Continents apart from one another, two farming families aim to reinvent themselves on their land. One family—an elegant French matriarch and the son she raised among her vines—tends a centuries-old, biodynamic vineyard in the Southern Rhône. Across the ocean in Humboldt, California, another family carefully manage a state-recognized, organic cannabis farm. APPELLATIONS interweaves their stories, urging comparisons between France’s revered winemaking tradition and the artisan culture emerging alongside the legal cannabis industry. But both farmers—the vintner and the pot-grower—face uncertainty. Can weed—long relegated to the criminal shadows—become the new wine? And can the ancient French winemaking industry survive intact into the twenty-first century, as climate change and a new generation of millennial winemakers challenge the old guard? Two sets of farmers, separated by vast gulfs of culture, language and tradition, navigate common challenges.
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