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The Dirty Guide to Wine cover art

The Dirty Guide to Wine

Written by: Alice Feiring, Pascaline Lepeltier
Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
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Publisher's Summary

Still drinking Cabernet after that one bottle you liked five years ago? It can be overwhelming if not intimidating to branch out from your go-to grape, but everyone wants their next wine to be new and exciting. How to choose the right one? Award-winning wine critic Alice Feiring presents an all-new way to look at the world of wine. While grape variety is important, a lot can be learned about wine by looking at the source: the ground in which it grows. A surprising amount of information about a wine's flavor and composition can be gleaned from a region's soil, and this guide makes it simple to find the wines you'll love.

Featuring a foreword by Master Sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier, who contributed her vast knowledge throughout the book, The Dirty Guide to Wine organizes wines not by grape, not by region, not by New or Old World, but by soil. If you enjoy a Chardonnay from Burgundy, you might find the same winning qualities in a deep, red Rioja. Feiring also provides a clarifying account of the traditions and techniques of wine-tasting, demystifying the practice and introducing a whole new way to enjoy wine to sommeliers and novice drinkers alike.

©2017 Alice Feiring (P)2017 Tantor

What the critics say

“In her newest book, Alice Feiring homes in on how an understanding of soil types can point to through-lines in wines from very different parts of the world." ( Punch Magazine)

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  • 2020-03-22

More of a Organic/Biodynamic Winery List

Other than the introduction, this book is essentially very short snippets on a particular wine maker or region, followed by lists of biodynamic and organic growers.

I learned next to nothing about soil types and how they affect wine. Granted I knew ahead of time that limestone and chalk were sedimentary rocks, granite was igneous, and gneiss was metamorphic. Other than that, I really did not glean anything about soils and wine other than lists.

The post script, for example, is a short paragraph followed by a list of 50+ areas in Alsace and their soil types. There is no real explanation provided for any of these soils. It just lists the area, followed by “marl, limestone, chalk” then the next unintelligible name and it’s soil type.

Furthermore the narrator is unable to pronounce many of the French names. Now, I'm francophone, and I get that in books such as these it would be exceedingly difficult to find someone who can pronounce English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese names perfectly.I'm certain that I would butcher many of the German names for example. But without exaggeration, half the time I was unable to decipher what French area the author was even talking about.

Oh, and if you were not aware - according to this book, the ONLY wines worth buying are from sustainable, organic, or biodynamic producers. There was no mention of a single other grower anywhere in the book. It is really a book pushing natural wine producers, in table format, and listing the soils in their particular vineyards.

Of the several wine books I’ve read and listened to, this is by far the most disappointing.

Perhaps if I had listened to some of the other reviews I'd read elsewhere I could have saved myself the headache.
Not recommended.

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