Just completed my reading of Alice's new book. I highly disliked her first book "The Battle For Wine & Love or How I Saved The World From Parkerization". It had a whiny/preachy/dogmatic/vitriolic/meglomanic tone that I felt obscured the message she was trying to deliver. It focused way too much on Parker and his evil side and too little what's good about natural wines (whatever the heck they are defined as). I've seen no signs that she, indeed, saved us from Parkerization. I sorta felt her view of the wine world was simplistic, either black or white, with no room for middle ground. You were either good/natural or you were evil/spoofalated/Parkerized.
So I eagerly started reading her new book last week with the trepidation that it would likely be just more of the same whiny/preachy diatribes that we saw in her first. Surprise/surprise...it is not. It has vastly toned down the vitriol and rhetoric from her first book.
The book is sorta a travelogue book along the lines of KermitLynch's or NeilRosenthal (though not nearly as entertaining as his) as Alice flits from one of her favored producers to another; describing them in personal/glowing terms as evidence as to why we should like their natural wines. It also details in much detail her first winemaking attempt with KevinHamel of the Davero Sagrantino (priced at $75-$100/btl....don't think I'm buying a wine like this that has been manipulated, at that sorta price).
What I particularly liked about Alice's new book is that she has grudgingly come to the realization that there may actually be a middle ground for natural wines. She acknowledges that there is some (valid) disagreement among its proponents as to what constitutes a natural wine. Is it minimal or no use of SO2? Can a wine use the lysozyme enzyme additive and still be a natural wine?? Can you harvest an overipe Sagrantino at 26.5% and still expect it to show its terroir (she asserts that it can...even though it was manipulated by watering back. I seriously doubt that even Alice can recognize Evers Ridgely's terroir based on one single data point).
I think her book also gives a very good retelling of the history of natural wines, at least from the European perspective.
She quotes RobertParker and DavidSchildknecht several times through her book. But instead of ripping into them as evil, she simply lets their statements stand or fall on their own merits...mostly they fall and don't come out looking very good.
She seems to believe that to make a natural wine, then you also must grow the grapes, at the very minimum, organic, but, preferably BioDynamic or Fukuoka. OTOH, she does acknowledge that there are some wines she likes (EricTexier, SteveEdmunds, Arnot-Roberts) in which the winemaker doesn't grow the grapes.
So what, exactly, is a natural or a naked wine?? Don't look to this book to give you any hard/firm definitions. And there now appears to be some wiggle room, in Alice's view, as to what constitutes a natural wine.
So...by my definition...a natural wine is any wine that Alice likes, and that is made by techniques that Alice approves of. That said, I'm fully confident that Alice has liked some wines over the years, that have had yeast additives or put thru RO (despite what she may think, I don't think that she, or I, can identify an evil signature in a wine that has been RO'd. Or identify a wine that has been spoofalated..whatever the heck that means). That is to say, a natural wine is not identified by a winemaking recipe or a dogmatic adherence to certain winemaking techniques, but is identified by a style of wine...one that Alice likes is a good enough definition for me.,,knowing that it may be a wine that others would not identify as natural. Maybe a bit on the fuzzy side..but it works for me. She even offers up a list of people/wineries of which she approves as making natural wines to help you with this definition.
So...bottom line: If you enjoy wine travelogue books like KermitLynch/GeraldAsher/NealRosenthal, I think you'll like it. If your bent is towards natural wines, by whatever definition you choose to define them, then this book is highly recommended. If your bent is towards going for the big point wines, spoofalated wines, and get very defensive if WS or Parker are not cast in anything but a glowing light; then don't waste you time with this book. If your bent lies in both camps, like some natural wines and hate others, like some spoofalated wines and hate others; I think you'll find Alices new book an entertaining read. Is it going to stir up a lot of buzz and controversy as Alice hopes?? Who gives a rat's a$$.
Tom
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