Award-winning writer Natalie MacLean sweeps readers behind the scenes of the international wine world, visiting its most evocative places and meeting its most charismatic personalities. Red, White, and Drunk All Over showcases the engaging wit, investigative curiosity, and sharp eye for obsessive passion that has made her free e-newsletter Nat Decants one of the most popular in North America.
Natalie tastes sensuous pinot noir in the ancient cellars of Burgundy while discovering the mysterious tenets of biodynamic viticulture from such colourful characters as the tiny, ferocious Lalou Bize-Leroy, part-owner of France's acclaimed Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. She pulls on sturdy boots to help with the grape harvest at California's Bonny Doon Vineyards-and gets to the root of the anti-establishment philosophy of owner Randall Grahm, notorious for his experimental wine techniques, love for unfashionable grapes, and fondness for naming his wines "Cardinal Zin," "Heart Has its Rieslings," and "Big House Red" (whose grapes are grown just down the road from one of California's state prisons).
Natalie takes a job as undercover sommelier at a five-star French restaurant, spends a day helping customers in a high-end New York wine shop, wades into a famous feud between Robert Parker and Jancis Robinson, two of the world's best-known critics and, back home, invites friends over for a casual wine tasting. Along the way she teaches us-painlessly and often hilariously-how to face a telephone directory-sized wine list without fear, what questions to ask to get exactly the wine you are looking, what those scores out of 100 really mean, and how properly to expectorate (it's best to start out in the shower!)
This wine-soaked blend of Kitchen Confidential and Sideways is a fascinating tour from the grape to the glass that will drive readers to drink. And think. And laugh.
MacLean, Natalie: - "Natalie MacLean is also the author of 'Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World's Best Bargain Wines' and 'Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much - A Memoir'.Natalie was named the World's Best Drinks Journalist at the World Food Media Awards and has won four James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards. She is the only person to have won both the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award from the James Beard Foundation and the M. F. K. Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing from Les Dames d'Escoffier International.Her work has appeared in Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Wine Enthusiast, The Globe and Mail, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Minneapolis Star Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, and National Post. She's the regular wine expert on several television shows.Natalie is the host of Unreserved Wine Talk, selected as one of the best drinks podcasts by The New York Times. She interviews the most colorful people in the wine world and chronicles her journey in publishing this book and the next one. She offers online food and wine pairing classes where she connects personally with those around the planet who share her passion for wine at www.nataliemaclean.com."
