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| The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization | 
 enlarge | Author: Alice Feiring
Publisher: Harcourt
Category: Book
List Price: $23.00
Buy New: $7.00
You Save: $16.00 (70%)
New (36) Used (7) from $7.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 208300
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0151012865
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.22
EAN: 9780151012862
ASIN: 0151012865
Publication Date: May 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: excellent condition
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| Customer Reviews:
 Love/Hate Relationship With This Book June 8, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
I first found out about this book from reading an article written by the author that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. In it, she seemed on the warpath, ready to offend anyone and anything as a means to get people to read her book to see what her outrageous statements were about. Myself, I thought this woman who criticized winemakers for manipulating wines into big, huge, bold styles in order to please Robert Parker and thus sell more bottles was guilty of the same thing, making outrageous statements and trying to create controversy in order to sell copies of her book.
However, I did agree in principle with what she was saying, that too often these days wines are manipulated into something that tries to please the consumer and they are losing their individuality. So I bought the book. Amazon's price makes it too attractive to pass up.
Pros: Ms. Feiring writes very well. She takes the reader around the globe in her adventures as we meet various winemakers on both sides of the fence, as she advances her argument against over-manipulation. I think most readers would be pretty surprised to find out what goes on in a lot of wineries in order to achieve the sort of wine they want to sell. It's a topic that does need to be more publicized.
Cons: Ms. Feiring sounds like she's taken out a contract on Robert Parker. She is so anti-Parker that it threatens the credibility of the book. She also tries to paint everything in black and white, as in small, family, old-fashioned winemakers = good guys and big, corporate, technology-utilizing winemakers = bad and evil guys. It's the same as people who automatically slam big corporations simply because they are big. She also tries to combine her romantic life with her discussion of the wines and I felt this added nothing to the book. In fact, I got tired of hearing about "Owl Man" and the others and was thinking, who cares?
If you can get past the chip (or boulder) that the author seems to have on her shoulder, this book is well worth reading. It will influence the way you perceive the next glass of wine you drink, as well as all the rest of them.
 I desperately wanted to like this book.. May 31, 2008
24 out of 27 found this review helpful
To begin, I will mention that most of the bottles in my cellar would likely be bottles that Feiring would enjoy, and some of which I'd guess she'd love. It helps that my cellar is made up almost exclusively of Burgundy, but my guess is that she and I agree on many facets of the product of wine.
Because of this, and because we both dislike many seemingly unbalanced (read: fruit/alcohol bombs) wines, I felt pretty sure that I'd enjoy the book. Instead, I found myself feeling like I was listening more to a book of whine than a book on wine.
My issues:
+ Feiring goes on and on about her distaste for science's intervention into winemaking. On a couple of rare occasions in the book, she tries to convince the reader that she's not anti-science, but her arguments aren't convincing. There is nothing wrong with understanding wine scientifically, nor is there anything wrong with using that knowledge to make wines. Science goes into some of the best wines in the world -- perhaps not RO, but knowledge that isn't merely anecdotal helps to shape them.
+ This book has been compared to Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" in some reviews here. I couldn't disagree more. Pollan's book could be considered an opinion piece, but his stroke was much gentler. Additionally, he provided gobs more information on his topic. Feiring's material is almost all opinion and truly pushes the reader to believe what she's selling. I do realize that's the format of her book, but for those reasons I don't see the comparison to "The Omnivore's Dilemma".
+ Something about wine knowledge makes people rapidly become wine snobs. I'm guilty of it, and I think most are to some extent. However, I think one measure of a person's caliber is how they're able to educate without being condescending. On this, I give Feiring low marks (but not a failing grade).
+ Biodynamics is, essentially, religion. Natural farming is great, and components of biodynamics are natural, which likely help farming. However, Feiring's willing to make excuses for the oddities of biodynamics (cow dung buried in a horn, for example) where she's not willing to allow science the same leeway.
+ This one's a simple complaint, and for most can probably be dismissed, but please lose the subtitle. It's embarrassing.
All that said, there are some redeeming qualities to the book, those being that you may learn a thing or two about why romance is a big part of the package of wine for many enthusiasts. It certainly makes drinking more enjoyable for me.
 delightful and insightful for connoisseurs and novices alike May 30, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Feiring's is one of the rare wine books that has equal appeal to both the oenophile and the weekend wine taster. 'Wine geeks' will feel vindicated by her manifesto that cries out against 'spoofalted' (unnecessarily manipulated) wine and praises the renegade wine makers who've turned to Biodynamic farming, or simply heeded the wine making wisdom of their great grandfathers. The less wine-savvy can still take delight in the love stories that mellow this tannic polemic. Feiring writes great characters as well as great wine reviews - for those of us who want to get to know the people behind our wine, Feiring satisfies with anecdotes of wine critics, wine scientists, and most of all the wine makers themselves. Highly recommended.
Things I'll say on my date with Alice Feiring May 29, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Presumably, you are reading this review to decide whether you should buy the book. Yes, you should!
I read it on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, sitting outside on a sunny, but chilly Vermont day with enough a breeze to keep the black flies at bay and the scent of lilacs and recently mown lawn in the air. (I won't say what I was doing in Vermont since it might cause readers to doubt my judgment, but I had the daytime hours all to myself and could guiltlessly while them away with a good read.) Here it is four days later and I am still having "What would Alice say?" moments every few hours. The first came about 27 hours after I finished the book. I was on a flight from Boston to London on my way to Birmingham. In business class, American was offering a choice of two red wines. One was a standard Medoc. The other was a Rhone wine described with a paragraph full of words like "biodynamic," "organic," and "natural." The old me would have ordered the Medoc. Bordeaux were my first introduction to serious wine and I still return to them time after time. When the flight attendant said "The Bordeaux or the Burgundy?" I went for the one that wasn't from Bordeaux. (It wasn't from Burgundy either, but I only knew it was a Rhone wine because I had read the menu. I guess he hadn't had time to do that.) For a moment, I thought I was following Ms. Feiring's advice, but then I remembered: She doesn't stoop to airline wine; she pops ambiens instead.
I don't want to be Alice Feiring. I have actually gone looking for a wine I was first served on an airplane. (A trocken Riesling served by Lufthansa business class on a flight from Frankfurt to Cape Town.) It sounds hard to not be able to eat most food. (She's kosher and vegetarian). It sounds hard to not to be able to enjoy wine on the airplane. It sounds hard to spend life looking for love. . .
In the days since reading this book, I've had several imaginary dates with the author. On these imaginary dates we pleasantly argue many of the points she makes in her delightful memoir-cum-polemic while sipping some superb, biodynamic wine she has picked out. In preparation for the date, I have changed my shower routine fearing that some trace of the strongly-scented Dr. Bronner's soap I usually use will cling to me and affront the author's exquisitely sensitive nose. I do not argue about the wine; I am way too intimidated by her superior knowledge and superior air. If I secretly don't like it, I consider that a fault in my untrained palate. I have learned to appreciate the burnt sneaker taste of an Islay single malt so, with effort, I can learn to like this too. Not that I can really imagine not liking a wine after hearing Ms. Feiring describe it. Her descriptions of wines, people, and places are fun and compelling; they are one of the reasons I liked the book so much. The other reason is that fanaticism is entertaining, and Alice Feiring is clearly a fanatic.
A few things I would argue:
* Whether the existence of mass-market products makes artisanal versions go away. Craft breweries are thriving in the shadow of SAB-Miller-Anhauser-Bush. There is still a market for bespoke suits and hand-made shoes. Great chefs are as famous as talk-show hosts.
* The great man theory of history. The times were ripe for ratings. If one "great man" hadn't done it, another one would have. This one succeeded because many unsophisticated people like me like the wines he likes.
* Whether a vegetarian can really make wine pairing recommendations for meat dishes, no matter how keen her sense of smell. Smelling is not the same as tasting. Think of smelling coffee grinding versus drinking coffee. Taste is all about texture and mouth feel and chewiness. No wonder Ms. Feiring can't see the appeal of big, jammy California wines! It is when I am searing a steak over a hot wood fire that I think of the few remaining bottles of Silver Oak Cabernet in my cellar. It is when I am slow smoking a leg of lamb that I think of opening my Lytton Springs Zin. I love a delicate, pale, aged Burgandy, but I also really like the wines that Robert Parker likes. And I don't care how they are made or how little they express terrior.
I have so many more, but you will want to come up with your own topics for your own imaginary dates.
About the whole battle for love thing: It really doesn't get in the way too much. The author is surprisingly gentle with her ex-boyfriends who, like Big in Sex and the City, never get real names. And, like the boyfriends in Sex and the City, they are not the main point. Read this for the vineyard scenes, the wine trade characters, and, of course, the wine.
Like I said, I don't want to *be* Alice Feiring (that sounds hard!), but I thoroughly enjoyed a few hours with her.
A treasure for any wine library May 26, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The other reviews on this site say it very well. Ms. Feiring gives voice to a minority in the wine world: the poor, downtrodden, forgotten traditionalist -- the old fashioned, fuddy-duddy who still believes that 200 years of experience in a vineyard can give 10 generations of a wine growing family sufficient knowledge and confidence to make good wine from their land, planted to the appropriate varieties, and made simply and unpretentiously. If you've gotten close to any new world winemakers, there is one thing you might have learned: with mortgages to pay, these wineries must make it happen NOW, and have no time for trial and error. So what to do? Better find out what people are buying and make some of that! They would have my sympathies if they weren't, as Alice says, often charging ridiculously high prices for wines they've "designed" to fill the Parkerized demand. I wonder how many of them actually drink the stuff they make?
For me the truth is simple - the best wines are nuanced, made with indigenous yeasts, not high-teched, and often affordable as a result. Randall Grahm calls them "wines with life force." Ms. Feiring does us all a great service by telling the story in her superb, engaging, often quite personally revealing style, against an industry tide of wealthy, new world winemakers. How's this for good writing: (pg.100)
"I was staggeringly tired when I landed in the spring-bright sun, and I slept soundly during the one-hour drive from Bilbao to Haro, where I awoke to the sight of the old Tempranillo vines just coming to life. The fresh leaves pushing from splintery stumps looked like hands reaching for the sun. The silver-tipped Cantabrian Mountains lit up the background. The sandy soil looked like crushed coral. I felt I was standing in the basin of a drained-out sea. Perhaps that's why I found a sea-like savory salinity in so many older Riojan wines." Good stuff, Alice. Thanks.
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