Issue I.
12 . 2025
Letter from the editor
Dear readers, drinkers,
This feels like a long time coming.
It is no coincidence to me that so many great works of literature, political negotiations, founding myths, and masterpieces of art contain at their center a good bottle (or several) of wine. Plato drank wine at his Symposium. The Devil poured fountains of it at his ball in Moscow. Faust watched in awe as Mephisto conjured up vintages—and tricks—for a group of drunken fools. Jesus Christ, for his own sake, turned his blood into wine (or maybe the other way around?). In these pages, some of my favorite writers and artists take on the mantle of this oenological literary tradition.
Three years ago, I founded Cora’s Wine Club because I was bored. Well, okay, also because I loved wine, and because I knew I had something special to share. In the years since, we’ve grown into an international group with eight chapters in three countries and over 200 members. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the six people who joined me that first night in September of 2022.
We were recent graduates, several of us unemployed, all packed into my little studio on East Ninth Street in Manhattan. We could hardly fit all our wine on my kitchen table. In the years since, we’ve traveled to wineries and festivals around the world, hosted salons, bar crawled across Europe, and tonight we’re onto our newest adventure: this literary journal, MOUTHFEEL.
Our designer, visual director, and one of my very best friends, Hadley Crow, and I picked the name MOUTHFEEL for a few reasons. It's an important and often overlooked part of any wine: beyond taste, what does a wine feel like? Swish it around a little. Give it a try. Learn what a tannin is (or ask me later). Further, though, what does it feel like to talk about wine? To read these stories out loud, to share this journal with a friend (which, of course, I implore you to do)? Also, you know, the innuendo. Get freaky with it.
All of these pieces tell a fresh, exciting story about wine we’re excited to share with you. They’re flashes of wine-fueled nights, reviews of our hosts’ favorite bottles of the year, things we heard through the grapevine. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Thank you, Hadley, for your help. Thank you to all our Wine Club hosts for their continued dedication to this silly project of mine. Thank you to our contributors, and to everyone else who submitted; may this be the beginning of a long-lasting creative relationship. And thank you to all the readers, the members of Wine Club, everyone who’s ever let me explain how to properly taste wine or pick a bottle for the table.
Cheers,
Cora Enterline
Editor-in-Chief
Un Bicchiere Per un Dio, Dominique Boccanfuso, 2025
Contributor Bios
Dominique Buccanfuso is the founder of Real Piece of Junk, a jewelry brand built from repurposed secondhand finds. When she’s not making jewelry, she’s working as a freelance creative, taking photographs, playing dress-up, or scavenging for more junk.
Jon Baird writes from Paris, France, where wine and relationships go hand in hand. When he is not writing, he is probably enjoying a Sancerre in the sun.
Raimer Rugh can be summed up in Rembrandt's self-portraits. All of them. And in the scumble you might find the Drift & Dribble Miscellany.
Nate Nocete (b. 2000, Saint Petersburg, FL) is a Filipino-American design historian and photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. His photographic work focuses on intimate, atmospheric moments within everyday social rituals, capturing how taste and gathering shape memory. He is currently a fellow at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and a research assistant at Parsons School of Design, where he is pursuing an MA in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies. His broader interests include queer material culture, drawing, and visual archives. In his free time, Nate also volunteers at the Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library. Nate’s photography is featured throughout this Mouthfeel issue in collages and edits.
Hana Lainn Flamm grew up surrounded by wine and magazine clippings. She misses the Trader Joe's wine shop at Union Square.
Cosmo Hinsman is a writer from Oregon with degrees from NYU and the University of Florida. He currently works as a schooner deckhand on the Hudson River.
Lyle Shipp is an aspiring comic artist and birder who lives in Edinburgh with their smart writer girlfriend Ella. They are the proud first member of Cora’s Wine Club.