Narrator Gabra Zackman has that rare ability to get inside the souls of her authors. Here she reads Feiring’s memoir with an understanding of its confessional dips into the past and its compelling journeys into the wine world of the present. Her pauses matter, she chats when needed, and her pacing is spot-on. Zackman’s French and Italian are musical. The audiobook is an appreciation of how a woman with 12 years of a Yeshiva religious education overcame a stressful childhood and unfulfilling romances to become one of the most important wine writers of her time. The merging of this talented narrator with the irreverent but essential wine writer creates a remarkable listening experience. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
To Fall in Love, Drink This: A Wine Writer's Memoir
Narrated by Gabra Zackman
Alice FeiringUnabridged — 6 hours, 59 minutes
To Fall in Love, Drink This: A Wine Writer's Memoir
Narrated by Gabra Zackman
Alice FeiringUnabridged — 6 hours, 59 minutes
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Overview
Named a Best Wine Book of 2022 by The New York Times, Forbes, and The Washington Post
From veteran wine writer and James Beard Award winner Alice Feiring, an insightful and entertaining memoir of wine, love, heartbreak, and the never-ending process of coming-of-age.
Alice Feiring is a special sort of wine writer-the kind who dares to disagree with wine “experts”, and who believes wholeheartedly that the best wine writing is about life.
To Fall in Love, Drink This is both her love letter to wine and a lifelong coming-of-age story. In a series of candid, wise, and humorous personal essays, Feiring tells the story of her parents' divorce, her first big wine assignment, the end of an eleven-year relationship, the death of her father, a near-fatal brush with a serial killer, pandemic lockdown, and more-and suffuses each with love, romance, pain, joy, and wine. Each essay is “accompanied” by a no-nonsense wine take-away designed to answer the questions everyday wine lovers have about wine-age, price, grapes, vineyards, and vintners.
This frank, charismatic work is a refreshingly grounded addition to the genre of wine-writing. Feiring has crafted a timeless, positively unpretentious memoir that will appeal to everyone who has ever enjoyed a glass of wine.
Editorial Reviews
05/30/2022
In this wry and earnest work, James Beard Award–winning writer Feiring (Naked Wine) delivers a canny blend of essays to reflect on the “aromas and tastes” that led her to pursue a life of quaffing and writing about wines. In “Then There Was Perfume,” the smell of aged wine (“parchment, dust, spice box with cloves”) recalls the scent of her grandfather, whose passion for perfumes helped develop young Feiring’s “nose” for wine while growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household in 1960s Nassau County, Long Island. A college rejection letter led Feiring to find consolation in her first taste of Chablis, which prompted a whirlwind of loves lost and, finally, love found in a childhood friend serendipitously encountered decades later. In “Faking It,” Feiring hilariously recounts writing her first commissioned wine story, an assignment that sends her not to the much desired Burgundy, but instead to Long Island in 1990 to cover its nascent wine scene. Throughout, she intersperses her punchy prose with delightful wine recommendations—for a “savory, yummy, ‘oops it’s gone’ kind of refreshment,” she suggests indulging in a Marquette—and intriguing histories of various varietals (who knew the California Chablis was a disingenuous appellation?). The result is a full-bodied and bighearted work that’s sure to intoxicate wine aficionados and revelers alike. Agent: Angela Miller, Folio Literary. (Aug.)
"Her best book yet. It’s her most insightful, both tender and wry, yet powerful... essays deftly woven together with wines that intersect in surprisingly appropriate ways."
—Eric Asimov, The New York Times
"Powerful, compelling... her deft prose delivers the reader directly into the emotional impact of her remembrances... humor and humanity reverberate through every anecdote, driven by Feiring’s curiosity not just about the wines of the world but about its people."
—Wine & Spirits
"Showcases her singular take on wine and her similarly distinctive take on life. It’s Alice assoluta: reverent, irreverent, erudite, effervescent and romantic through and through."
—Frank Bruni
“A full-bodied and bighearted work that’s sure to intoxicate wine aficionados and revelers alike.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A zesty memoir... Feiring creates warm portraits of wine growers and producers, steeps readers in the terroir of different regions, and, with great delight, sings the praises of natural wines... An enjoyable quaff."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Offers glimpses of the ebullience, the fear, and the beauty that Feiring discovers as she pursues her desires and is pursued by them, with moments of great beauty and profundity... an entertaining and engaging story about grapes and growth."
—Library Journal
“Readers traveling with Feiring will discover a vast inventory of wines, many new and obscure and worth seeking out.”
—Booklist
"Humor and humanity reverberate through every anecdote, driven by Feiring’s curiosity not just about the wines of the world but about its people.”
—Wine & Spirits Magazine
“Compulsively readable.”
—Club Oenologique
“Alice Feiring's most powerful work to date. Her intelligent, forceful voice takes readers to the heart and the soul, of both humanity and wines.”
—Pascaline Lepeltier, Meilleurs Ouvriers de France
“A book of the highest order, written with verve and wit and a novelist’s feel for storytelling, that pretends to be all about wine. It is also about humanity, and the earth, and the fragility of the soul. Flat-out wonderful.”
—Bill Buford, bestselling author of Heat and Dirt
“Alice Feiring is the rare wine expert whose decades of experience and technical knowledge have not curtailed her genuine wonder at wine’s power to connect us—not just to others, but to ourselves. Her transporting memoir is Feiring’s proof that there is indeed magic to be found in a good glass of wine.”
—Talia Baiocchi, editor-in-chief of PUNCH
“Alice’s adventures through the drinking glass are enlightening, amusing, and at times, startling. Her engaging memoir explains how she became one of the leading proponents of natural wine, her passion awakened by tasting her way around the world, one glass at a time. I alternated between devouring her captivating stories and taking notes of wines she recommends that are sprinkled through this book. To Fall in Love, Drink This tells of how Alice fell in love with wine, and you will too when you read it."
—David Lebovitz, author of Drinking French
"This is a book about living, paying attention, figuring out what you love, learning to trust what you love, attempting to understand what you love, being driven crazy by your family, appreciating the oddballs of the world, staying curious, and drinking wine."
—Pete Wells, restaurant critic for The New York Times
06/01/2022
This memoir feels almost like Alice in Wonderland for the alcohol-legal set. It offers glimpses of the ebullience, the fear, and the beauty that Feiring (Natural Wine for the People) discovers as she pursues her desires and is pursued by them. There are moments of great beauty and profundity here, as when Feiring writes, "Survival often hinges on the back of accidents, luck, and the random kindness of strangers." In documenting such moments, along with the wines that accompany them, Feiring becomes as much a companion as a guide, someone her readers are experiencing things with rather than (or while) learning from her about the complexity of wine. She answers questions and offers advice about everything from price to the subtle science of wine, with attention paid to grapes, vineyards, and vintners. VERDICT Feiring provides an entertaining and engaging story about grapes and growth.—Emily Bowles
Narrator Gabra Zackman has that rare ability to get inside the souls of her authors. Here she reads Feiring’s memoir with an understanding of its confessional dips into the past and its compelling journeys into the wine world of the present. Her pauses matter, she chats when needed, and her pacing is spot-on. Zackman’s French and Italian are musical. The audiobook is an appreciation of how a woman with 12 years of a Yeshiva religious education overcame a stressful childhood and unfulfilling romances to become one of the most important wine writers of her time. The merging of this talented narrator with the irreverent but essential wine writer creates a remarkable listening experience. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
2022-05-19
A wine writer’s happy discoveries.
In 2001, Feiring published a piece in the New York Times business section that launched her on an unexpected career as a wine writer. The article, exposing technology in the wine industry, led her to become an advocate of natural wines, grown organically, with none of more than 72 legally allowed additives. In her zesty memoir recounting her transformation into a wine expert, the author writes about growing up in an observant Jewish family on Long Island, with little experience drinking anything but kosher wines. Her adventurous course of self-education involved journeys around the world and has resulted in a plethora of detailed wine recommendations. “I spent time in vineyards,” she recalls, “I learned about viticulture and chemistry. My world exploded with travel and discovery. It was wild, energetic, and idealistic.” Feiring creates warm portraits of wine growers and producers, steeps readers in the terroir of different regions, and, with great delight, sings the praises of natural wines from Chile and Vermont, Czechoslovakia and California, Italy and the republic of Georgia. “No matter where I am,” she writes, “when I taste a wine that moves me, I feel the imperative to follow the thread to its origin, and that’s when I know I’ve got something special.” Her descriptions swirl rapturously: A French Syrah evoked the sinew and muscle of “a sleek racehorse” combined with “classic blueberry”; the “modestly amber-colored wine” she drank in Georgia, made from mtsvane grapes, imparted the flavor of “preserved lemon with its salted rind, textural for sure, and thirst quenching.” Besides wine, Feiring reflects on family—her stubborn mother, philandering father, and beloved brother and confidant—and various boyfriends, one of whom, unfortunately, did not drink at all. “Wine is the place where history, science, and civilization meet,” she writes, “and drinking the right glass of wine does have the power to nourish love.”
An enjoyable quaff for wine lovers.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940176226768 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 08/09/2022 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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