Chevonne Ball on Embracing the Yes

Certified sommelier and French Wine Scholar Chevonne Ball took what would be considered the traditional route, working years in the hospitality industry that would ultimately lead her to a lifestyle of travel, culture, and exploration. While working at the James Beard Award–winning restaurant Le Pigeon in Portland, Oregon, in 2006, she was encouraged by co-owner and wine director Andrew Fortgang to hone her understanding of French wine. “It was the taste and nuances of Burgundy that got me really excited about wine, but I knew at the time that my pocketbook couldn’t afford Burgundy,” she recalls. “So I tended to lean toward the Beaujolais Cru. And I just really loved the stories of these winemakers, and sharing them with guests.”

“I woke up one day and just said, ‘I’m moving to France.’ I had no clue what that looked like or what that meant—I just knew that I was doing it.” 

Ball was in graduate school at the time and decided to study French to fulfill a language requirement. She never saw herself as a Francophile, but in February 2009 she decided to fully immerse herself in French culture. “I woke up one day and just said, ‘I’m moving to France,’ ” she says. “I had no clue what that looked like or what that meant—I just knew that I was doing it.” 

She didn’t want to make the clichéd move to Paris, nor did she want to be completely isolated in a small, off-the-grid village. She chose Lyon—France’s third-largest city, and a place that’s groundbreaking and culturally relevant in its own right, from its historical architecture to rich gastronomy and its proximity to wine country. Ball might not have been able to point out Lyon on a map at the time, but she chose a city that would expose her to more than she could’ve expected. “I started looking around at schools, found this program, and applied—every step of the way, everything just kept saying yes.” By August 2009, she was living in France. 

This past winter, Ball was in Paris, rounding out a three-month European trip for both business and pleasure. As a business owner and entrepreneur, she’s built her company, Dirty Radish Travel and Hospitality Consulting, so that she has the ability not only to be a digital nomad, but to take on projects that allow her to work in and explore different parts of the world. “I’ve been saying for about a year or so now that I’ve wanted to create a life where I’m three months in one place, three months in another,” she says. “When I wrote it down, it didn’t seem like something that I could do. And then I did it; I’m doing it.” 

“There’s something about Gamay that just spoke to me—perhaps it’s the underdog story of Beaujolais, or learning more about these crus and realizing that there’s more than just Beaujolais Nouveau and Beaujolais Villages.”

Early on that first trip to France in 2009, Ball connected with friends from Oregon and found herself falling hard for Beaujolais and, specifically, the Gamay grape. During her time at Le Pigeon in Portland, she poured a variety of Beaujolais wines and met a number of Beaujolais producers. “There’s something about Gamay that just spoke to me—perhaps it’s the underdog story of Beaujolais, or learning more about these crus and realizing that there’s more than just Beaujolais Nouveau and Beaujolais Villages,” she says. “There’s so much more than the bubble gum and banana candy flavor you always hear about. There’s depth and complexity to Beaujolais, and to Gamay as well.” 

This experience was the first of many that gave Ball permission to embrace her new French life to the fullest—befriending chefs, butchers, and cheesemongers, and even playing pétanque with the older locals. From Lyon, she moved to a small village outside of Geneva where she worked on a vineyard for three months, tending to the vines in 2010. Then, after living in France for a little more than a year and with her visa expiring, she returned to Portland, working as general manager at Little Bird Bistro and managing various restaurants over the next seven years, while still yearning to work for herself and travel. In 2017, she launched Dirty Radish to produce immersive travel experiences in both France and Oregon. “The goal with Dirty Radish was to spend more time in France and to give people the experience I was having when I traveled to France,” she says. The pandemic altered the plan somewhat, but she found some unexpected ways to share her knowledge and experiences.

Elaine Chukan Brown—the executive editor U.S. for JancisRobinson.com—works at the intersection of wine, social justice, and personal empowerment, and they participated with Ball on a panel in January 2020 about race and ethnicity in wine in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Brown was immediately drawn to Ball’s passion and enthusiasm for doing collaborative work. “The most exciting businesses and people in wine are those who are able to approach it with multiple, interrelated specialties,” Brown says. “Chevonne’s work exemplifies this, as she loves food, travel, culture, hospitality, and wine.

“I was named one of Wine Enthusiast’s 40 under 40, my social media blew up because of the Black Lives Matter movement, and [it was] me just speaking my truth.”

In the summer of 2020, when social injustice was exponentially magnified in the United States, Ball—along with many other Black beverage and hospitality professionals—spoke out about the injustices she’d experienced while working in wine. “While hitting that refund button on those trips I had planned was really hard, 2020 was such a big year for me,” she says. “I was named one of Wine Enthusiast’s 40 under 40, my social media blew up because of the Black Lives Matter movement, and [it was] me just speaking my truth. My work did pivot in a way, but in a direction that I had always been moving, with more consulting projects.” 

While she calls it pivoting, one could view it as expanding. In July 2020, Grant Coulter of Flaneur Wines called Ball and asked if she wanted two tons of Gamay grapes that he wasn’t going to use. She said yes, and this led to her first wine, Gamay Noir. Just as she agreed to take on this new project, Jason Lett of Eyrie Vineyards asked her to make wine with him, as well, using whole-cluster Pinot Meunier. The wine is currently resting in a single barrel and will be released this fall. 

Lett believes that making meaningful wine requires a big perspective—something that Ball naturally brings to the table. “One of the reasons to work with her was to expand our winemaking boundaries,” he says. “I gave her a suite of varieties to choose from, and she immediately focused on Pinot Meunier, but with this very interesting twist of wanting to ferment it whole cluster. Witnessing her joy in working with the fruit in this novel way was so fun!” 

“I thought it was going to be fruity, quaffable, drinkable-now wine—that’s not what happened. I made a really, really good wine.”

Ball was encouraged to trust her gut, even though she was clearly a novice winemaker. “I set out to make a Cru Beaujolais wine—that’s what I had in my head and what I wanted,” she says. “Never in a million years did I think I would do that. I thought it was going to be fruity, quaffable, drinkable-now wine—that’s not what happened. I made a really, really good wine.” 

Today, Ball aspires to build a business encompassing travel, cultural experiences, and of course, great wine. At the time of this interview in February, she was preparing to deliver a presentation with David Glancy, master sommelier, for the nonprofit group World of Pinot Noir, about several producers from Burgundy, and she was working on an even bigger project combining her love of travel and wine. “She has a distinct bond with each of the people and producers she works with, which creates an effortless and kind of familiarity for her clients and guests,” says Maryam Ahmed, a hospitality strategist and creative entrepreneur, and owner of Maryam + Company. “She understands people. She is hospitality—and that dimension continues to build her success as a wine professional.”

Ball wants to continue to inspire people to be audacious and bold when it comes to their dreams, even if it doesn’t always make sense in the moment. “It’s just a matter of speaking it into existence and saying you’re going to do it,” she says. “Just follow the yes.”