Review of Alice Feiring’s “The Battle for Wine and Love”

The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization

I read and re-read this book a couple of times, trying to pierce to the heart of what her underlying focus was. What made her so angry about today’s wines? What was she rebelling against? And what, importantly, was she aspiring towards?

It turns out that her biggest gripe is with the techniques used to make wine today. In her lexicon, she calls these wines “spoofulated,” and credits her palate with being able to discern the even the slightest manipulation. She extols the virtues of naturally-made, “expressive” wines which convey their terroir and sense of place.

As she tours vineyards, falls in and out of love, and even helps with a grape harvest, she reveals a great deal about what she’s learned about how wine is made. However, she is clearly writing within the confines a very limited wine critic scope, from which the book both benefits, and suffers…


I must admit that her descriptions of the various processes that a wine can undergo on its way from vineyard to table are indeed mind-boggling. Additions of acid, tannins, wood chips, enzymes, and “designer” yeasts, together with techniques such as reverse osmosis and micro-oxygenation form many of the subtle (and not so subtle) flavors in today’s wines. And many of these methods are actually taught, in particular at UC Davis, to which an entire chapter is devoted. Essentially, this only serves to stoke her outrage and feeling that the wine world will come to an end, as the next generations of winemakers will forget the “purity” of “artisanal” winemaking.
In truth, European winemakers for years have “finished” their wines with a wide array of substances, including gelatin, bull’s blood, eggs, milk and moss. And, very likely, some of the very wines that she loves so dearly.
However, the main underlying theme in the book is that Robert Parker has contributed to the downfall of winemaking with his preference for “big” wines.
The minute she detects any “bigness,” or what she identifies as “spoofulation,” she immediately dismisses the wine, the producer, and frequently, the entire country. An entire chapter is devoted to the demise of Rioja, and how Spanish wines are now “undrinkable” to her

And yet… There may be one very simple reason for Feiring’s aversion to “big” wines – she’s a vegetarian. This would explain a huge void in her comprehension of wine. She, perhaps with intended comic effect, states that the Spanish think that the “pig is a vegetable.” The effect to me is that this kind of comment comes across only as uninformed and closed-minded.

For example, in her chapter, “My Date with Bob,” she draws the fundamental divide between her and Parker’s ideals (about halfway down page 210):

A great example is a 2002 Bond Vecina, a Napa Cabernet Parker oozed over, giving the wine 95 points: “A primordial, tannic beast with a beef-blood-like concentration, a huge, opaque purple color, and notes of scorched earth, blackberries, chocolate, camphor, roasted meats, and cassis. It’s as if I took an aged porterhouse steak from Peter Lugar’s (sic) famed restaurant, put it in a Cuisinart, and aged it in new French oak.” That is a great example of a wine I would be quick to pour down the drain.

The emphasis above is mine, however, it is fairly obvious that a vegetarian would be deeply offended and appalled by the tasting notes that Parker so eloquently describes.

And what are examples of wines that Ms. Feiring adores?

Let’s just say that the 1987 DRC Le Montrachet was one of the giddiest white Burgundies ever to slide down my gullet. It had a riveting element of deep, blushed apricot, toffeed butterscotch, and a finish that just kept going, and such a fresh acidity that I just had to keep on smiling.

And here she describes a 1966 Domaine Romanee’ Conti:

Pretty fasinating: A dash of Tabasco and red pepper, then it was all a tumble and jumble of allspice, nutmeg. It was like sticking my tongue in a cinnamon stick.

Any wine that is deeply colored is often not even tasted, as she correctly notes that older red wines tend to actually lighten with age through the natural oxidation process.

Overall, she also comes across as a stolid non-conformist and something of a “prickly” character.

She loves, for example, old, dirty, and disorganized wineries, and deplores cleaner, organized, and sanitized ones, decrying that they create “predictable” wines. (?)

Sometimes rambling, and the “love” part of the title is given shorter shrift, as the men that come and go in her life referred to by amusing epithets like “Mr. Straight-Laced,” or “The Owl Man.” Her girlfriends, with whom she travels, also have names like “Skinny.” At times, vignettes about the same region are tied together chronologically; in others, she shifts time and place in abrupt fashion. The manuscript in parts didn’t seem particularly well edited, as there were a number of major typos, like “cyprus” trees (instead of “cypress,”) and “All of the sudden.” Perhaps she was trying to create a personal, expressive tome, not too perfect, in keeping with the wines that she so adores.

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