We Never Fold the Same Origami Twice (Anders Frederik Steen)

We Never Fold the Same Origami Twice is the second volume of notes on wine-making and wine-drinking by Anders Frederik Steen, covering the five-year period between 2021 and 2025 and follows Poetry is Growing in Our Garden. Together, they form a long-term record of an individual winemaker—and the non-linear learning process that’s ultimately produced a range of highly sought-after wines—but also the broader context in which he works: a natural wine movement in the midst of change and expansion and a reaffirmation of its ideals.

Here we see the infinite variables that must be contended with in the making of a wine. Countless natural processes are unfolding, some perceptible to the attentive observer, while others are still to be pushed up against and hypothesised. Other variables are less subtle, as in 2021 when a 15-minute hailstorm wipes out the entirety of his harvest. Knowledge is constantly shared between a tight-knit community of producers, but Anders is also looking outwards in his travels to the US, Japan, South Korea, and the rest of Europe, to see where his wines are received and how others are working in their own way towards a common sensibility. In the end, we see how these insights are applied in a way that isn’t meant to dominate or divert the wines but to mould the winemaker around them.