Red, White and Drunk All Over
Ξ August 4th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ A Day at a Time, Book Reviews |
Red, White and Drunk All Over (A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grapes to Glass) - Natalie Maclean
Natalie MacLean is Canada’s leading woman of wine and this is her first book after years of writing on her popular web-site, Nat Decants and in numerous newspapers and magazines.
I started reading this book not long after finishing Jay McInerney’s “A Hedonist in the Cellar” and the first thing that struck me was the complete contrast in style and content. “A Hedonist…” was a compilation of punchy, bite-sized articles which, at times, came across as rushed and often left you wanting more - but this was tolerable in the knowledge that it was really just an adhesion of his magazine articles.
MacLean has created well researched, substantial stories on which she writes in a flowing, easy to read manner and peppers with personal anecdotes and experiences. Each chapter is given space to allow the story to develop naturally and draws the reader in with rich detail, excellent character building and ample reference information for the wine enthusiast (although, on occasion, she pushes to the other extreme and you feel some paragraphs are unnecessarily “padded” or tangential to the main topic - such as the several pages of cellar information apparently randomly slotted in the Jay McInerney chapter, “Big City Bacchus”).
The introduction sets the tone with a full and vivid description of MacLean’s early experiences with wine and how she immersed herself in the field and passed Sommelier exams, but was strictly amateur until 1998 when she only started writing after the birth of her son. It includes an epiphany moment after leaving University with a Brunello enjoyed at an Italian restaurant - anyone who describes a taste “like a sigh at the end of a long day” is clearly letting you know the emotional, almost sensual descriptions that wait in later pages.
The first Chapter, “The Good Earth”, is a vivid introduction to the complexities of Burgundy and details visits to Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Domaine Leroy, Domaine Leflaive & Frederic Drouhin of Negociants Maison Joseph Drouhin. As with the second chapter, “Harvesting Dreams”, which covers Sonoma’s Seghesio family and the unique Randall Grahm, it is the insights into the people which I enjoyed as much as the wine facts. All throughout the book MacLean takes the personal touch which adds to the reading enjoyment. I especially liked her admission of abject failure when it came to riddling and disgorging Champagne in “The Merry Widows of Mousse” chapter.
There are plenty of other tales but two more chapters I especially enjoyed were “Purple Prose with a bite” and “Undercover Sommelier”. The first is an informative recount of Chateau Pavie 2003 debate (also known as the War of Words) between Jancis Robinson and Robert Parker, which does a good job of stating the facts and also providing detailed profiles on these two giants of the wine tasting circuit. The second recounts an evening at Le Baccara restaurant in Quebec where MacLean puts her Sommelier training to good use and comes out relatively unscathed and with a tale that should provide some insight to those tempted by that career path.
This was my first introduction to Natalie MacLean, but it proved an enjoyable one and I can only recommend this book. Any weak areas are still informative, the general style and content is excellent and there’s a good dose of lighthearted humour throughout, something I’d like to see more of in wine writing (and which I have to remind myself to retain, lest I fall into the trap of humourless prose).
Greybeard.
