Wine Media Darling’s Reputation Takes a Hit

Winemaker Krista Scruggs is a media darling.

A native of Fresno, California, who got her start as a logistics coordinator for Constellation Brands, she moved to Vermont to pursue her dream of owning her own vineyard and winery.

Scruggs makes unusual natural wines, such as some combining biodynamic hybrid grapes with foraged apples for a wine/cider crossover. Her first vintage was 2017 and immediately she began being lauded by some of the highest-profile media venues a winemaker could hope for.

Wine Enthusiast put her in its Top 40 under 40 list of tastemakers in 2018. Bon Appetit magazine ran a feature in 2019 titled “Krista Scruggs Is Making the Most Exciting, Most Delicious Natural Wine Right Now”. Time magazine called her tasting room, a joint operation with a cider producer, one of its 100 Greatest Places of 2019.

In August 2020, NBC’s Today show did a segment on her. Host Sheinelle Jones opens it with the prophetic line: “Krista Scruggs has always been a bit of a rulebreaker.”

After the Boston Globe did a feature on her in December 2020, Food & Wine magazine gave Scruggs a chance to write her own column for its April 2021 issue, and she wrote “This Land is My Land”. 

“I’m a Black queer woman doing the work of my ancestors here in America,” she wrote. “Everything within the umbrella of Zafa Wines symbolizes anti-colonialism.”

Hitting the buffers

Online, that Food & Wine story now comes with a disclaimer on top: “Since the publication of this story, allegations of sexual harassment at Zafa Wines have come to light, as Zafa Wines has acknowledged on their Instagram page.”

The sexual harassment allegations detailed on an Instagram page devoted to them, called “The Thing Happening in Vermont”, are graphic and disturbing. The page was taken down after a few days, apparently because of negative messages sent to the women running it. But the public callout led Zafa’s respected distributor Jenny & François Selections to post on its website: “Deeply concerned by the recent allegations towards Krista Scruggs, the Zafa winery owner, we’ve suspended our representation of this brand while the authorities and us investigate these matters further.”

The sexual harassment allegations are not the only problems looming for Scruggs and Zafa.

Her newfound celebrity brought to light other troubles, most notably that she operated from 2017 – her first vintage – to November 2020 without a state license to make wine. That month, Vermont’s Division of Liquor Control issued her a cease-and-desist letter to stop making and selling alcoholic beverages, according to the Vermont newspaper Seven Days.

Despite this, she was raising money from investors also until November 2020, when Vermont’s Department of Financial Regulation also ordered her to cease and desist.

“The Department’s investigation thus far has found that Scruggs marketed Zafa in investment materials without disclosing certain material risks as required by Vermont law,” the state’s website reads. “Specifically, because Zafa was openly manufacturing, bottling, selling and distributing wine, a reasonable investor would have justifiably assumed the company had all necessary state and federal liquor licenses to do so. In fact, although Zafa did not have the necessary licenses, it informed prospective investors in a risk disclosure document that it did not expect compliance with government regulation to have a material adverse effect on its operating results.”

© Zafa Wines
| Scruggs’ Zafa wines grabbed attention for their unusual composition and natural ethos.

On March 24, the Vermont Department of Liquor and Lottery belatedly issued four licenses to Zafa, Seven Days reported. The paper also added this tidbit: “Scruggs must notify the commissioner of the Department of Liquor and Lottery within 48 hours if the ‘Applicant is charged with additional criminal and/or civil violation(s) (beyond those served on or about March 10, 2021) and/or convicted of a criminal and/or civil violation(s)’.”

Whatever Scruggs was charged with on March 10 has not yet been revealed, though the Seven Days story also says Vermont assistant attorney general Jacob Humbert suggested that before granting a license, the Department should consider “Scruggs’ alleged ‘activities related to securing a credit card in the name’ of another person.”

Scruggs did not respond to a request from Wine-Searcher for comment. Her attorney Heather Ross told Seven Days: “If there are criminal charges, that is a prime example of Krista, as a Black woman, being treated differently and more harshly than others.”

Breaking the rules

In the Today show segment, Scruggs said: “When tradition doesn’t represent you, I think you have no choice but to break those rules.”

Scruggs wrote in Food & Wine that in Vermont, she is only the 18th Black farmer, out of 7000 farms, to own land. Her 56-acre farm on Isle La Motte is apparently currently held for her by the Vermont Land Trust, “which will hold the land for me for the next three to five years as I build my business until I can take full ownership of it”, she wrote. The Trust has not yet issued a public statement about the licensing issues.

Two years ago, Scruggs was the toast of the US natural wine world and the small, collegial Vermont wine scene.

In the 2019 Bon Appetit article, Marisa Ross wrote that she first tried Scruggs’ provocatively titled dry pétillant-naturel wine Jungle Fever at a party in Oakland. The wine was made from La Crescent, a cold-tolerant hybrid grape created at University of Minnesota in 1988. Ross wrote: “It tasted like a pineapple that had been salted, lightly misted in tanning oil, and struck by lightning in the bottle. It was tropical and inviting but with such racing acidity that I was lusting for another glass before I finished the first. ‘Who made this?!’ I cried. The crowd parted, and there was Krista Scruggs.”

Note that Ross tasted the wine first. It’s an important part of her story, and it’s striking because most of the other media entities that reported on her apparently did not. Scruggs says her approach is to make completely different wines in each vintage, based on her emotions or, according to San Francisco’s KGO TV, songs or films she likes. KGO’s segment on the gay culture show “Outstanding” shows some of the wines: they’re all cloudy, with colors ranging from fizzy dark purple to murky blood orange. But at the end, host Jesse Tyler Ferguson says: “And I for one can’t wait to try a glass. Or three.” The Today show doesn’t talk about how the wine tastes, nor does the Globe feature.

In Bon Appetit, Ross later visits Vermont with Scruggs, and writes: “On the drive back to Burlington, Scruggs raved about La Crescent and ranted about how underrated it was. She lamented over exes and excitedly told me of new releases she was dedicating to new loves. Near tears, she gushed gratitude for her community in Vermont: Her friends who produce Shacksbury, one of Vermont’s most popular ciders, gave her a personal loan to open her new cellar and tasting room in Burlington, and her apple supplier, Carl Cobb of Canamak Farms, helped her secure a lease of 40 acres on Grand Isle to plant 10 acres of vines and two acres of apple trees.”

In contrast to the seeming outpouring of community support two years ago, now many of those who celebrated Scruggs’ accomplishments as a queer BIPOC woman are struggling with recent accusations.

An excerpt from one of the stories posted last week on “The Thing Happening in Vermont” describes the dilemma they face: “She has been lauded as a visionary and a barrier breaker, and her wines have been praised in nearly every esteemed outlet – though rarely if ever tasted by those who have helped to build her up as the Great Black Hope of the too white, too male wine world … And herein lies the complicated question at hand. As the call to interrogate systems of sexism, oppression and white supremacy have gained a mainstream foothold in all corners of popular culture and most assuredly in the wine and food worlds, there is no clear path to holding a queer BIPOC woman accountable for her myriad transgressions … This is a rare instance where there’s little doubt that Krista would have been ‘cancelled’ immediately if she’d been a white guy. But our desperation to get behind a cause without fact checking that cause has provided a smoke screen for her bad behavior.”

This story was edited on April 9 to clarify Scruggs’ license status.