Yes, ladies and germs, I've long desired to use that headline. And, strange to say, it's mostly true.
First, anything is better than Cats. That's too easy.
Second, I laughed out loud a number of times as I read Alice Feiring's "venomous screed" (I'm anticipating or perhaps paraphrasing Mark Squires) against the supposed villains of natural, authentic or even drinkable wine. Ahem, like, ahem...
I did not cry. I may have wept internally for the perennially hopeful Mr. Bow Tie, but no salty tears were shed in the reading of this book. So my headline was 2/3 factually correct. Let's hear it for wine-blog journalism and its occasional truthiness.
I rebel against my academic training, so I will list very "impressionistically" (the insult hurled at me by New Criticism-brainwashed profs way back when Alice was still looking for the afikomen) the things that I liked/found most interesting about The Battle for Wine and Love (great title), or How I Saved the World from Parkerization (not so great but, untrue as the assertion is in all actuality, it is a brave proud demarcation and sure to generate the controversy we all crave), and the things that left me a bit thirsty.
First and foremost, to coin a phrase, Alice's warm relationships with certain wine producers have plainly given her a nuanced appreciation of the rigors of growing, harvesting and fermenting grapes into something you want to drink. After reading her narrative, you wonder how anybody makes anything without a heap of manipulation, which is an excellent corrective to all the nit-picking over catalogues of fruit, wood and dirty-socks tastes and aromas in a wine. Just drink the stuff and see what it does to you, for Chrissake. Especially in the morning.
I particularly like Alice's description of the redemptive effort of picking grapes, sticky purple hands and the fragrances of the vineyard included. This seems to me the epiphanic moment of the book, not the discovery of Scanavino's "real-life story." That recherche des temps perdus seems almost anticlimactic.
That's fine; it provided the impetus for the book, and it helped motivate Alice's journeys to the heart of wine. She had the chance to learn from Bartolo Mascarello and, yes, from Mr. Parker. I appreciate how she struggled to be receptive to Parker's point of view, and she agrees that wine in general is better than it used to be, although it's a bit much to suggest that this improvement is due entirely to Big Bob's "consumer advocacy." But, regardez mes amis, the lady tries to entertain both sides of the argument, even if her natural instincts as outsider and antiestablishmentarian get the the better of her from time to time. I share this tendency, so I better recognize its excesses in someone else.
I also appreciate Alice's sharp observations about "living" and "dead" vineyards, beginning with her visits to Champagne. Having tramped around a few vineyards myself, I know what she's talking about and I agree with her condemnation of agribusinessy farming, lots of chemicals and an attempt to mechanize the human and cultural factors out of the juice. It's still farming, whether the big guys like to think of it that way or not. Which is why she and I share a predilection for small, family farms that grow grapes and, usually, chickens, orchard fruit, and so forth. It's an excellent "objective correlative" for the numbing effects of the standardization of wine, whether it's made with intentional bubbles or not.
I do sometimes wonder if Alice doesn't go a little overboard in looking for a narrowly defined authenticity, which may limit her wine horizons. Not all wines can be yummy little gems springing from the free-range-chickens' shit, and not all of those wines are too yummy anyway, as a visit to any organic/natural/real wine fest quickly demonstrates.
But this is nitpicking, as they say in Spinal Tap.
I missed a deeper portrait of her adventuresome sidekick Skinny, who seems like the best sport of all time, and of Becky Wasserman and Russell Hone. This odd couple sounds absolutely fascinating, and the kind of people you'd like to visit and learn more of their histories. Barring that unlikely event, I wish Alice had spent more time developing them in the book instead of using them as, essentially, transitional devices.
OK, I've probably wounded the lady's spirit enough. I have to say that Alice's sharp observations about the pretentious putzes of wine, about ruinous agricultural practices that bring disastrous social as well as oenic results, and her self-positioning as a love-struck Everywoman give us the funniest and often the wisest moments in the book. Here's where I laughed out loud. Here's where I said, "God, I didn't know that!" or "How true!" Here's where Alice shines in this book. She marshals her clarity of vision and her desire for the truth, without pretense and bullshit, to tells us what may be disillusioning about, say, Champagne.
Her motto is "In vino veritas," and The Battle for Wine and Love really is a battle for wine and truth, exposing the vanities and greed and warped reasoning that goes on the world of wine.
The next book is going to be about Love and Wine. As all my political heroes say, "Bring. It. On."
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