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Unquenchable

A Tipsy Quest for the World's Best Bargain Wines

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
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.

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    • Library Journal

      September 15, 2011

      Many readers would have enjoyed swapping places with MacLean, an award-winning wine writer, as she traveled the world in search of good value and great taste in a bottle. She focuses on finding a wine to pair with a typical dinner each day of the week. Her overriding goal, however, is introducing readers to less familiar wine-producing regions of the world. In the process, MacLean introduces an array of colorful vintners and teaches readers how to choose good representative wines. She supplements the chapters with URLs to further information on her website. The instruction is wrapped in an engaging travelog that includes references to local literature and narratives of mouthwatering meals. MacLean is a charming and disarming author, freely admitting to her love of a bargain (so long as it is delicious) and the intoxicating fun of having wine in her glass. VERDICT A light, informative adventure in wine appreciation that should have broad appeal. Highly recommended. [George M. Taber's forthcoming A Toast to Bargain Wines is a good companion.--Ed.]--Peter Hepburn, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago

      Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      November 1, 2011
      Wine writer MacLean would like us to be a little less, well, snooty when it comes to wine. It is a myth that the best-tasting wines come in the oldest, most expensive bottles. You can find some really good stuff at quite reasonable prices, if you know where and how to look. MacLean devotes a chapter to each day of the week, with a choice of wine to complement the day's meal, whereupon she launches into each selection's history, notable brands, and some personalities associated with it, such as the movie special-effects wizard who became a top winemaker. The book is full of interesting nuggets of information (e.g., in 2001, Yellow Tail Shiraz was the most successful new-wine launch in North American history), and MacLean's enthusiasm for her subject sparkles off of every page. This is no dull tome about the history of viticulture; it's a lively, entertaining tour of wines and a personal look at some of Mac-Lean's favorite flavors, a book that says you don't have to be rich or excessively refined to enjoy wine. You just have to know what you like.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

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  • English

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