For the Love of Wine

When most of us think of wine country, we conjure up images of France and Italy. But Georgia? I can still remember hearing of “Soviet Georgia” on the news when I was a kid and the name conjured up cement grey buildings and unsmiling locals. As Feiring discovers, nothing could be further from the truth. Situated on the Black Sea, the residents of Georgia have been making their own wine as far back as anyone can remember. The author travels to Georgia to learn more about the people and their wine making skills. She meets with farmers, artists and priests and learns that many of the wines are made from wild grapes that have not been subjected to chemicals or fertilizer. She attends feasts, gets recipes and drinks plenty of wine, some better than others. She covets the clay fermentation jars that winemakers bury in the ground to process their wines and she falls in love with a country and a way of life along the way. Part travelogue, part history lesson and 100% fascinating

Feiring, a food connoisseur, went to Georgia in search of their ancient wine culture, perhaps the oldest in the world (borne out by prehistoric clay pots, in whose modern descendents people still age wine buried in their backyards). She found that Soviet standardization, while it drove varietals and terroir-based wine making underground for personal consumption, never succeeded in obliterating the vines or the people's taste for wine patiently steeped in grape skins, imparting a full spectrum of flavor and eccentric interest. Now, however, as European money offers opportunities to buy modern equipment and produce homogenized product, the industry stands at a crossroads unresolved by the end of the book.

My goodness, I have been reading a lot of wine related books lately, but this one really stands out. Feiring is a extremely passionate connoisseur of wine and it's history. Her book is about the country of Georgia, and it's thousands of years of wine culture. She vividly describes her experiences in the country, tracking it's vinicultural history, it's methods of making wine, and it's struggles through the years in preserving it's culture.
Feiring is an outspoken advocate of the natural, organic method of making wine. She makes a strong case against the current trends of the mass production, chemically enhanced, pesticide laden, monotonous wine. While the world is experiencing the taking over of wineries and vineyards by large corporations (and the Chinese), Georgia is embracing it's roots in it's age-old techniques.
Feiring explains in detail how Georgian wine is made in qvevri's (clay vessels sunk into the ground), the methods of making the wine, and the hundreds of varieties of grape vines in Georgia (many of which have been saved and maintained only by local farmers). She describes how the culture was almost wiped out by the Soviets during their period of occupation.
Her descriptive language is of such high quality that you could almost smell and taste the wines and food. She made you feel as though you were with her, sitting down to expansive meals with Georgian farmers, traveling through the countryside in search of rare grape vines or ancient qvevri's. Her portrayals of people enabled me to clearly see them in my own mind. While it seems like small scale, sustainable methods she advocates are facing insurmountable odds against the large corporations, it is refreshing to know that there are people like her who are trying. If you are interested in wine, history that wasn't taught in our schools, or just outstanding writing, this is a great book for you!

Thank you to University of Nebraska Press/Potomac and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review. You definitely need to be a wine lover to read this book. Interesting, although the book gets a little repetitive as you get further into it. The author clearly demonstrates a passion for wine.

A passionate look at the world of Georgian wine and a clarion call for the cause of natural wine.