Well, there you go. No sooner do I see the controversial Alice Feiring speak, and begin reading her great new book, The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization, have my own views about wine been subtly altered, in fundamental ways.

I remember having a dinner with my Italian aunts and uncles who had come to visit here in the States. Trying to share something special with them, I brought out a Gregg Norman Shiraz. Translating from the label, I told them about the “ripe, dark plum, blackberry, sweet vanillin and spice with light subtle hints of blueberry and blackcurrant fruit.” My Aunt Paola, who had grown up drinking wine, innocently said, “But shouldn’t wine taste like wine, and the grape that made it?”

Back when I lived in the Veneto region, we would drink a fresh, local Merlot (which they pronounced “merlott”), that came in large pitchers, and had a characteristic dark plum color. And now I remember that almost no bottled wine had that same color.

It might surprise most wine drinkers to find out that the blackberry, espresso, chocolate, and cassis that one finds so often in today’s wines, together with the deep dark colors and high alcohol content are not a product of the grape, the terroir, or the traditional wine making methods, so much as a studied set of techniques that produce wines pleasing to the Robert Parker palate.

Those techniques run the gamut from using the small toasted French Oak barriques that produce the vanilla, chocolate and coffee flavors, to machines that provide micro-oxygenation and reverse osmosis to pump up the wine’s color and alcohol content. Secretly, and almost impossible to find out, is an additive made from grape skins called Mega Purple that also gives wine both it’s distinctive color, and it’s smooth “mouth feel.”

Importantly, with the accessibility and popularlity of Robert Parker-favored wines, very few wineries remain that still make an honest, true product of the soil, the vine, and the vintner’s simple know-how. Begun in California, this trend has spread throughout Australia, South America and Europe, as one by one, from France to Spain to Italy, generations-old vineyards have abandoned traditional techniques in order to rush a “consistent” “product” to the marketplace, filled with nouveau riche wine collectors and the circle of parasitic profiteers.

It’s one thing to see the “legs” of a great purple “fat” Zinfandel cascade down the sides of a Bordeaux glass and to enjoy it’s deep dark fruit notes; it’s quite another to realize that what you’re would have been impossible a few short years ago, and for all of the 10,000 years of wine making that came before that.

All I can say is, I’m about halfway through this book, and it’s a must-read for anyone who enjoys wine. You may not agree with this woman’s message, but it’s important to know the full story of how the wine got to your glass.

Kind of like taking a trip to the slaughterhouse to get at the reality of how that steak got to your table…

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