Unquenchable!: A Tipsy Quest for the World's Best Bargain Wines
Natalie MacLean
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 0399537074
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
We wine writers tend to be obsessive souls. How else can a person stay fascinated throughout a career with just one drink? Compare us to food writers: Over their lives, they'll encounter thousands of ingredients and ways of combining and cooking them. Wine, by contrast, is just fermented grapes. But it engages our primary senses-smell, taste, feel-in a way that is both hedonistic and cerebral.
That's why I've spent the past several years traipsing around the world, visiting wineries, tasting their offerings, and searching for the world's best cheap wines. The narrative is as familiar as Arthur's quest for the grail and as naive as Dr. Seuss's plaintive search for the affirmative in Are You My Mother?
With her signature conversational style, Natalie MacLean takes you on a whirlwind journey through the world of wine, searching for great taste at a low cost. By turns confessional-with guilty admissions from a penny-pincher who loves simple pleasures-and spirited, Unquenchable is informed by MacLean's decade-long career as an award-winning wine writer.
In this engaging and enlightening book, MacLean recounts her adventures with the most passionate personalities in some of the most gorgeous, off-beat places in the world-from the crazed vintner who explains his philosophy while speeding down the Autobahn to the Sicilian winemakers you don't want to disappoint with your tasting notes. Yet there's plenty to take away from her inspired recommendations for food pairing to lists of favorite value wines and vintners, plus plenty of pointers that will enhance your own drinking pleasure.
Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History
Farmhouse Ales: Culture and Craftsmanship in the European Tradition
Primal Cravings: Your Favorite Foods Made Paleo
Into the spittoon—great expectorations. As we wander though the box-filled rooms, Raimond tells me that although he was raised at the family château where his father made bulk wine for other wineries, his first love was antique wood furniture. He originally trained as an artisanal carpenter and “learned the value of natural materials and craftsmanship.” But after several years in that business, Raimond yearned to be back in the wine industry, so he became the export manager for the big.
Put that fact on any of his labels. I ask him why not. In a word, he says, consumer perception. Most drinkers already think of wine as a natural product, though they’re likely less influenced by knowledge of the winemaking approach and more by those leafy pictures of vineyards on labels and in ads. So although they may seek out organic versions of lettuce, tomatoes, or beef, they don’t think to do so for wine. Martin isn’t alone in his caution; many wineries hesitate to promote their organic.
Number of wineries, including Malivoire, pulled their affected wines from store shelves that year. Eventually, they traced the problem to an Asian species of ladybug, quite different from the indigenous five-spotted ladybugs. Farmers in the southern U.S. had introduced the bug to feed on the aphids that were plaguing their pecan trees and soybeans. The problem began when these ladybugs migrated north, following the aphids, and became a seasonal pest in wine country. Swarms of these beetles amass.
Minerality open the core of the wine like a sunlit glade in the middle of a forest. As I taste it, the winery noises fade away and I am alone with this wine. “Niagara is blessed and damned by being so close to Toronto and Buffalo,” Thomas says, bringing me back from my vinous reverie to commercial realities. “Having those large urban markets right on our doorstep has kept us from lifting our eyes to the world stage. We have remained provincial and unfocused in our grape choices.” He believes.
Gestures toward the goat, which seems to be looking at me with mild amusement. I squat down beside the goat, leaning my cheek against her warm belly for balance. Donald, Chris, and a group of strapping lads in grass-stained overalls gather around to watch. I grab one of the teats and pull. Nothing. I try again. Nothing. My cheeks start to burn. “Start higher up on the teat,” Donald advises. I do and it works: a long stream of milk sprays at me and then into the pail. I feel.