Sommelier and wine scribe Natalie MacLean has written for dozens of magazines and newspapers, penned Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass, and authors the monthly wine newsletter Nat Decants. I asked MacLean, who hails from Canada, about how the palates of professionals and amateurs match up, how cultural background affects wine critics, the pros and cons of the Internet for wine consumers, and more. In Red, White, and Drunk All Over, you state that you taste 3,000 wines per year, while a critic such as Robert Parker tastes as many as 10,000. Given […]
Budget Wines
There’s nothing that says luxury and the good life more than sitting down on the patio and sipping a glass of good wine on a hot summer’s evening. I used to think that being a Budget Smart Girl meant that I’d either have to forgo this one little pleasure, or be forced to buy a wine that wasn’t that great. However, as the philosophy of the Budget Smart Girl’s lifestyle is to have luxury but at your own price, I did some research and happy to say you can enjoy a great glass of wine at a Budget Smart price, […]
Golf & Wine
Normally you’d figure that any PGA Tour player accepting high-fives for scoring in the 90s must have had a sip of something strong. A group of current and former pros, though, have taken winemakers for playing partners and adopted the wine critics’ 100-point scale as a new measure of being on par. The idea is simple enough: Golfers bring the fame, winemakers bring the expertise and together they alchemize the mix into a golden brand. Greg Norman has been at it for nearly two decades. More recently, Arnold Palmer, Mike Weir, Nick Faldo, John Daly, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and […]
Wedding Wines
Summer is a time of celebration. Social calendars that seemed so barren just a few weeks ago are suddenly swollen with backyard barbecues, graduation parties, family reunions, tailgate excursions and impromptu get-togethers of all kinds. Oh, and did we mention weddings? June is traditionally a big month for weddings, which, when you think about it, are simply summer parties in nicer clothes. For all of planning that goes into a wedding — invitations, reception, rehearsal dinner, rings, flowers, formal wear, photography, music — it’s easy to overlook an important element that can play a role in setting the mood for […]
Gewürztraminer
Natalie MacLean, editor of the award-winning wine newsletter at NatalieMacLean.com and author of Red, White and Drunk All Over helped AskMen.com learn about the extraordinary white wine Gewürztraminer. Gewürztraminer has historically been unfairly treated and ignored. This dry white wine calls Alsace home and despite its distinctive character, its more popular big brother Riesling largely overshadows it — “partly because Gewürztraminer is hard to say in a restaurant or liquor store,” says MacLean. Once you taste Gewürztraminer, however, you’ll either love it or hate it. Either way, there’s no way you can ignore this versatile wine or its lychee and […]
Steak & Wine
When it comes to steak, conventional wisdom says the color of your wine should match the color of your meat. But if you can’t bear to quaff yet another cabernet sauvignon with your beef, there are other options, including plenty that refute convention, says Natalie MacLean, a sommelier and wine writer. “Robust whites can also muscle in beside a steak,” she says. “If you’re tired of big, honkin’ reds, try a California chardonnay or a French blend of marsanne and rousanne. These toasty, aromatic whites highlight the smoky notes in the meat.” But avoid light-bodied whites, which can be overshadowed […]
Women & Wine 2
For too long, oenology (een-ology, the study of wine) was considered off-limits to the average American consumer. Wine knowledge was a carefully guarded male stronghold of stuffy sommeliers, grumpy English professors with big, red noses and the wealthy. But in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the wine industry began selling its products in the United States with a more inclusive approach. A methodical marketing scheme began with easily understood White Zinfandel. Wineries started selling people on Chardonnay and then Merlot, varietals that were easy to drink, whose names had a ring of sophistication. People took notice. It was a […]
Scoring Wine
I just finished a chapter in Red, White and Drunk all Over in which the author Natalie MacLean examines the “purely American phenomenon” of wine scores. Hugely interesting stuff, and very relevant to us Winos; the vast majority of us, I would hazard a guess, are influenced by those 100-point-scale ratings that we see taped up next to displays of wine in stores. Charged with a mandate to buy something relatively obscure (a bottle of Pinot Noir from Chile, lets say), and discovering two similarly-priced bottles at your local wine shop — both with positive reviews but one featuring a […]
Food & Wine 6
Oh man, are the Traveling Mamas big fans of wine writer Natalie MacLean. She’s a funny and informative writer, a four-time winner of the James Beard Journalism Awards, and she also was named the World’s Best Drink Writer at the World Food Media Awards (that’s just about the best name for an award). Natalie MacLean writes hilariously and self-effacingly in her book, Red, White, and Drunk All Over. This is a kind-of travel, kind-of drinking memoir, and I love it. Even better, she kindly answered some of our questions, and – my favorite – has put serious consideration into wine […]
Internet & Wine
Lucky for me, Red, White and Drunk All Over by Natalie MacLean was one of the first books I picked up when I started thinking about doing a wine blog. For MacLean, writing about wine is not an academic exercise, a parsing of the chemical responses upon the tongue, a conjugation of fruit groups or a diagram of geographical factors. Important though they are to figuring out how and why certain flavors and aromas play out on the senses, those elements alone are a flat description of a particular wine’s character. As MacLean explains in the chapter “The Making of […]
