Nick Wilkes
Michelle Wildgen standing with arms folded and a copy of her book Wine People.
Wildgen explores women making their way in the male-dominated world of commercial wine.
Madison author Michelle Wildgen knew she wanted to write a novel about the wine industry. Although she admits she’s no wine aficionado, her years working at L’Etoile in the late ‘90s and friendships with people in the wine importing business had already given her a taste of that world. Now she needed to dig deeper.
“I started asking people in wine if they would talk to me,” Wildgen says. “And you never know, at that point, if it's going to go well. It could turn out there’s not as much as you thought there would be. But in this case, there was so much more.”
Wildgen kept track of all the memorable stories she heard — like the one from the daughter of a grape grower who had suggested her family move into winemaking — and began developing what became her fourth novel, Wine People, out now from upstart publisher Zibby Books. Along the way, she also took research trips to Italy and California’s Central Coast.
Wine People begins in New York City at a glamorous and cutthroat boutique wine distribution company, where Wren and Thessaly become unlikely allies in an office dominated by men. Eventually, they decide to relocate and open their own distributorship in Madison, allowing Wildgen to explore ways even the closest of friends can misjudge each other.
“I really enjoy writing about Madison,” says Wildgen, 49, who moved to the city from northeastern Ohio to attend UW-Madison. “This is my adopted hometown, and it’s the place that taught me about setting and how a particular city can have a real flavor of its own.”
While Wildgen wrote about three brothers at competing restaurants in Pennsylvania for 2014’s Bread and Butter, female characters drive Wine People. And the editor of the Tin House anthology Food & Booze: Essays and Recipes was able to retain her focus on, well, food and booze — offering readers sumptuous descriptions of fine wine and cuisine throughout Wine People. (Wildgen has also written restaurant reviews for Isthmus.)
“For me, wine is very much about the human experience,” Wildgen says. “It’s so often paired with food, and it’s a way of thinking about togetherness and about the world. We tend to sit down together and have these rituals around food and wine, and…I just happen to love them.”
Wine People’s launch party will take place Aug. 8 at Table Wine, 2301 Atwood Ave., from 6-8 p.m. — not far from where Wildgen lives with her family. (Advance tickets for the free event, where there will be wine and light snacks, are available on Eventbrite.) Her schedule is booked well into the summer and beyond, too. She will be part of a panel with other local women writers at Madison’s Arts + Literature Laboratory on Aug. 27. Then she’ll join fellow Madison author Christina Clancy (Shoulder Season) at Mystery To Me on Sept. 14, and she is the writer-in-residence at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery’s Illuminating Discovery Hub, where Wildgen aims to connect storytellers with scientists.
Additionally, Madison Writers’ Studio — the workshop space Wildgen co-founded with Susanna Daniel — will celebrate its 10-year anniversary in September.
At the moment, though, Wine People is the focus. After all, Time named it one of the “25 New Books You Need to Read This Summer.”
“If you’re into wine or food, or interested in business-succession dramas, there is plenty in the book for you,” Wildgen says, adding that long-term professional relationships can be just as messy as personal ones. “People at work are as crazy and weird as people at home. And I find that endlessly fascinating.”
