Joanna Foster, Stella Crinita

About
Joanna is a natural winegrower working with regenerative agriculture principally through biodynamic methods. She is an Anglo-Indian woman born in London in 1968. She was nurtured and brought up single-handedly by her activist, macrobiotic, courageous Mother. 

After several years traveling and a short period working with street children in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil she returned to London to study at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London taking a BA in Geography and Development Studies of South Asia. She studied Hindi, became passionate about Social Forestry and participatory decision-making tools, and did her undergraduate research related to gender roles in natural resource management based on experience with a forest-dependent tribal community in the south of India.

In the year 2000, after bringing her second child into the world she completed her MSc in Sustainable Environmental Planning and Management at UCL with her research focusing on bottom-up community-driven policy construction observing processes of urban recyclers in Buenos Aires. 

She went on to work for 7 years in community and environmental projects in both rural and urban areas in Argentina. Within this role, she gained experience at the institutional level and valuable insights through the very sensitive area of working with the community, especially the Toba and Coya Native communities in the Chaco and Jujuy provinces. These projects were focused on breaking barriers of social exclusion using health and human rights as a gateway to initiate that work. 

Her role as a natural wine grower is supported by valuable insight and values resulting from her experience working with the community and their local environments. She is a fervent advocate for social and environmental justice. Making natural wine she finds a coherent path to work in harmony with nature and support sustainable livelihoods in her community. 

She has 3 children and currently lives between Toscana, Italia, and Mendoza, Argentina. 

Social Justice and Environmental Restoration Statement

Stella Crinita is a biodynamic organism of approximately 7 hectares comprising a small forest, rose garden, food forest and orchard, grape-vines, bees, and a forest fungi project. It is situated in Vista Flores, Uco Valley, Mendoza at 1100 masl within the larger biodynamic farm, Finca Tikal Natural from which Stella Crinita sources grapes from approximately 15 hectares. We have worked for approximately 17 years gaining experience and knowledge through the practice of biodynamic agriculture. For the last three years, we have been incorporating a variety of agricultural techniques and practices with the main objective of learning different methods for soil and ecosystem regeneration through building biodiversity, complexity and resilience. We work with heirloom species and are in the process of building our seed bank. We forage the spontaneous herbs and flowers that grow alongside those that we planted and we use them either raw or fermented. We also have a fermentation project called Awa Viva, currently elaborating on Kombuchas from the Andes. 

Our biodynamic orchard and apiary, fruit trees, and fungi space are essential to promote animal, plant, mineral, and microbiological diversity that is integrated with our vines.

We conceive of Stella Crinita as a living and agricultural organism with the capacity for self-regulation and regeneration in the face of the different socio-environmental problems that we face in these times. We experiment, observe, and record in the hope that our learning can be interesting and beneficial to others in our community and future generations. 

The result of all this work in the field is reflected in our wines. Lively, healthy natural wines with history. Our wines are not filtered or fined and have no added SO2. 

We are committed to environmental and social justice. Our actions aim to reach beyond our farm by connecting with our community, schools, local grassroots orgs, local networks of producers, and local leaders in order to learn from each other and find new ways to change our local production system in the face of powerful agroindustry and exclusionary dominating forces. Probably the most powerful tool that we all hold is our role as consumers. Therefore we are constantly looking for ways through wine and our associated productions to create and sustain the conversation about the importance of what we consume and how it is produced. Some of our wines are direct advocates for a particular organization or person that we want to celebrate and communicate with.