Go ask Alice: Feiring reads at Lou on Vine

Alice Feiring, Los Angeles, Lou on Vine, Wine bars

We went to an sparsely attended intimate reading last night at our neighborhood wine bar, Lou on Vine, featuring hot-button wine writer Alice Feiring. We read her book about a month back, and, though we don’t always agree with what she says, in the book or elsewhere, we have great respect for both the author’s prose and her point of view. We won’t get into a review of the book here, and maybe we never will (there has certainly been enough back and forth about the tome without us throwing ourselves into the dialogue). Nor will we get into a review of Lou, which continues to grow on us (can’t get enough of the Pig Candy or Hook’s Cheddar) despite our disdain for their frustratingly compact stemware (bitching about it makes us feel a bit wine-snobby, but oh well).

Suffice it to say, Feiring takes a hard line approach to the current state of the wine world, while the approach at domaine547 is admittedly soft line, with a highly inclusive attitude to wine. Yes, we like leaner Loire Valley Cab Francs made with native yeasts. We like us some slightly oxidized Chenin Blanc and Burgundian Pinot Noir. But we also like bolder California wines, such as the Curran Black Oak Syrah, which we’re fairly certain would trigger Alice’s gag reflex (though we bet Alice would be intrigued by the Curran whites).

And in person, she’s a dynamo. Our first time meeting Alice in person was incredibly friendly. She’s warm, charming, articulate, and prickly. Yup, prickly. And we love us some prickly. A meek audience member told Alice that she thinks the homogenization of wine might have some benefits — since she likes the plonk she gets now a whole lot better than the plonk she used to find at grocery stores. And this comment was not met with any amount of sympathy.

Instead, Alice responded that there is no reason to drink plonk, period. She noted that it’s still very possible to find bargain wines from Europe (despite the plunging dollar) that show terroir, that have interesting flavor profiles and depth, rather than plonk dominated by tea-bagged oak chip vanillans and overripe fruit. There may have been a scoff and a scowl involved, but the scoff was charming, the scowl winning. We’re not sure the meek audience member felt the same way.

Personally, we’d have to say we agree with both Alice and her lone detractor. Cheap, mass-produced wine is more drinkable now (even Jonathan Gold seemed to think so), and maybe that’s the result of Robert Parker’s palate, or maybe it’s the result of inevitable technological advancements in food processing in general. But smaller, artisan wines (not always, but often natural) are also readily available and affordable, and from our perspective, there seems to be a growing number of wine consumers open to trying them. The question is accessibility — and, ultimately, it’s just as much (if not more) the responsibility of critics and wine sellers to highlight these wines as it is for the wine drinker to seek them out.

Despite the subtitle of her book, “How I Saved the World from Parkerization,” Feiring doesn’t have delusions of grandeur. But she does have a very specific point of view and she feels that it’s an underrepresented one, as far as the market is concerned. Her attitude is that it’s her duty to speak her mind, and we think this confidence in her own position is something we can all learn from.

Feiring’s hard line approach may be leaving her trapped in a corner. But it’s a corner we can peer into on occasion, without resting there permanently ourselves — mostly because she’s there on our behalf, fighting the good fight. And for that, we’re very grateful.

what's all this, then?

Domaine 547 is a community meant for people who want to come along with us on our journey, as we learn about the world of wine.

It’s a point of view, that says wine need not be put on a pedestal or saved for special occasions, but should instead be a part of everyday life—because life is just that much better with a glass of wine in your hand (unless, of course, you are an alcoholic or under the age of 21).

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