24th Street September 12th, 2024
Along with the rest of the world, I became obsessed with puzzles during the early stages of the pandemic. I approached the quest to acquire great puzzles — specifically, the laser-cut masterpieces from Boulder’s Liberty Puzzles — with the same fervor with which wine collectors seek out allocated Cabernets. I would impatiently await the email notification that my spot on Liberty’s waiting list had finally arrived, opening up a 24-hour window during which I could purchase any Liberty Puzzle from the website.
Honestly, it was barely cheaper than a fine wine habit; some of these puzzles cost upward of $200. But the feeling when the box would arrive in the mail and I’d tear open the tissue paper, inhaling the roasty aroma of the wooden pieces — priceless.
Since those deep pandemic days, my jigsaw fever has cooled slightly, but I’m still a discerning puzzler. So I was especially tickled when a friend brought me back a souvenir from a trip to Europe: a puzzle depicting the wines of France, outlined artfully on an illustrated map. I hungrily began working on it, and even though it wasn’t a Liberty-esque wooden number, I loved that I kept having to call upon my knowledge of French wine geography in order to solve it. The puzzle piece that says “Gamay” — could that fit in the Beaujolais section, or the Loire Valley?
As I soon learned, the company behind it, Water & Wines, specializes in wine map puzzles. Its designs include Spain, Italy, Germany, Champagne and California, and it has now branched out into French cheese, Italian coffee and Scotch whiskey. I’ve since completed several of them, and I can confirm that for anyone who loves wine (or maps!), that they are extremely fun.
Water & Wines was born in 2020 when founder Yamit Viitaoja-Malmberg was stuck at home in Sweden and — what else? — doing lots of puzzles. She’d recently completed a sommelier certification at the Scandinavian Wine Academy. Memorizing maps is a crucial component of any formal wine education, and puzzles struck her as an ideal way to learn those tricky, intricate geographic details.
“Puzzles were historically created to learn about geography for kids in school,” said Aurelia Chaudagne, who works on Water & Wine’s research team. “Yamit thought it would be really helpful for students who are aspiring sommeliers.”
Water & Wines, though small in what is apparently a $1.88 billion jigsaw puzzle industry (according to Credence Research), has seen rapid growth, said Amy Renyu Jin, its head of marketing. In its first year, it launched three puzzles and sold about 40,000 copies, she said; last year it sold 100,000 and now has 18 designs. The U.S. is the largest market for Water & Wines,, so it now manufactures many of its puzzles here
The California puzzle is charming. Illustrator Derek Fenech gave it a groovy, psychedelic look, and some of the most conspicuous details have nothing to do with wine (perhaps giving a clue as to what Europeans think about the U.S.), like a very large Marilyn Monroe head. The puzzle nods to some key moments in California wine history: the Judgment of Paris, with a little Eiffel Tower waving a “1976” flag, and the historically significant Mission grape, personified by a Franciscan friar.
An unexpected gift for California wine lovers
Greg