Eight exotically sourced wines join Patagonia Provisions’ ranks.
This week, Patagonia added wines to its Provisions line and announced that cider and sake are on the way.
The release constitutes the second wave of alcoholic inclusions in the brand’s food line, which already features beer and various trail staples. Multiple reds and whites are on the table, sourced from vineyards all over the world that appear to embody Patagonia’s planet-first principles.
The sake (made with organic rice) and the hard cider (from the brand’s namesake region in the Chilean Andes) are due in November.
Unlike much of the food sold through Provisions and all the flagship gear, the new vino lineup does not carry the Patagonia monicker. Instead, the brand sourced existing natural wines to sell alongside its other Provisions offerings — similar to the coffee and some of the snacks sold there.
But Patagonia, as per usual, makes sure to back up its decision with pithy, down-to-earth rhetoric. Starting with “connection to place,” the brand waxes poetic about how naturally produced alcohol “captures” and transmits a physical location’s essence through its flora and fauna.
The brand says it searched far and wide for the spirits it now purveys. Along with the eponymous Patagonia region itself, sources include a vineyard on the face of a Sicilian volcano and a biodynamic farm (holistic farming that involves spirituality) in Austria.
Bona fide “natural” wines bypass common processing techniques like filtration, additive inclusion, and chemical treatment. Whether or not each Patagonia wine meets the (murky) criteria looks like a matter of niche conjecture.
For instance, “biodynamic” does not necessarily mean “natural” — only that the process of growing and harvesting the grapes involved mysticism.
If weird wine is your thing, head to Patagonia Provisions. Most bottles are almost cheap enough to make us spring for them, and there’s even a canned entry for occasions bound to get rowdy.
There is a catch. As of this writing, it only ships to 13 U.S. states, plus Washington, D.C.: Alaska, California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana (wine & cider only), North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
