Sharon’s Wine Line
On her journey searching for some of the planet’s best bargain wines, Natalie MacLean sampled an astounding 15,267 wines at 312 wineries in 8 countries on 5 continents so you don’t have to. You can just sit back in your favorite chair and read her book and learn and enjoy and laugh. The only drawback: You’ll have to supply your own wine.
MacLean’s an accredited sommelier, a “lover of both bargains and grapes.” She’s extraordinarily accomplished. Among her citations: four James Beard Foundation Journalism awards, six Bert Green Awards for excellence in food journalism and the 2009 Louis Roederer International Wine Writing Award. She was named the World’s Best Drink Writer by the World Food Media Awards.
I think of her as the Energizer Bunny of the wine world. As she says in her video promoting her book, “I’m always eating and drinking for the sake of my readers.” Afterwards, she writes books, magazine articles, and print wine columns that reach more than 5 million readers. She’s got a website, a blog, an e-newsletter, a Wine Picks and Pairings mobile app (and other apps, of course) for smart phones. And naturally she tweets and has a gazillion Facebook friends.
In Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines (Perigee, $24, 344 pp.), which is part memoir, part travelogue and part wine guide, MacLean shares her adventures at wineries in Australia, Germany, Canada (where she lives), South Africa, Italy, Argentina, Portugal and France. And, to wrap things up, she makes a stop at the famed bar in New York City’s Algonquin Hotel.
In each chapter, she recounts her visits with several winemakers and paints colorful portraits of them. They come to life, and you feel privileged to accompany MacLean on her rounds. Ernst Loosen of Germany’s Dr. Loosen wine estate, for example, expounds on what makes Mosel Riesling special: “When I drink Mosel riesling, I want to smell the blue slate soil that formed the fruit. I want to taste the memory of the old vines, and I want to feel the rain and the sun that year. Without all of this, wine is just another drink.” Loosen extols the virtues of riesling: “Many wines are big and fat and that’s it, you know, but riesling is strong and delicate at the same time. It has many facets, like a diamond, depending on when and where you taste it and what you’re looking for.”
The wines she devotes the most time to are Shiraz, Riesling, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Nero d’Avola, Malbec, Port and Provence rosés. The end of each chapter features “Field Notes from a Wine Cheapskate,” which includes insider tips, the websites of the wineries she concentrated on, the best value wines, top-value producers, special pairings and resource suggestions.
MacLean suggests you “read the book for the adventure stories,” and then visit her website, www.nataliemaclean.com, for recipes, photos, website addresses, wines she liked that are in stores now and much, much more. There’s plenty that will capture your interest.
Bottom Line: Unquenchable will undoubtedly inspire you to undertake your own wine journeys–whether to the supermarket or to faraway continents.
You can read more reviews of my new wine book Unquenchable here.
