When my friend Micha told me her friend Adam’s book was the favorite book she read in 2022, I took her words with a grain of salt and simultaneously added the title to my to-read list.
Part of me feels like I’m back on the elementary school playground, playing a game of telephone, but it was like the words Micha whispered in my ear came true: Adam’s book did end up being one of my favorite books too.
So, the book. It’s hard to put Adam McHugh’s Blood from a Stone: A Memoir of How Wine Brought Me Back from the Dead. As the subtitle suggests, it’s a memoir, digging into the personal and the spiritual of his life. But then, it’s a story of wine - the history of wine, the healing of wine, and every bit and part of wine you didn’t know you actually wanted to know about a bottle of stomped-upon grapes. It’s a story of place, of California and Washington state and the south of France too, and it’s a story of death and resurrection in a thousand different, little and big ways.
The good and honest truth is that it’s utterly captivating. Enjoy this bite-sized q&a with Adam, but also, buy the book and follow him on Instagram if you’re not already.
Cara Meredith: How are you coloring outside of the lines, all over again, when it comes to your writing and this book in particular?
Adam McHugh: It's a genre-defying book, that's for sure. Lines need not apply here. It's a memoir, it's a wine book, it's a history book, it's travel writing, it's a book about career change and transition and loss and grief and disappointment. It's a book about coming home. Oh, and it's funny. What?
Cara Meredith: You wrote a book! Tell us! What upside-down idea were you trying to turn right side up again?
Adam McHugh: Really I am telling the story of how I have tried to turn my upside-down life right-side-up again. I worked in hospice as a chaplain and grief counselor for several years, and spending night after night with dying and grief changed me in so many ways but eventually just flattened me. I went on a desperate search for life and abundance and eventually I found it in the grapevines, the dirt, and the people of a place called the Santa Ynez Valley.
Cara Meredith: Okay. We talk so much about audience when it comes to book-writing, but what did you learn about yourself along the way?
Adam McHugh: I am such a cerebral person, and it's so natural for me to keep my distance from everything and everyone. But that just wasn't working for me anymore. I reached the end of that lifestyle. This book is about coming closer, in every way.
Cara Meredith: Putting ourselves out there when it comes to storytelling is always a risk. What is the biggest, fleshiest risk you took with this book?
Adam McHugh: This book is wildly vulnerable, which is risky and scary by itself, but then when you consider that I wrote it about my current life and surroundings, it goes to the level of terrifying. People who live and work right around me, in this little farming community, are reading all about my unresolved life - my successes and joys, but also my mistakes, broken relationships, and career failures. Who's idea was this again?
Cara Meredith: Publishing a book is a shiny milestone! What else are you celebrating in your ordinary, everyday life?
Adam McHugh: We have been saturated with rain this winter, and it has been a rare California season of hygge. I am a Pacific Northwest boy at heart, and this is good for my soul.
P.S. Y’all know the
I mentioned earlier is worth a follow. Show her some love by following her on Substack today!P.P.S. All of these brilliant questions (and the sub theme as well) stem from interviews that the equally brilliant
originally created. I adapted them for this space, but the origins are all hers!