WILD Project - Transforming WILD← Back to Journal<br>Transforming WILD<br>Jul 7 2026Dylan ArapsSix months ago I announced WILD to the world and we began selling our wine and olive oil online. A lot happened since then and as my family and I navigated and learnt more about the industry we came to the realization that we weren't being true to ourselves or our philosophy.After much thought we decided to transform the venture from one focused solely on selling products to one with a human purpose: to cultivate better people. And today, I am pleased to launch our next stage, WILD Project.The response from my initial announcement far exceeded our expectations and people from all over the world reached out and connected with us over my personal story. Many people find themselves in a similiar situation of poor health and disillusionment, seemingly stuck in a career or job slowly destroying them mind, body and soul.My later posts on my personal blog were another source of inspiration and means of connection for people and I am surprised at the sheer number of readers my blog has garnered in such a short time.In the last three months we started hosting volunteers on our estate to great success. More than 30 people have stayed with us with many more scheduled to come each week for the foreseable future. This has been a truly inspiring experience and through farming and discussion we have changed many lives.We have also added two new products to our lineup: Grape Vinegar and Olive Soap.Our oil and wine have been sent all over the EU and have been enjoyed not only by "tech people" and users of my software but by everyday people, politicians and michellin star chefs alike.We pushed very hard to put our products in front of as diverse an array of people as possible and from this exercise we learnt invaluable information. It was a major guiding factor in WILD's transformation.The direct-to-consumer slice of the olive oil market is one of smoke and mirrors whereby everyone is selling basically the same thing: standard extra virgin olive oil. Bottle type, label design, meaningless claims and marketing are drivers of sales instead of the oil itself. Everyone is putting lipstick on a pig and novelty marketing tactics are now verging on the insane and absurd.Our oil has measurable and verifiable benefits thanks to natural farming practices and our unique harvesting and processing methods but at the end of the day, sensorily, it is still just another olive oil, albeit of the highest quality. The industry is only interested in the surface level differences of color, taste and smell and not in analyzable but invisible things like PAH pollution, microplastic contamination and chemical/pesticide residues which have real effects on human health.The global wine industry is another beast entirely. Like many large entities it is two-faced. To the public it presents a romantic image or myth and privately, everyone involved knows they are part of a con or mass deception. The romance of the wholesome farmer tending to his vineyard and making wine like his great grandaddy used to make no longer actually exists anywhere.Having spoken to people from all echelons of society we came to the realization that most people naively believe wine to be made entirely of grapes. The absence of a mandatory ingredients list on labels is certainly a contributing factor for if you knew what you were actually drinking you may choose a different beverage or stop drinking wine altogether.Winemaking has today become a chemist's wet dream and the grape juice is manipulated using hundreds of legally permitted additives and dozens and dozens of questionable industrial techniques. Instead of being an expression of terroir wine is now the expression of the chemist.And just like the olive oil industry, the makeup is applied and the wine judged by meaningless marketing claims and sensory qualities. The wine industry takes it a step further as it has invented an infinitely deep tasting system whereby highly schooled alchemical experts use magic and divination to find a universe of flavours inside a glass of chemically manipulated fermented grape juice.The problem is also caused by the consumer who having lost the taste for natural wine now seeks out chemical wine. Many sommeliers have also sampled our wine and they all make the mistake of comparing it to chemist made wine on a solely sensory level. Consumers by and large are uninterested in anything but taste.We also entered our wine into two wine competitions not understanding until later what these "competitions" actually are. Events for networking and an industry endorsement racket where you pay money, play by the rules and receive fancy accolades by elevated individuals you can flaunt on your website and label. Natural wines never do well in competition.This led us to another realization: Our products are tied to place. To take a bottle of our wine and consume it in isolation in a foreign land is to lose it. The people...