Alice Feiring's "The Battle for Wine and Love: Or How I Saved the World From Parkerization" is a book I have referenced in various posts since reading it six months ago, but until now had yet to dedicate time to actually review. I attribute my postponement of this task to the mixed emotions I experienced reading it.

While I appreciated this book for the learnings it offered about wine, I was put off by what I came to know of the author's personality.

On the positive side, "The Battle for Wine and Love" offers useful insights into the historical and cultural influences on wine and the changes that occurred thru modernist practices. On the negative side, I was really disappointed in Feiring's abrasive and condescending nature, especially toward people she had a habit of either demonizing or ridiculing. I was aghast at what she wrote about one travel companion, a person who would be justified in never speaking to Feiring again.

Reading Feiring's book is an exercise in patience, for once you get through her long diatribes about certain people (and their wines), there are useful learnings. This book offered valuable insights into the evolution of winemaking over the past century, especially the changes that occurred during the last several decades. For example, Feiring helps explain why many Italian, French and Spanish wines that tasted so unique decades ago, now tend to be made in a homogeneous style, one designed to appeal to Robert Parker's palate in hopes of generating a 90+ point score.

Traveling across parts of Europe and California, Feiring is quick to blame winemakers and marketers who have become "Parkerized". She makes it clear that her issue is not with Parker himself, rather the folks who follow him. Her prescribed antidote to Parker's influence is a wholesale return to natural winemaking. Feiring is very clear about what constitutes natural wine, which is absolutely no intervention in the vineyard or during the winemaking process. Just grapes grown and fermented naturally, with nothing but a moderate use of sulfides allowed.

It's here where I found Feiring's book most enlightening, for I never realized how truly "natural" winemaking was before the modern practice employing engineered yeasts, manufactured chemicals, wood byproducts, and other materials was used to achieve a uniform, consistent product each year. Feiring does an effective job bringing much needed transparency to the opaque nature that is non-traditional winemaking, whether a large commercial outfit or small boutique producer. This is where the book shines in the breadth and depth of coverage on this important topic.

In fact, after reading this book and learning more about natural wine, I am even more emboldened to seek out wines that are made in a less interventionist fashion. Call them natural, biodynamic, organic or otherwise, I like the uniqueness of these wines, both for their taste and their story, relative to their more intrusive counterparts. And I like knowing that these wines have a minimal impact on our environment and bodies, which makes for sustainable production and consumption in the years head for all concerned.

If you can get past Feiring's overbearing personality in this book, then it offers an enlightening read. And don't expect an answer to how she ultimately saves the world from Parkerization. The jury that is the average wine consumer continues to deliberate that one. Time will tell...

Related Links
The Oregonian's Interview with Alice Feiring
Vinography's Book Review