Adventures in Viticulture: Madi Franklin’s winding road to winemaking
Somewhere in the undeveloped lands between downtown Hanoi and the Noi Bai airport, Madison “Madi” Franklin crossed her arms, tucked her head and deliberately fell backward off the moving motorcycle—she thought she was experiencing an abduction attempt. It was the second of three rides on motorbikes, during two of which she was a passenger, that a biographer would certainly use in media res style to start chapters in the narrative of her life.
Franklin is currently the Viticulture and Enology Coordinator at the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, but before being the person responsible for helping grape growers and winemakers do the best job possible in our state, she spent time working and learning in Vietnam, Greece and Italy.
The first of her motorbike rides occurred shortly after the 22-year-old Oklahoma State grad arrived in Hanoi to teach English. Rather than stay cooped up in her hotel with the brothel on the fourth floor, she did what she’d been doing since her childhood in El Paso, Texas: She went exploring.
“It was about 110 degrees that day,” she says. “The hotel had no glass in the windows, and I was going to be there for six days. I found an expat group on Facebook, and had a guy bring me a small motorcycle. He asked if I knew how to ride it.”
There were three rules for riding a motorcycle in Hanoi, the man told her. She wrote them in a journal she kept later, but that day she committed them to memory: 1. Don’t look in the side mirrors—everything that matters is in front of you; 2. Keep two fingers on the brake; 3. Don’t stop honking.
“He said I’d be better off removing the side mirrors, so I did,” Franklin says. Other than nearly smashing into a mango stand at speed, the first ride was uneventful once she got the hang of it.
What the rides do narratively is provide insight into Franklin’s interior life, a place dominated by metaphors that she concretizes into ways to be in the world.
“I’m a big metaphor person,” she says. “I was sitting on the twin bed in the Hanoi hotel room when I realized I needed to turn off the switch in my head that controls fear, anxiety and worry. That’s how I got on the motorcycle.”
Not everyone has that switch, or the ability to deactivate it. It’s possible it’s formed in childhood, and for Franklin that is most likely. Her mother, now retired, worked as a DEA agent in El Paso when Franklin was a child, and it’s worth noting that El Paso isn’t one of the safest cities for DEA agents.
“My mother kept me in the loop because she worked undercover, and a lot of her work was with the cartels,” Franklin says. “I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone what she did, so she told me to tell them she was a florist or janitor. She impressed on me the seriousness of what she did.”
So when the attempted abduction happened — the second motorbike ride — she simply fell off the motorcycle, gathered herself and ran to find another ride to the airport, where she was meeting her family who’d come for a visit. She’s matter-of-fact as she relates the story today, even providing a Charades-style demonstration during the narrative. That ability to compartmentalize made it easier for the then 23-year-old to decide she wasn’t ready to return to the U.S. when she left Vietnam. Franklin was over the noise and busyness of Hanoi, but she thought returning to America would be more of the same.
Instead, she went to Athens, and then the island of Lipsi—the third ride was on a rural road on that small Greek island, holding onto a man she’d just met, as she held his cellphone aloft to light the way back to the organic farm she’d agreed to work on after leaving Vietnam.
The organic farm and winery provided the kind of peace and quiet she needed, but it also introduced her to the world of wine from the perspective of those who produce it. She would return to the U.S. briefly before leaving for Italy to pursue her master’s with a specialization in vinification and oenology in Piacenza. The program covered grape growing, chemistry, the wine industry as a whole, vineyard management, tastings, flaws, pest control, etc., and lasted 18 months. The last five months she spent working as an extern at the Ruffino winery in Tuscany, where she spent a great deal of time cleaning tanks and learning Italian.
“I was sitting on the twin bed in the Hanoi hotel room when I realized I needed to turn off the switch in my head that controls fear, anxiety and worry. That’s how I got on the motorcycle.”
“I cried twice a day at first, but eventually I got to where I could speak it conversationally,” Franklin says. That was after one memorable day on which a thunderstorm that reminded her of home led to her yelling “Tonno!” at her coworkers, the Italian word for tuna, as opposed to “tuono,” thunder. “I was so embarrassed I didn’t speak for a week,” she says.
After graduating in November 2022, she came back to Oklahoma, where she applied for the current gig. “My resume was so perfect for the job, they thought I faked it at first,” Franklin says. “Now I get to help support and develop the Oklahoma wine industry from grape to glass.”
Franklin said she feels lucky to have a unique skillset that can help people and help Oklahoma. The job includes helping Oklahoma farmers figure out which grapes grow best in Oklahoma’s various soils and climates. A reliance on popular grapes like Cabernet and Chardonnay has helped hold back the state’s growth as a winemaking state—not her words, just an observation about the quality of wine we’ve been producing—and she’s working to improve the profile of Oklahoma-friendly grapes like Chambourcin and Vignoles, both of which produce delicious wines, and both of which have won multiple contests around the state.
Beginning this fall, she’ll be teaching International Wine and Culture at Oklahoma State University, so she’ll return to her alma mater to teach nascent hospitality professionals the lessons she’s learned, along with her real-world knowledge and application. It’s a very promising development for our state’s wine and hospitality industries. •