One of them is the first anthropological history of Guyane written by indigenous people of Guyane.
It was researched and conceptualised using their own anthropological methods and I think that is really compelling. That's how they want all of their books to be approached: deconstructing the Western tools of research for examining colonial countries or countries. It’s about letting the voices actually return to people who are displaced or the descendants of slavery or colonialism. They're releasing a book about decolonialism and looking at how decolonialism has been co-opted by many people as a buzzword in the general anti- racist movement, but how decolonialism is fundamentally very much about the restitution of land and money to indigeneous people to whatever extent is possible. They're going to do a really interesting presentation about these questions as a whole and about the mission of maison d'édition.
We're also planning to do a hybrid festival. In New York, Jahdé Marley organised a festival called Anything but Vinifera, which was really a landmark wine fair examining non Vitis vinifera beverages and people who are exploring polycultural systems and things that are much more durable and just destigmatising non-noble grapes or other fruits.
I think there are a lot of people in Europe who are in that space right now and the narrative about it is in flux. I think that it would be really great to give this space over to people by doing a fair that gives people a chance to try all these kinds of wines and multi-fruit beverages and build a bit more momentum around those things too. We will hopefully try to organise that for the end of the year.
Ginger: I’ve got one last question for you: where are your favourite places to eat and drink around here?
Nathan: Marrow, just around the corner, is fantastic in terms of their approach to food. If you love bone marrow, if you love octopus, but also hyper seasonal ingredients, they’ve got very transparent ways of working with them.
I really love Le Dénicheur in the 3rd arrondissement. What Jules and Étienne do there in terms of providing a watering hole for natural wine feels super accessible and very shockingly low-key. Anyone can turn up and you can have amazing wine at really reasonable prices with small dishes that are cheap and homemade. It just feels convivial.
And then La Retraite: it feels like an unquestionable safe space, which is, again, not an easy place to find in wine bars. It is run by two badass women who are really about actually making sure that the space feels non-toxic and selling really awesome stuff. It’s a space where people can feel like themselves and that is pretty, pretty great.
There's one other place, which is nearer to Pigalle, called FRO. They are also a mixed concept because they sell records, zines and magazines and they are a natural wine bar. It always has great vibes. Again, it's a place that feels super queer friendly: you come as you are. It's a refreshing place to drink wine.
