Book Review: Red, White, and Drunk All Over

The children's riddle asks, "What's black, white and red all over?" The answer is, "A newspaper," with red and the past tense read as homophones. In order to get the joke, you have to trace the trail back to a time when people read newspapers and those newspapers were printed in black and white.

You have to perform more mental gymnastics to find the humor in the title of wine writer Natalie MacLean's new book, Red, White and Drunk All Over (Bloomsbury, 280 pages, $23.95, ISBN 1582346488). Patterned after the old riddle, the assumption is that the word "drunk" is meant to be the past tense of "to drink" and the reference is to an oenologist's broad sampling of the world's red and white wines. With MacLean's British background (okay, Scottish) she must enjoy such wordplay. Surely she can't mean drunk in the blunt sense, as in inebriated, hammered, potted, blitzed, sloshed?

But then this sentence appears very early in the book: "I have to confess, much as I'm drawn to its nuances, I wouldn't be writing about wine if it weren't for the buzz. I love the way a glass of wine makes me feel - invigorated and animated, released from my natural shyness." That's just the first glass. Check out MacLean's condition after a refill: "My second glass tasted like a sigh at the end of a long day: a gathering in, and a letting go. I felt the fingers of alcoholic warmth relax the muscles at the back of my jaw and curl under my ears. The wine flushed warmth up into my cheeks, down through my shoulders, and across my thighs." What do we have here? A sensualist. Someone who writes about wine for the right reasons. Finally.

MacLean says, "I'd love to say that I was born with an uncanny palate, but I was just born thirsty." She is not afraid to write about the effects of wine, as in her account of an indulgent lunch at Cru restaurant in New York with novelist and wine wonk Jay McInerney. They consume several glasses of DeMeric Sous Bois NV Cuvee champagne, a bottle of Andre Perret 2001 Condrieu viognier and a bottle of Clos de la Bussiere 1997 Domaine Georges Roumier pinot noir. McInerney compliments MacLean on her ability to hold her liquor. Her response: "I tell him that I'm not affluenced by incohol." It puts you in mind of Myrna Loy playing the charmingly tipsy Nora Charles in The Thin Man movies.

Now an award winning wine columnist, MacLean began writing this book before she had traveled to many of the world's great wine territories and had only once been to the French wine regions. As a result, we learn right along with MacLean. There is nothing intimidating about the journey. Only occasionally does she fall into the incomprehensible language of winespeak, as in: "For me, great bordeaux is a mansion of a wine, solid and imposing in structure, with stately finishes and designs. At first, it seems locked shut, but as the years pass, long corridors of aromas open up and I discover secret rooms that reveal new dimensions." Or the memory of her first glass of Chateau Latour: "The taste of furious passion. Rich aromas of cassis, smoke, and leather curled around me. Then it finished like a dagger…" Yeah, blah, blah, blah. Much more fun and far less common is her reaction to a pinot noir in Burgundy: "I dissolve with pleasure into the wine, like a sugar cube with warm water poured over it. The only way to convey the intensity of flavor in my mouth would be to make the words on this page burst into flames."

MacLean is at her best when discussing the practical aspects of wine. Yes, there are practical aspects. She delves into the details of corks versus screwcaps, grand vin versus second labels, investing versus imbibing, swallowing versus spitting (she tells a hilariously self-deprecating story about a botched attempt at public spitting), Old World versus New World, decantists versus bottlists and selling versus cellaring. In analyzing house wine versus list wine, for example, MacLean writes, "Today in North America, house wines are often the leftovers from the list: cheap and nasty stuff that you can use in a pinch instead of Liquid Drano… Drinking them is like accidentally walking into a bad neighborhood: you'll get roughed up and robbed and will learn never to take that wrong turn again. Not only are they bad to drink, they're also usually a bad buy - one of the biggest rip-offs on the list. Many restaurants price a glass at the full wholesale price of the entire bottle." Some of her most entertaining chapters involve stepping into the shoes of essential workers in the wine chain for a day. Her adventures find her toiling as a vineyard winemaker's assistant, a retail wine shop sales person and a restaurant sommelier.

At the heart of Red, White and Drunk All Over is MacLean's desire to ease the mystery and stigma that often attach to wine. The boggling array of wine is unlike all other alcoholic beverages. "Even the largest wine brands own less than 5 percent market share," MacLean points out. "Compare this to spirits, for which the leading brand can easily own as much as 50 percent market share, or the ten best-selling light beer brands, which comprise 99 percent of the market." Also unlike most other beverages, there is a lot riding on a bottle of wine. "At social gatherings, it's the only consumable we put on the dinner table in its original packaging. The label is like a billboard: it tells your hosts and guests just what you think of them and how much you're willing to spend on friendship."

A short time spent with MacLean takes some of the pressure off the contents of the bottle.

Red, White, and Drunk All Over
By Natalie MacLean
Bloomsbury, 280 pages, $23.95
ISBN 1582346488