Wine writing needn't be stuffy: this racy read aims to demystify wine, writes Joe Breen
Red, White & Drunk All Over, Natalie MacLean's lively, entertaining and informative "wine-soaked journey from grape to glass", is proof that this Canadian wine writer has a fair degree of bottle and an impressive store of knowledge about what goes into one.
Though some of the stories and many of the insights will be familiar to experienced anoraks, MacLean fuses the fruits of her imaginative and bold approach with sound background technical and business knowledge to provide a well-rounded tome suitable for wine veteran and newbie alike.
MacLean is not one to shrink from a challenge or allow herself to be humbled by overbearing tradition. For instance, she barrels into the hallowed halls of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in Burgundy with the same innocent enthusiasm as Dorothy mustered on her way to Oz.
It is a remarkable passage. Few enough people get past the door, never mind find themselves entertained and indulged by the famous winemaker and co-owner of the legendary domaine, Aubert de Villaine.
He opens a 2002 Romanée-St-Vivant, a bottle of which would cost about €500-plus, and, charmed by her reaction, invites her to the "historic" cellar where he plays a game of guess the vintage with a bottle of 1956 La Tâche.
She guesses correctly, and he breaks into rhapsody.
She picks up the story with de Villaine's comments: "Ah this wine is alive. It was brought up in the barrel, then imprisoned in the bottle where it could only wait and wait for this moment . . . When we release it from the bottle, the wine is like a prisoner who has been captive for 30 years. Or perhaps," he says, winking at me, "this wine is more like a young girl in a convent school who now is grown into a woman."
Monsieur de Villaine was not the only one to dwell on the sensuous nature of red Burgundy. The next day MacLean visits Lalou "La Tigresse" Bize-Leroy, a formidable pocket rocket of a woman who was once de Villaine's partner in Domaine Romanée-Conti before she was driven out after she bought a number of nearby vineyards and renamed them Domaine Leroy.
Bize-Leroy runs her domaine on biodynamic principles and her 2003 Nuits-St-Georges prompted this colourful observation from MacLean:
"Fine red Burgundy is said to enter the mouth like a peacock's tail: narrowly at first, then fanning out unexpectedly across the palate, with flashy aromas of raspberries, leather, sandalwood, smoke, burning autumn leaves and earthy truffles.
"This particular one wants to play coy with me before filling my pleasure centre. The wine's suppleness feels as though unseen hands pull a velvet dress over my head and down over my breasts and hips, until the hem brushes my thighs."
As the elderly woman (actually film director Rob Reiner's mother) says in the movie When Harry Met Sally after watching Meg Ryan fake an orgasm at a restaurant table: "I'll have what she's having." u jbreen@irish-times.ie
• Red, White & Drunk All Overis published by Bloomsbury (£14.99 in the UK). MacLean's website is www.nataliemaclean.com