From City to Soil
An NYC expat’s journey in regenerative farming and natural winemaking in Italy.
Hello dear readers,
We’ve had a rough start to 2025. As a native Angeleno, it’s been incredibly painful to watch my city endure such devastation from the recent wildfires under a president who does not take climate change seriously. You might be wondering, as I have: what would life be like in another country? While I’m committed to staying in and rebuilding L.A., the urgency to find more sustainable ways of living grows—making it more important than ever to explore what other cultures and ways of life get right.
This interview issue of Change Notice offers one possible answer through the story of my friend Joy Kull, who left New York City to start La Villana, a regenerative winery and farm in Italy. Joy began making natural wine in 2015, many years before it became the go-to drink for millennials and Gen Z—a shift that reflects a broader reconsideration of how we drink. As interest in lower-intervention, more transparent alcohol choices grows, so does the conversation about sustainability in winemaking. A few years after starting La Villana, Joy integrated regenerative agriculture into her process—something I knew very little about. So, when I was visiting her at the beginning of the year, I sat down with Joy to learn more about the regenerative agriculture movement, her hot takes on natural wine, and what life is like in rural Italy.
For some background, Joy and I met in the halls of Cornell’s famed School of Hotel Administration. While many of our classmates sported polos and loafers, Joy had a nose piercing and wore colorful scarves made of block-print fabric, so I decided we should be friends. We bonded over our love of travel, good food, and hip hop, as well as the shared experience of being middle children in eccentric immigrant families with entrepreneurial dads. We waitressed at the same college-town restaurant and spent holidays together at her family’s home in Connecticut whenever I couldn’t make it back to L.A.
After college, we both worked catering jobs in L.A. before joining startups in NYC—me at the travel search engine KAYAK, Joy at Gilt Group’s wine division, Gilt Wine. However, in 2014 our paths diverged: Joy quit her job, took a leap of faith, and moved to Italy to learn how to make wine. She apprenticed at a winery in Gradoli, a tiny town on the edge of Lake Bolsena, about two hours outside of Rome. There, she fell in love with the terroir, rich with volcanic rock and ash, the craft of winemaking, and her now-husband, a jovial shepherd (yes, an actual herder of sheep) with the voice of an opera tenor named Simone. Inspired by all three, Joy decided to start her own winery and regenerative farm.
Around 2017, I began noticing La Villana’s bottles in natural wine shops across NYC and L.A. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed Joy’s wine in restaurants in Mexico City, Rome, and Boston. There’s something particularly special about sipping wine crafted by a close friend—the same friend who TA’d your wine seminar, danced with you to Beyoncé countless times, and walked with you to class through Ithaca’s majestic gorges.
From a cultural perspective, I’m intrigued by the rise of natural wine. In the '90s and 2000s, commercial wineries sold a glamorous image—think sipping a crisp Pinot Grigio and imagining yourself on a breezy, sunlit veranda in Tuscany. Today, the focus has shifted to the artisan behind the wine, the wine itself, and the unique branding that shines through in the beautiful variety of labels found in natural wine shops. You see similar trends in other CPG industries, like fragrance, coffee, spices, and tea, where the emphasis has shifted to independent labels and creators.
The general change in consumer preferences, combined with the growing buzz around regenerative agriculture, inspired me to reach out to my former colleague, Alina Zolotoreva. She runs Fresh Future Consulting, where she supports brands scaling regenerative agriculture. I learned that in addition to curbing carbon emissions, regenerative agriculture improves the quality of our food. According to Alina,
Regenerative agriculture is gaining serious momentum in the U.S. as more consumers wake up to the impact of food on their health and the planet. People want food that’s not just organic but also grown in ways that restore soil health, boost biodiversity, and pack in more nutrients. Early research suggests that crops grown on regenerative farms contain higher levels of essential vitamins and minerals compared to conventionally grown crops.1 A study found that food grown using regenerative practices had 11-34% higher nutritional content, and meat from animals raised on regenerative farms contained more omega-3 fatty acids.2 While more research is needed, strong indicators show that improving soil health directly boosts the nutrient density of the final crop.3
Certifications like the Regenerative Organic Certification are helping build consumer trust, with companies like Patagonia Foods leading the way in educating consumers and creating demand. Patagonia has launched a range of products featuring regeneratively grown ingredients, from beer to pasta, showcasing the potential of regenerative farming across multiple categories.4 Meanwhile, states like California are stepping up to define what regenerative agriculture really means.5
And now, for some insights and inspiration from Joy:
Q: What motivated you to adopt regenerative agriculture at La Villana, and how do those practices impact the soil, vines, and overall ecosystem?
Thinking back, the adoption of regenerative agriculture came from a moment of real anxiety related to climate change, probably in 2020-2021. I started as a grape grower and winemaker, but I felt very disconnected from the natural ecosystem around me. I felt like I was just farming and taking from the soils to make wine. It didn't feel whole to me. I was wondering how I could help in my own little world.
I couldn't necessarily donate money or much time since I'm farming constantly. So I asked myself: how can I make where I am better for whoever comes after me? Regenerative agriculture was the response—you hear it in the name, right? My farming regenerates my soils. That's my number one priority now. I farm to regenerate soils, and as a byproduct and bonus, I get grapes out of it.
Q: And that was a big shift from when you first set out to make wine?
Yes. When I worked at another winery before starting my own, they were doing biodynamic farming, so that's what I learned and thought I would do. But it wasn't resonating with me. The shift from farming biodynamic or organic to regenerative is actually a very small shift on the scale. I'm not going from conventional farming—at worst, I was doing nothing, which is still negative because you're still harvesting from the soils each year. I wasn't adding things that are bad for the soils like chemicals, but I needed to be more proactive. It's not only about growing the best grapes anymore. I'm spending time learning how I can improve my soils and the whole environment around me.
Q: What is the benefit to the environment and soils? What's the impact?
Farming, particularly tilling soil, is a significant source of carbon release into the atmosphere. With regenerative farming, the goal is to sequester more carbon into the soils. This happens by regenerating your soils and creating a humus layer on top that you're not tilling or killing off. It acts like a sponge, absorbing more water and carbon from the atmosphere instead of releasing it. (The humus layer is a dark, organic layer of soil formed by the breakdown of plant and animal remains.)
Q: So you’ve been practicing regenerative farming since 2021 or so? Can you go into more detail around the practices and impact of what you’ve been doing?
I've probably been doing parts of it longer since I've never really tilled my soils. But the more recent proactive part is animal integration, which helps regenerate the soil. The whole idea is to recreate healthy topsoil on your land, which means it is composed of 4-5% of organic matter. When I started, I was lucky if mine was at ½ percent given the prevalence of sand and volcanic rock in our soil. So I’ve been on a mission to increase the organic matter in my topsoil. I do that by roller crimping, incorporating mulched matter, and by letting Simone’s sheep graze the grass that we let grow in and around the vineyards.
Q: What challenges have you faced in implementing these practices?
My biggest challenge is feeling like I don't know enough. It's a world where you need to be an incredible scientist-biologist to really know even a little. I'm always thinking "I don't know enough, I'm not doing enough." That's my constant anxiety. Finding reliable information is difficult because every scenario is so specific. That's why there are consultants, but they’re expensive, so I'm trying to navigate that by finding free courses and people I can ask about my specific scenarios. I've been farming for about 10 years total, but focusing on regenerative agriculture for only 2-3 years. The basics are the basics, but there's still so much to learn to do it deeper and more precisely.
This means, I need to scientifically understand my soil—what's missing, what's not missing, what do the plants need. Do they need more phosphorus? More nitrogen? Are there other issues in my soils? Like drainage issues in different areas? Am I not harvesting enough? There are so many small adjustments you can make that affect your soil. I think part of the training of my brain in this is recording and tracking. Because if you don't track, you have no idea, right? You have to start somewhere. You have to start taking lab tests of your soils yearly. You have to see what they're telling you and take actions from there. You can't just make educated guesses.
Q: Moving on to natural wine—can you explain what natural wine means to you and how it differs from conventional winemaking? And in that answer, can you also talk about biodynamic wine and how that differs too?
Let’s start with biodynamic wine. Biodynamic is a certification from the Demeter organization that covers both farming practices and cellar work, though it's mostly farming. There are specific treatments and biodynamic sprays, following certain cycles, and integrating animals is now required, at least in Europe. In the cellar, there's a limit to what products you can use to modify or correct your wine.
There's a really cool diagram I can share that shows what's allowed. In conventional wine, you can use over 300 things to modify your wine. With organic, it's around 100. Biodynamic is maybe 20 or 30. And then there's natural wine, where the only debate is about adding sulfites. (Diagram linked here).
I’m not fond of the term "natural wine," to be honest. It got latched on early, but it's a misleading name because there's nothing natural about making wine. The natural evolution of a grape is to turn to vinegar—we're stopping that evolution. But that's the term we're stuck with. For me, natural wine at its basic level is wine made just with grapes and maybe sulfites for stabilization. No clarifying agents, no mechanical processes. It's hand-harvested, it's artisanal. I think you should be able to connect it clearly to the farmers.
Q: Have you had to make compromises between the ideals of natural winemaking and the realities of running a vineyard?
Yes, I debate constantly about whether to add sulfites to my wines. I've stepped away from this purist idea of not adding sulfites because the reality is I run a business, and I want to be able to ship my wine across the world. When I don't need to add it, I won't, but if I need to, I will.
Q: Can you explain what sulfites do?
Sulfites stabilize the wine and prevent it from further evolution. For the greatest wines, adding sulfites would be the worst thing you could do because those wines are meant to evolve and age over time. I think there's a place for adding sulfites with young, fun wines that just need to be stable—so they don't become mousy upon arrival in the U.S. after traveling, or develop flaws after being open for a couple hours. For wines that are meant to age beautifully, adding sulfites would be a curse because it holds them back from continuing to evolve in a good way.
Q: How have you seen the natural wine movement evolve over the past few years?
It was on the rise before I landed in the middle of it, and then it just skyrocketed into this really trendy thing. The natural wine market has become really saturated—there are many more winemakers making “natural wine.” It's harder to stand out. It rose so quickly but without proper education. People often don't really understand what natural wine is, and things get marketed as natural wine when they're not necessarily that.
Unfortunately, the entire wine industry is taking a huge hit. In the U.S., wine consumption was down about 15% in 2023—that's billions of liters of wine. This has an impact on natural wine as well.
Q: What are some common misconceptions about natural wine? How do you as a business address them?
One example is people saying "I just want an orange wine" without understanding what that means. Some people actually ask what fruit it's made from, not knowing it's just a macerated white wine. People follow trends without really understanding what they like. I think this is a forever problem in wine—people are afraid to say what they want or trust their own palate. They think they're supposed to like certain things, so they don't trust their own preferences.
Q: How would you advise someone on cultivating their palate?
Honestly, when people come to tastings, some are wine fanatics and that's fun, but the most enjoyable experiences are when people come in saying "I don't know anything about wine." That's perfect! I just want them to tell me what they smell and taste. It doesn't matter what anyone else says—even if all you smell is grapes, that's fine. Just trust yourself, like with anything else. Don't you have your own style in clothes and books? Wine should be the same thing. It should be for you to enjoy, and then go from there. Just taste and have fun with it.
Q: What was the biggest cultural adjustment moving to Italy from the U.S.?
Well, I didn't just move between cultures—I also moved from a city to a tiny town, which is a major part of it. Here, everybody wants to know your business, which was an adjustment for me as someone who values privacy and personal space. Professionally, in the U.S., the opportunities feel endless—you can make money from anything. Here it's more stunted, more bureaucratic. I think that comes with being a really old country. It's not built off of immigrants moving here with nothing. Here, people buy houses for their kids or pass their own houses on without pushing their kids to go out and experience life.
Q: What do you love most about living in Italy and what do you miss about the U.S.?
You know, anytime you move to a place you love vacationing in, it seems like it will be a dream world. But then you have to actually live there. Still, there's a beauty here in nature and history that maybe isn't as present in the U.S. You're living among thousands of years of history that's still such a part of day-to-day life, which is fascinating. And the quality of food is typically much better than what you can get in the U.S.
As for what I miss about the U.S.—sometimes it's the simplicity of having and doing anything you want, when you want. There's always a store open, you can always get what you need. Here it's a bit slower.
Q: What advice would you give to anyone looking to move or start a business in Italy?
Patience, patience, patience. If you want it, you can do it, but you need patience for everything, whether it’s buying a house or starting a business. I think one of the reasons I'm still standing with this business is because I just plowed ahead. That's probably my American mentality—I will find a way. Things just take longer.
Q: What are the most rewarding and challenging parts of building La Villana?
The most rewarding part is that I built my own business and get to create a product that's shared all over the world. To be making something that has this global reach but also creates these special, intimate moments—like someone dining at a restaurant one evening —that's really cool. That connection between me making the wine here, and someone like Leah in Silverlake going to a restaurant and saying "Oh my God, what is this? This wine is so good!" That's the best part.
The most challenging part, aside from the bureaucracy, is climate change. It makes winemaking a bit of a question mark year to year. It's harder for me to see my future clearly because so much is out of my control.
Q: What are your favorite food pairings with your wine?
That's a hard question to answer—it definitely depends on the wine and when I'm drinking it. But the most impactful pairing for me is drinking my wines with cheese made from Simone’s sheep. Sometimes you can just tell it's the same soil, the same terroir. There's just this connection in my mouth between the cheese and the wine—they work so well together. It's hard to explain, but I think that's the coolest pairing.
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