Charine Tan of Exotic Wine Travel
What do you want from life? Are you at a desk all day yearning to be on the road doing something meaningful, however you define the term? I regularly use this column to galvanize readers into action. I myself used to be a lawyer. I left the industry to pursue wine and travel writing full-time as well as chase the ultimate title in the wine world, Master of Wine. So, it’s a joy to connect with kindred spirits and share the stories of their paths. For “How to Quit Your Job and Follow a Dream,” I’ve interviewed former lawyers, bankers, and consultants who have walked away from the hours – and money — to attempt life-altering feats like grow coffee on a volcano in Panama, make wine on the Sonoma Coast, and found a coffee roastery and café in Bordeaux.
Recently, I met Charine Tan and Matthew Horkey, founders of Exotic Wine Travel, at a seminar on Croatian wine. With no formal training but years of informal wine appreciation, the couple cut ties to their home and set off on a multi-year journey that led them to write books on unsung wine regions. As they crowd-fund their next project, an overview on Hungarian wine travel called Discover Hungarian Wine: A Visitor-Friendly Guide, I asked them about the challenges and thrills of their path.
Can you share a bit about your backgrounds? How did wine factor into your lives?
Charine Tan: I grew up in a relatively progressive Singaporean family who drinks wine whenever the celebratory mood demands. My ‘wine epiphany’ happened on my 18th birthday. I treated myself to French fine-dining and bought a glass of Côte de Beaune Village. Prior to establishing Exotic Wine Travel, I was working at corporate agencies for nearly a decade, with roles in various functions: from marketing to sales, PR, corporate performance, and branding. During that time, I had the opportunities to work with clients in the wine industry – including LVMH Moët Hennessy, Pernod Ricard, and Treasury Wine Estates.
Matthew Horkey: Both of us are WSET Level III-certified but enrolled in the program after we started writing about wine. I am a Chiropractor by training. I fell in love with wine during a backpacking trip when I was 26 years old. My friends and I ordered a liter of house-pour Sangiovese in Lucca, Italy. I smelled the wine for about 10 minutes before letting my friends pour themselves a glass. When we were living in Singapore, Charine and I were hyperactive wine consumers and attended wine events nearly every week. We were also members of the Confrérie du Sabre d’Or. So, in some ways, our ‘informal wine training’ started some years ago.
Matthew Horkey of Exotic Wine Travel
Tell us about some of your past books.
We’ve authored three wine books. Our first book is Uncorking the Caucasus: Wines from Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia; the second is Sipping Santa Barbara: Recommended Wines and Producers; and the third book is Cracking Croatian Wine: A Visitor-Friendly Guide.
We decided to shake up our lives and travel around the world in 2015. After a few months on the road in Western Europe, we noticed that an alarmingly large part of our expenses were on food and wine. When we arrived in Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia, we realized that there was very little information in English about those wine regions (the Georgian wine boom was just starting). So, we thought we could put our investment (time and money) and experience to good use by creating resources for intrepid wine travelers.
The lack of information was a tangible problem we thought we could help to solve. Additionally, we also had emotional motivations. After experiencing the hospitality of winemakers in Armenia and Georgia, we felt compelled to share their stories and to either return or forward their kindness. Most importantly, the wine quality there was on par with the ‘international standard’, but with a sense of exoticness to boot!
Describe your lifestyle. You’re both on the road full-time tasting wines and. Is this your new life? Do you imagine ever going back to a desk job?
We have been on the road full-time for the last four-and-a-half years and visited hundreds of wine regions in Armenia, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, and the USA. We’re constantly visiting producers and taste about 5,000 wines annually. So far, we’ve tried about 400 wine grapes in varietal wine form. Exotic Wine Travel is our lives and perhaps unhealthily, because there’s no line drawn between Exotic Wine Travel and our personal lives.
Matt: I’ve aspired to have a location-independent lifestyle since I was a teenager. What we have today is a dream come true. Life on the road isn’t always easy as we carry everything we own and we are always on the move. Usually, we would rent an apartment in the city of a wine country for four to 12 weeks. That apartment serves as a ‘base’ where we would leave some things there while we travel around the country or to neighboring countries for press trips or for our own self-study and research.
CT: On most days, this lifestyle feels liberating, but the freedom we have is in exchange for the (mostly financial) security and certainty (of the future) we give up. Our location-independent lifestyle helps us to focus on work and our own priorities. There’s less societal expectations and peer pressure when one is constantly on the road. At work, being away from a fixed community or environment enables us to be more creative and resourceful. But all that is a double-edge sword. We don’t really have hobbies since all of our focus goes to Exotic Wine Travel. Sometimes, we also feel lonely, especially when we run into a challenge. We don’t have someone that we can call up or a mentor who can guide us through the tangle.
Matt: On the flip side, we’ve been fortunate to have so many magical experiences in different parts of the world that wouldn’t be possible if we were simply tourists. A few years ago, in Sardegna, we were invited to lunch at a shepherd’s home in the mountains of Mamoiada. We ate roasted sheep and sheep’s blood with all of the wine producers from the village. It was nearly 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and we were sipping on 16% ABV Cannonau while eating greasy, pungent meat. It wasn’t the ideal situation for that kind of food and wine, but the experience is burned into my mind forever.
CT: Ultimately, this journey on the road and through the vines has been transformational. It has helped us to whittle life down to the baseline of what we want in order to be optimally happy.
Had either of you written a book before deciding to write wine region books? Why writing as opposed to some other wine-related business?
Before the wine books, we released a personal development-travel memoir called Travel, Learn, Earn: Let The World Be Your Guide to Freedom with a Canadian publisher. Originally, we thought we would go into consulting and speaking in the personal development and coaching field, but that idea was banished soon after we started traveling.
We don’t see ourselves as writers, more of communicators or generalists. Currently, we are contributors to a few media outlets. We produce videos for wineries; handle media relations, social media, SEO strategy for some wine regions; and conduct tasting classes. We also work with a small group of private customers whom we help to source for fine wines from lesser-known wine regions. We are constantly pushing ourselves to do and learn more about the wine business and may start a sort of wine club soon. Ultimately, the vision for Exotic Wine Travel has remained the same since 2015: we want to be the ‘Lonely Planet for wine lovers’. Regardless of what we do, the idea remains: to help and inspire wine lovers, especially independent wine travelers, to explore lesser-known wine regions.
Tell us about your latest book on Hungary. Why are you focusing on this country?
Hungarian wine is one of the best-kept secrets in the Old World of wine.
Many people have heard of Tokaji, but few have a chance to taste it. It’s a pity because tasting a well-made Tokaji Aszú is a transcendent experience. Just imagine complex flavors mixed with textural richness and fiery acidity. That said, there is so much more to Hungarian wine than just Tokaji. You can find every type of wine in Hungary – from fresh and aromatic to oxidative-style and profound whites, from medium-bodied and juicy to full-bodied and age-worthy reds. Hungary also has several autochthonous and regional varieties that create wines of distinctive sensory merits. ‘Volcanic wine’, ‘orange wine’, vin jaune-style wine, Hungary has all that, and most of them offer outstanding quality-price ratios.
With this book, we want to help wine lovers save time and money by enabling them to skip or shorten the trial-and-error process of finding the Hungarian wines they like. We always aim to produce the guidebook that we wished we had when we first visited a wine country.
