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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: $11.50
You Save: $11.50 (50%)
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Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 30575
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
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Z-2
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Product Description
"I want my wines to tell a good story. I want them natural and most of all, like my dear friends, I want them to speak the truth even if we argue,” says Alice Feiring. Join her as she sets off on her one-woman crusade against the tyranny of homogenization, wine consultants, and, of course, the 100-point scoring system of a certain all-powerful wine writer. Traveling through the ancient vineyards of the Loire and Champagne, to Piedmont and Spain, she goes in search of authentic barolo, the last old-style rioja, and the tastiest new terroir-driven champagnes. She reveals just what goes into the average bottle—the reverse osmosis, the yeasts and enzymes, the sawdust and oak chips—and why she doesn’t find much to drink in California. And she introduces rebel winemakers who are embracing old-fashioned techniques and making wines with individuality and soul. No matter what your palate, travel the wine world with Feiring and you’ll have to ask yourself: What do i really want in my glass?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 A Must Read for Wine Lovers September 13, 2008
A wonderful little book. Kudos to Feiring for some badly needed straight-talk. Robert Parker has been on a crusade to destroy terroir-driven wines. Feiring is a champion for those of us who love wine and hate what Robert Parker has done to wine. Buy this book and boycott Parker-rated wines!
great read, great purpose. September 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I picked up this book because of the title. It sounded like it might be helpful with my own changing taste and evolution with wine. It did and it's a terrific book.
As a native Californian, when I started drinking wine in the late 60s it was California Cabs and I loved them. However, over time I eventually grew tired of buttery chards, and jammy reds. When I started to explore French and Italian wines it was confusing and a disappointment at first. But then the subtlety finally got to me and they began tasting elegant and unique. It wasn't long until the overly fruity and oaky wines were hard to drink. Furthermore, I slowly began to realize that the 1-100 point scale for wine that I once used religiously became an almost inverse guide--- if Parker or Wine Spectator, or Wine Advocate gave something a 90 plus rating, I would worry that it was way too fruity.
Kermit Lynch's terrific book--Adventures on the Wine Route, really opened my eyes--or taste buds--and helped in a historical context to more understand what fine, soulful wine is all about.
Alice Feiring's book takes it a step further and nails it for the wine world of today! This is a wonderful, funny, and insightful work. Her many different points of contact in the wine world reveal just how the current disincentive for authentic wine has occurred--everywhere in the world. Her personal references humanize the story making it more fun to read than the typical wine book. Within the fascinating stories, are remarkable, if not startling specifics of what to avoid and what to seek out in trying to find the unique, quality wines that are honest expressions of the area and not artificially doped-up and homogenized to a single commercial taste. All this is extremely important to anyone who really wants to improve their understanding and find truly good wine--old or new world. Fortunately, they do exist in both and his books points you in the right direction.
But perhaps most importantly, Feiring is a competent and courageous voice helping to get the world of wine back on track.
Bravo and carry on!
 It would be pointless to rate this on a 100 point scale September 6, 2008
As Alice Feiring sagely argues, that would be a silly thing to do with books, people, wine, or life in general. I thus find it difficult to "rate" this book, whether on a scale of one to five stars, 100 points or 20 points or otherwise. There is so much good about it. But for me it is something of a flawed diamond.
I wanted so much to be enthralled with this book, as others here have said. Alice Feiring has her head in the right place where wine is concerned. She's got a great blog. She knows what she's talking about. When I heard her book was coming out, it was a must have volume for me and I "pre-ordered" it. To be frank, the title was off-putting. It seemed like a marketer's strange marriage of "chick lit" (oh God, forgive me, Alice) and wine geek ((and I mean that in a good way), but I figured I could get past that, no problemo.
So then I sat down to read the book cover to cover, in a few ferry crossings between The Rock and Seattle -- and I did so with great expectations (little g, little e, not with the Dickens novel in my other hand). Here's the Plus and the Minus:
Plus: The book stakes out a strong and well reasoned argument for terroir, traditional (and by that I mean organic, possibly even biodynamic, non-interventionist, not careless and just plain bad) viticulture and winemaking. Alice plainly knows her stuff. And yes, she has the "cojones" to call a spade a shovel. Heck, anyone who will cross swords on the dais with the likes of Clark Smith certainly knows hold to hold her own in an argument.
While it isn't exactly new news, as tens of thousands of us by now probably feel the same way and may have said it often enough, it's gratifying to see someone pronounce Robert Parker, the Wine Spectator, Michel Rolland and others of that ilk something of a public menace -- and get published.
Minus: There's too much chatty, "personal backstory" stuff clouding the picture, for my personal taste anyway. Some may find Mr. Bow Tie, Owl Man, Honey Sugar and all the rest entertaining. To me, it's just in the way at best; unnerving, awkward and genuinely distracting at worst. When I got to the part about winemaker so and so's "deep, sexy voice" and his "tussle of brown curls and fleshy, sensuous earlobes," and read about the various exploits of "Skinny," I began to wonder whether I could finish the book.
The book definitely is worth finishing. But I do wish it stuck to what I hoped to find, and did in large part -- well-crafted and opinionated writing about wine. Maybe this really needed to be two books - one about wine, the other about, well, the other stuff. "Sex and the Single Wine Writer," perhaps?
Let's be clear. Alice is the real deal and she's a valuable advocate for real wine. As I said at the outset, this is a book I'd like to be able to give an unqualified five stars. I just can't, given the distractions that to me detract from the seriousness of the message.
Were I Robert Parker, I would give it an 88. OK, maybe a 90. Who the hell knows. That's what's wrong with the whole Parker School of wine criticism in the first place. But I imagine he might call it a fruity, quirky, wild cherry and chocolate laden hedonistic fruit bomb, with overtones of creosote and a whiff of pheromones; drink 2008 to 2010.
As it is, I give it four stars.
A fine blend of wine culture and travelogue August 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Wine journalist Alice Feiring had a long affection for complicated wines - and was horrified when she discovered all kinds of wines were beginning to taste alike. Her search for originality in the wine world led her on a journey through ancient vineyards of France, Spain and more as she searched out old-fashioned wines and artisan winemaking over corporate production techniques. "The Battle for Wine and Love or How I Saved the World from Parkerization" is a fine blend of wine culture and travelogue, perfect for any library strong on wine appreciation.
Alice is the Real Deal (and so is Neal Rosenthal) July 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Forget about the title and get over Bow-Tie Man, the Owl Man, etc. Alice Feiring (pronounced Fire-ing) has a right to air her personal stuff. After all this is her book. And as to complaints that the second part of the title is silly and designed to help sell books. So what? Somebody had to have the cojones to take on Robert Parker, whose IMHO 'silly' reviews have helped wipe out the demand for many truly authentic wines and have promoted the facile, manipulated wines of the new rich and enriched any number of his favored status importers and formulaic consultants--who are not wine tailors, they are knock-off artists.
Alice is the real deal and so is Neal Rosenthal, who Confessions of a Wine Merchant comes on the heels of Alice's book, echoing themes about the authenicity and sense of place in truly great wines and railing against the tragic (for real wine lovers) imposition of industry homogeneousness and wine manipulation over the real thing.
Both these books are deep--not frivolous, as some people would like to paint Alice Feiring's book--complex and filled with nuances that everyone who really cares about great wine should know and appreciate. Neither book is jammed with appreciation for overripe fruit, residual sugar, palate numbing alcohol levels and, Thank God, neither comes in a horrid new oak binding (barrels where supposed to be aging vessels, not gross flavoring agents that override grape varieties, terroir, etc.).
My prediction is that these two books are going to have an enormous impact on young (and not so young) sommeliers, wine directors and wine buyers (especially non-retail types, who don't use Parker scores to flog wines), because they both espouse the greatness and distinctiveness of terroir-driven, authentic, artisan wines that have a sense of place. Since these are not mass market Parkerista wines, I think this philosophy will not have an immediate effect on the Parker consumer, but it will have on restaurant wine lists run by younger sommeliers, who believe it or not have been fed up with tasting Parkerista wines for quite some time. They will seek terroir-driven wines to lend distinction to their lists and push these wines as those which help set their wine lists and restaurants apart.
Restaurant goers will discover these wines and begin to look for retail stores that carry them. It will not be long before the already choppy anti-Parkerista waters build into a very big wave, which, pardon me, copycat American wine journalists will soon see as a bandwagon to jump on, at least those who still have a palate left after tasting all the overripe, sweet, over-oaked, alcoholic junk that they have been barraged with over the past decade or so. And with greening and organic movements growing stronger in response to environmental changes, more and more conscientous wine drinkers will begin to question the manipulation of wines.
Alice Feiring: ". . . At stake is the soul of wine. This is giant corporation vs. independent winemaker. This is international and homogenous vs. local and varied. This manipulated and technical wine vs. natural and artisanal. . .wine is being reduced to the common denominator. . .I visit producers who make wines that inspire love and devotion. . . I unmask the modern way--the reverse osmosis, the tannin addition, the yeasts, the enzymes, the cold soaks, the sawdust, oak chips, the barriques, the micro- and macro-oxygenation, the rotor fermenters, and the cherry drops. There will be scientists and consultants, who help create cookie-cutter wines for the mass palate. I will deal with those who say terroir (the magic that brings soil, climate, vintage, and winemaker together in a bottle of wine) and natural winemaking are simply excuses for making bad wine."
Neil Rosenthal: ". . . proof that there is some seriously fine terroir to be found in California and elsewhere, terroir that merits being left to express itself rather than being dominated and destroyed by human manipulation in the form of superextraction or immersion in new oak barrels or any of dozens of other laboratory tricks that "correct" what nature gives us."
Alice Feiring and Neal Rosenthal are heroine and hero!!! Buy both these books and take a trip through the world of real wine, you will never turn back.
Gerry Dawes
Blog: Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel.
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