The Dirty Guide to Wine: Following Flavor from Ground to Glass [Paperback]

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 wines flavor and composition can be gleaned from a regions soil, and this guide makes it simple to find the wines youll love.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.?Rather than relying on tasting notes, Feiring attempts to ascertain the ways?soil actually transcends a grape, pointing to tangible details like how a specific soil type can lend acidity or power, no matter the region. Limestone,?for example: It is associated with elegance. Limestone is something that you first sense up front in the mouth, on the tip of the tongue, and it betokens a long finish with a linear structure.?Feirings sense of humor (as seen in her description of?Brettanomyces?as smelling like a small closet stuffed with live sheep) and cheeky descriptions (in a wet climate well-drained granite soil saves Albari?os ass) are met with a real enthusiasm for the energy that earth can imbue in?a wine.?What emerges through Feirings travels and tastings with her frequent co-conspirator, sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier, is that theres a way to evaluate wine that?goes simply beyond taste.Discover new favorites by tracing wine back to its roots