E87 - Felicity Carter · In Defense of Wine

Wine is being put on trial. And almost nobody is asking who's actually building the case. For most of human history, wine wasn't a question. It was just there — at the table, in the ritual, in the gathering. Now it's a headline, a health warning, a culture war. Something shifted. Few people can tell you exactly what, or why, or who benefits from the shift. Felicity Carter can. In this episode of Read Between the Wines, host Pierre Ferland sits down with Felicity Carter — award-winning journalist, founder of Drinks Insider, and one of the most respected investigative voices covering alcohol policy and the global drinks industry. Felicity has spent decades tracing how the conversation around alcohol actually gets built: not just science, but media incentives, advocacy networks, funding trails, and the political machinery behind a "consensus" that looks a lot more manufactured up close than it does from a distance. This isn't a defense of wine. It's an investigation into how a 9,000-year-old part of human culture became a public health flashpoint — and what gets lost in translation along the way. A thoughtful, provocative, occasionally uncomfortable conversation about science, spin, and what wine actually means to the people who still gather around it. Featuring: Felicity Carter, Drinks Insider, alcohol policy, wine journalism, wine culture.