I won an award—with under 2,000 Instagram followers🗣️🍷

I can’t tell you how cool it was to be recognized by Wine Enthusiast Magazine as one of this year’s “Future Forty,” their list of tastemakers to watch in the beverage world. At least, I couldn’t tell you until this Tuesday, when the list dropped and I was allowed to let everyone know that my work for Modo di Bere is on it!

The online profile went up on Tuesday, with beautiful illustrations of all the honorees by the artist Brittany Norris . It will be even cooler to see the print edition of the magazine when it comes out in October.

I do love the printed word. Wine Enthusiast noted my poetry degree—fun fact!—and said this about me:

“Bannister tells stories about wine through an artful, almost lyrical lens.”

I’ve been in the wine industry for a long time, but it’s been a little over two years since I left sales and service to become Press, with the mission to connect biodiversity (think, grapes) and linguistic variety.

Considering that Modo di Bere is an independent media project, how cool that we’re receiving this level of recognition so soon! It’s a lovely validation of this idea that I had to share the local culture stories I love about language and wine.

With a growing cast of collaborators , I’ve produced three seasons of the podcast—really six, since there's the English pod and the Italian –published fourteen essays for the magazine, edited endless short form videos , and filmed a series of regional wine documentaries on three continents.

As we celebrate this lovely award, I’m most excited that this project is catching on because you’re here, reading this!

Speaking of which, how did you get here? This question will make more sense if you keep reading below. Spoiler alert: I suspect most of our audience got here by word of mouth, not from social media, but I’m keeping an open mind.

By sharing this newsletter today, I’m hoping to reduce the sense of pressure that many people feel to become social media phenoms. 

If this poll comes back showing that you all got here because of the reel where I got misted like a lettuce at an outdoor cafe in Spain, I’ll follow up with a revised hypothesis. :-)

Creative Life is a 🪂

When I read the Wine Enthusiast profile on Tuesday, it felt amazing to be described in print as the “Founder, Filmmaker and Host” of Modo di Bere. Especially the filmmaker part. I still wake up every day and can’t believe that’s actually happening!

The instant I came up with the idea for Modo di Bere, I said out loud, “That’s a good idea. I am going to do that.” However, switching to the wine press track with an independent media project was a big change for me, and I was as nervous as I was committed.

I’d previously approached wine as my grown-up straight job, complete with super-serious sommelier certifications. (I teach for one of those programs now, and appreciate their less hierarchical model.) I expected a wine career would be an avenue where I did not have to build the infrastructure for all my own opportunities, which is how I always described my music career .

Even as I’d begun to suspect that “building the infrastructure for all your own opportunities” is actually 1) just life, 2) something I actually enjoy as long as I understand what’s happening, giving myself permission to pursue wine as a creative career still felt like jumping out of a plane and waiting for the parachute to catch up.

Every time a course of action feels ambitious and I commit to it anyway, I text my filmmaking partner Emilia Aghamirzai a parachute emoji. This can mean anything from “Yikes, but let’s go!” to “Holy shit, we actually did it!!”

^ This trailer was worth a few 🪂 🪂

Of course winning a big award makes it feel like my idea is working out!

I had the best time on Tuesday, sitting on my fire escape reading the profiles for the other WE Future Forty recipients—so many women!!—and following everyone on Instagram. Past recipients of this award include a ton of bev world people I admire , including Modo di Bere podcasts guests Abe Zarate and Dr. Rachel Allison .

• Check out Abe’s episode

• Check out Rachel’s episode: Part 1 and Part 2

But with everything I was feeling on Tuesday, it kept floating into my mind that I was chosen for this list with fewer than 2,000 Instagram followers.

Why is today’s newsletter about Instagram?

After getting the podcast off its feet, I spent an extreme amount of time in 2023 trying to win at Instagram. Posting a reel every single day for eight months was time and energy I don’t precisely regret, but it broke me a little.

In between travel adventures, I spent hours editing and posting on my couch, feeling like I was working really hard, but without any quantifiable picture of what gaining more Instagram followers would actually mean for Modo di Bere.

In some ways, I couldn’t have picked a better time to get into independent media. But the timing of my launch was an issue when it came to my decision to prioritize social media. Creators who got famous on social media during Covid warned everyone that their successes would never have happened with new changes to the algorithm.

I didn’t listen.

Watching the account grow, however painstakingly, was almost too satisfying. The rewards were intermittent, the algorithm a capricious master exhibiting the “come here, go away” behavior that gets humans hooked on figuring out what the creature might respond to next.

And other favored creators were always there, just ahead of me, apparently doing fantastically well, as I scrolled the feed “for research.” If they had figured it out, why couldn’t I?

Do you have a number you feel compelled to reach on Instagram?

I do.

Something about these apps’ design plus our psychology makes those numbers at the top of our accounts feel like popularity thermometers that compel us towards comparison. I am not immune.

I know that reaching 10,000 Instagram followers will not change my life. The more I work on growing this project, the more I believe it probably wouldn’t even change my business, at least not that much.

Actually, it did affect my business, in one arbitrary, self-imposed way: I privately decided that 10,000 instagram followers would confer the legitimacy required to begin approaching any sponsors, including for non-Instagram platforms. Why did I put off building a media kit? I was waiting for that magic number.

This decision started to feel as stupid as putting off a photo session that Emilia offered me for my birthday in 2024 for over a year in case I lost weight. I’d managed to film a TV show with complete confidence, but somehow photos tripped me up. Such a sad decision! Don’t do that! Of course they turned out wonderful.

Do not put off LIFE over “Vanity Metrics!”

As I navigated my obsession with growing Modo di Bere’s instagram account, I bristled when marketing educators downplayed follower numbers as “vanity metrics.” As if follower counts don’t matter at all, when it feels so much like they do!

Agreeing that social metrics are “only vanity” feels like paying lip service to ending toxic diet culture while still privately greeting each spring convinced that this will be the year we change for our bikinis.

But that’s nonsense.

I once had a self-styled music manager who openly told me that the skinnier I was, the more successful my career would be. This was absolute garbage, and every second I spent believing him was 1) pure misery and 2) energy that did nothing for my music career and everything to give this person an undue level of control.

Somehow, winning a big award with my cute little instagram following makes me want to go up to all such dudes and say “Ha!”

I have been so much happier since I dragged my creative momentum away from “social” and applied it to producing meatier items, like this newsletter. As I work towards establishing this project in less algorithmic formats, I feel so much more confident that the hours spent will translate to reaching more people—and encourage them to click through and peruse the entire platform .

Whatever format you perform on to boost your personal or professional goals, I have a modest yet radical proposal:

Can we please put a metaphoric square of tape over our follower counts and focus on making cool stuff?

I’ve heard people with tens of thousands of instagram followers talk shit about their own numbers, and I’ve had people look at my account and say, “Wow, you have a lot of followers!”

I’ve done collaborations with creators many times my size and gotten zero new follows, and I’ve had some video I made at eight in the morning on a Calabrian beach explode because the fishermen all sent it to every one of their cousins.

I was interviewing them about their local dialect. which was awesome, but in this particular video, nothing interesting happens. We’re just all waving at the camera like, “Hi Mom!”

In my experience, social media’s rewards are too random for the time investment they require. I also resent that these apps work by harnessing our hopes and dreams of fitting in and looking good, a cost that feels hidden to me, which is why I’m talking about it today.

TikTok, of course, feels more fun and less airbrushed. As an experiment, I never pushed TikTok like I did Instagram. It grew almost as much, without any promotion from me. My favorite thing about TikTok is that the Calabrian fishermen are all on there. They call it “Ticky Tocky.”

Then again, I could hardly bear to post on TikTok after the “All hail” message they wrote about the current American leader.

Which is a great example of why our hopes and dreams as creators, storytellers—and humans trying to connect with each other—should be held apart from all that’s happening in tech.

As much as we can, let’s build our own infrastructures, proudly and intentionally, to reach our fellow humans with stories that matter.

Here’s how you can support mine:

For one-time support, you can Buy Me a Coffee. We don’t only drink wine over here!

#WEFutureForty is Instagram Gold

I’m not saying that social media can’t be helpful. It’s (probably?) still necessary for most people trying to build recognition online. Many of the Wine Enthusiast honorees have a distinctive social media presence, even if—thankfully!—we’re not all super popular on there.

The whole experience of #WEFutureForty is optimized for Instagram. I appreciated the shareable resources, like a social-sized version of our cool illustrations by Brittany Norris. Instagram was essentially the venue where the reward experience exists. (I’m sure many accolades “exist” on instagram too, not to mention so many moments in our lives.)

Each of our profiles in the Wine Enthusiast article resolves with our Instagram handle. (Only Chris Walden of Vineyard Dresser Management appears to have opted out of the ‘gram—a true maverick!)

When the news of the award came out, I got something like 30 new followers in one day, possibly a career record. And all I felt was relief that I had unhooked my hopes and dreams from Instagram.

As I look to the fall, I’m excited about writing and sending out this newsletter, to relaunching the magazine, to sharing new podcast episodes, and to accessing post-production support so we can complete and release the documentary series.

Wine Enthusiast Future Forty was an Instagram gravy-train—and what a relief it is to treat Instagram like gravy.

Creative life is a purple 🖍️

When I imagine a creative life, I always think about is Harold and his purple crayon. Did you ever read that children’s book? Harold takes his purple crayon and draws the world he walks through. I think that story is so beautiful.

I conceived of Modo di Bere as an independent media project to make shit happen, the way I always did—every time I decided to do things myself instead of waiting for a vague and capricious force to open a gate.

My chosen creative path feels the most magical when I realize that nothing is magic. It’s all work, but it’s the work I enjoy, and I feel so lucky to be doing it.

I hope this letter encourages everybody to keep finding ways to reach each other with our stories, no matter what happens with tech, AI, TikTok, big media, or whatever. Find your purple crayon, draw your own path, and walk it.

What’s next for Modo di Bere?

After building a number of things behind the scenes this summer, we have a ton of new things to share with you:

• Season 4 of the Podcast

• New essays for Modo di Bere Magazine

• A lot more about that Italian wine in Nigeria story

• Plenty of new videos (never fear!) and updates on Modo di Bere TV

But for now, thank you for reading this far, and for allowing me to share this cool award news with you. Wine and language culture stories are being recognized as the force of nature that they are, and I hope that makes all of us feel fantastic.

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