Excerpt from Dave McIntyre’s column …
With the holidays approaching, it’s time to recommend books to give the wine lovers on your list. Here are my top three picks from among wine books released this year.
The economic downturn has spawned a genre of wine books designed to reassure us that it’s okay to drink cheap wines, and that any wine is good so long as it’s cheap. Canadian writer Natalie MacLean takes another perspective in her new book, “Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines.”
To MacLean, bargain means high value at a reasonable price, not necessarily cheap for cheap’s sake. She roams the world and meets with producers such as Wolf Blass in Australia and South Africa’s Charles Back, creator of the popular Goats do Roam wines.
Her chapter on Ontario wines had me planning a trip to Niagara Falls just so I could take the 20-mile detour to Niagara-on-the-Lake wine country. Although each chapter ends with her “field notes from a wine cheapskate,” MacLean’s book is a reminder that bargain wine can be an adventure, not just a lowest common denominator.
You can read more reviews of my new wine book Unquenchable here.
