The Fizz #67: Palm Wine founder Onyeka Obiocha is using wine to build global community
In this issue, Onyeka and I talk about community building through wine, why Palm Wine is focused on in-person connection, and how Nigerian palm wine inspired his idea for a natural wine social club.
For the 67th issue of The Fizz, I spoke with Onyeka Obiocha, founder of Palm Wine, a global natural wine social club. Palm Wine hosts wine events in different cities around the world, focusing on inclusion and in-person connection. Onyeka’s dedication to community building through wine and music is inspiring and intentional, not taking wine too seriously, but using it as a conduit for good.
Palm wine itself a fermented wine made from the sap of tall palm trees, and the inspiration for the social club, which focuses on natural wine made from grapes. The beverage is a staple in Nigeria, where Obiocha’s family is from. It’s exciting to see folks in our industry focus on wine as a way to build lasting community away from screens, showing us how much wine helps to bring out our similarities. I can’t wait to join a Palm Wine event.
Margot: I’ve heard about palm wine, but I’ve never tried it myself. Is that something that you grew up with?
Onyeka: My parents are Nigerian, and when I was ten years old, my older brother, my older sister, and my dad moved to Nigeria for a year because my parents wanted me to get a better understanding of where we were from. They grew up in Nigeria, and me and my siblings were born in the United States. I was ten years old and my dad handed me a styrofoam cup with a bit of froth on top and some dead fruit flies, and he said just blow off the flies and take a sip. That was my first experience with palm wine.
I didn't grow up with it, but it's a cultural staple in Nigeria. Weddings, funerals, everything in between—palm wine is going to be there. That's how I was first introduced to the beverage. I haven't been back to Nigeria since, and that was over two decades ago, but it's still something that resonated with me.
Margot: It obviously stuck with you! Can you find it anywhere here in the states?
Onyeka: I haven't looked for it, but there’s a business in London called London Manya that actually have taken the palm juice that's fermented and turned into sparkling wine. That looks incredible, and I think that's the closest thing and the highest level of intentionality I've seen around palm wine. The thing about palm wine that's really interesting is that I would consider it the original natural wine because of the way the palm sap is. Once it is oxidized, the moment the tree breaks open and air interacts with the palm sap, it automatically starts to ferment. So in the first two to four hours, you can get up to like 5% ABV. The monkeys and birds would get drunk and then people would say, hey let me give this a shot too.
Because of that, it's really volatile. I don't think there's any real pasteurization processes, so that's why I haven't really tried this stuff in the states. If anything, it's even further away from the source.
Margot: That’s so interesting, I hope I can find it some day and try it! Was grape wine something that was prevalent in your household growing up?
Onyeka: Not really. Nigerians, we would do Heineken, Guinness, things like that. I can't remember a time where there was really wine in my house. Even now, my mom loves a glass of Manischewitz, but that’s really it. There's no language around wine at all in my home.
Margot: How did the idea for Palm Wine come about? When did you get the wine bug?
Onyeka: The first time I remember trying wine was when I had an opportunity after graduating college to do some work in South Africa. We visited a winery in Stellenbosch where I tried wine. I remember on the plane ride home from South Africa, I ordered a glass of wine and that's the first time I had a Pinotage. It was fantastic to me. I thought oh, I think I might like wine.
Outside of that, it wasn't until 2020 when my good friends and I went to Barcelona for a week. We had a really interesting experience and by the time we got to this one nice hotel we stayed at at the end of the trip, it was COVID lockdown. We were quarantining inside the Casa Bonay hotel for three days, and they specialize in natural wine. So for three days, we're just ordering room service, trying natural wine. When we came back, my friend and I ended up splitting a natural wine subscription.
We just started drinking and drinking and drinking, and really enjoying the playfulness of the beverage, the playfulness of the labeling. We would meet up once a month, pick twelve bottles and we would do a draft. That's how I started to research the wines. We would sit down, have all the twelve bottles laid out and I would read a little bit about each one and then try to pick the one I liked the most.
By 2021, I was drained. A lot happened in my life. I ended up leaving my job and wanting to go back to Europe and really get the full experience. I ended up traveling through Europe, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Nice, drinking wine, having a great time. I think one thing that was really fascinating to me was the through line between all the natural wine bars that we went to. The fashion, all the sommeliers were super cool, the front of house staff were super cool. The music was on vinyl with soul samples from hip hop. It was a refreshing and inviting scene. It was really a parallel to hip-hop to me, in terms of the natural wine world being a bit less traditional.
Before I came back to the U.S., I was lamenting not having this type of culture back home of super approachable wine, cool people. Not a party, not too stuffy, but just intentional and fun and inviting with music and fashion and culture. I was talking to my mom and told her I'm just traveling, drinking natural wine. She was like, oh, you mean palm wine? As a Nigerian, that's what she associated with natural wine. I started thinking about afro-futurism, if we're in Wakanda, you know, they would sabor a bottle of palm wine. What if we lived in that universe that didn't really center the European nature of wine as a fermented grape, but really expanded not only how we thought about the product of wine, but also the culture of wine? Palm Wine is kind of my attempt to reimagine all aspects of wine from the base of it to the culture around it.
I created an Instagram. I used a palm tree emoji as my logo. I put up a flyer and said, hey, anyone want to come drink with me when I got back to Hartford? And next thing you know, people I've known for years just pulled up. They said hey I like good wine, but there's really no place for me to go where it feels good. I was like, holy shit! I started traveling to Hartford, New Haven, then New York, then Paris, then Barcelona. Every time I traveled, I just put up a flyer and said hey, come drink natural wine with us.
It was approachable—it was bring your own bottle. I would buy six bottles or so just to have a good little base. Then people would bring a bottle and we'd just share. We'd talk about it, we'd talk about anything. We’d play music. The common thread there was wine and people would bring like a bottle of Josh and I was like, okay, cool, thank you. Let me put over this over here, but have you tried this Gamay, for example, like you might really enjoy this, trying to introduce people to it.
There has been so much that has happened over the past year that has allowed Palm Wine to be really fun and reimagine how people interact with wine.
Margot: I love that. It sounds like you had an inspirational experience that led you to that place of community, and folks are really identifying with that. What can a person expect if they were to see a flyer on Instagram and say, okay, this looks like something I might want to go to?
Onyeka: Folks can expect to find one or two people that they can have an authentic conversation and connection with outside of wine. I think one thing about what I like the most about Palm Wine events is that for some reason it brings people together who are just great human beings. They're culture builders. They like music, they like food, they like wine. None of it in a pretentious way. They like to to share experiences. They like to be open to what the world wants to offer in a way that's very abundant and very loving.
We always have a playlist. We have music, but it never turns into a dance party. It's always just enough so people can get their head bobbing, but allows for genuine connection and conversation. I think that's the biggest thing for me, and fun above all else. Fun, inviting, zero pretension, maximum love, and just a really good time, trying some amazing wines.
Margot: How has wine allowed you to build community?
Onyeka: When I started this journey, the intention behind it was always to build community. I'm never going to drink a glass of wine by myself. I'm constantly thinking about—who do I want to share with this bottle with? It's allowed me to literally travel the world. I travel a lot for work, so anytime I'm in a new place, I throw up a flyer. The people who come, we're still friends with this day. It's incredible. On the back end of coming out of the pandemic, I've been a lot more intentional about being in authentic community in a way that's filling and intentional. Who and what spaces drain my energy? Build my energy?
Everything is about building community. That's why I kind of struggle with Instagram, honestly. I don't want to build a digital community. I don't want to have a bunch of Instagram followers for no reason. Everything I do is to try to activate an in-person communal experience, and really invite people to be in the community in a way that I know I need, and hopefully resonates with them. The very ethos of Palm Wine is around building community and using great natural wine as a hook to get people in.
Margot: What do you think it is about wine that helps you facilitate that?
Onyeka: Honestly my passion for it. I think it can be anything, it can be wine, it can be food, it can be Dungeons and Dragons. If you come to it with this energy of yo, I really love this and I think you will too, that's what always draws me into people. I think the energy I come to it with is really interesting, and people in my community gravitate towards that. More and more I get people who may have been intimidated or just excluded from the traditional wine world. I think as folks get older, it just hits different.
Natural wine has the ability to speak to folks who aren't wine drinkers. I can slide them something and say yeah, this is like alcoholic Capri-Sun. I try to base it on something I think they would know or already enjoy, like hint of fruit rollup, you know what I mean? That language around it is important for people to connect, they can benchmark it to an experience or a taste that they’ve had in the past that was positive.
Margot: What you have learned in the process of putting on these events on a global scale? It’s pretty unique that you're putting on these events in different cities all over the world.
Onyeka: I've learned that there’s such a commonality between people across the world. Going to Paris and having amazing conversations about the retirement age and how millions of people spilled out into the streets to protest, and having similar conversations in Barcelona about Catalonian versus Spanish government. People are going through similar things in different places.
There are these elements of people of all types eschewing tradition and speaking up. I think those people also gravitate toward natural wine because it's doing something similar. I tend to find these friend groups everywhere. Socrates had this thing where he said, this guy was surrounded by bad people in his village. So he left and went to a different village and ran into a guard and said I'm looking for great people. The guard was like, well, were you with great people in your own village? The guy said no, and the guard said okay, well, there's no great people here. Pretty much saying that anywhere you go, if you are the same person, you'll find that type of person. No matter if it's a new place, it's really the energy and the passion and the intentionality you bring to a place.
Whether I'm in Lisbon or I'm in Paris, I'm gonna go to that vinyl bar, sit down, listen to their music. I think that kind of common approach to the way I show up, and the way the Palm Wine brand tries to show up and cultivate these spaces, allows folks from all different areas to find that cultural anchor in their location. That was a huge learning. There's something like this for everyone everywhere, and there's community for everyone everywhere, if they show up in a way that they're open to finding it.
Margot: That's awesome. Looking through your website, I'm seeing social responsibility as a big part of your life and it seems like you've connected a couple of Palm Wine events with nonprofits. How do you think through supporting nonprofits with your events and how do you choose who you're supporting?
Onyeka: For an event in New York, we supported The Peer Defense Project. My friend Sarah is one of the co-founders. I met her in New Haven. She's this incredible individual. Ultimately for me, anytime folks are being put in a position to cultivate power, I'm excited about it. One thing I like about The Peer Defense Project is that she's really trying to put young people in the position where they have the legal tools to cultivate power and essentially be their own voting block.
I always look for organizations that are asking, how do we think about how the systems and institutions in which this country operates do not serve everyone? If you're willing to kick those systems and traditions down, I think the same way you have some amazing winemakers doing the same thing, then that's something I want to support. Anytime I can support communities and individuals building power to create a society in which they can thrive, that is really exciting to me.
Margot: Where do you see the future of Palm Wine going? How are you thinking about what's coming next?
Onyeka: I'm trying to figure that out right now. In the last year, I’ve just been saying yes to everything. This year, I’m focused on being a bit more financially sustainable. In this next iteration, when we're looking at financial sustainability, it's not saying how can we have Palm Wine be financially sustainable, but how can we become an economic engine for the cultural assets that we love to be economically sustainable?
If we can get a beer and wine catering license, that would be great. If I’m at a coffee shop and I hold a late night spoken word night, late night jazz night—it's great for the community, but usually the coffee shops don't see those sales because no one's chugging espresso at night. I think one thing I want Palm Wine to do, at least in the near term, is to say we're just here to cover the cost of the wine. Once we break even, then we can split the profit. The cultural assets that we enjoy that make up Palm Wine—the music, the clothes, the people—if we keep those cultural assets alive, then it's doing more to create that type of environment in which we can thrive.
We’re looking at doing some partnerships with the brands that we love. I’m thinking about what would it mean for us to do a bit more traveling. There's an organization in Providence that just closed—Fortnight, which was a natural wine bar co-op. If we can be the phoenix that rises from those ashes to create a co-op natural wine bar somewhere in Connecticut, that would be incredible. There are no natural wine bars in Connecticut.
Margot: Oh, really? I'm surprised to hear that.
Onyeka: Yeah, me too. That's something that I would love to help steward. Connecticut has some of the best creative talent I've seen anywhere in the world, but I think we're also on an island because we're between New York and Boston. We're culture builders, and I want Connecticut to be like cultural exporters, in the way that we're thinking about music and food and wine and things like that. I was born and raised in this state. If I can do it, then other folks can.
Margot: I love that. That's awesome. Where do you find your biggest joy in the work that you're doing?
Onyeka: That's a good question. In 2021, me and a friend I was traveling with hosted an impromptu natural wine meetup in Barcelona, where we were for that week. We popped around, met some people at a couple of bars. We had a big Airbnb and thought hey, Monday is industry night, no one's working. We're going to throw a natural wine meetup in the Airbnb. We hosted it in November 2021. November 2022, I received a picture of two people who met at that meetup who just got married. Those are the kinds of intentional connections that I think Palm Wine can steward around the world. That’s what will keep me doing this for another twenty years.
Margot: Wow, that’s really special. Thanks so much for chatting with me! I hope to make it to a Palm Wine event soon!
You can support Onyeka by coming to a Palm Wine event. DM Palm Wine on Instagram with ideas for collaboration and support, if you want to host a Palm Wine event in your city, or email Onyeka at palmwineus@gmail.com.