Naked wine is wine stripped down to its basics--wine as it was meant to be: wholesome, exciting, provocative, living, sensual, and pure. Naked, or natural, wine is the opposite of most New World wines today; Alice Feiring calls them "overripe, over-manipulated, and overblown" and makes her case that good (and possibly great) wine can still be made, if only winemakers would listen more to nature and less to marketers, and stop using additives and chemicals. But letting wine make itself is harder than it seems.

Three years ago, Feiring answered a dare to try her hand at natural winemaking. In "Naked Wine," she details her adventure--sometimes calm, sometimes wild, always revealing--and peers into the nooks and crannies of today's exciting, new (but centuries-old) world of natural wine.

Award-winning wine writer Alice Feiring presents an all-new way to look at the world of wine. While grape variety is important, a surprising amount of information about flavour and composition can be gleaned from a region’s soil. Feiring’s guide makes it simple to find wines you’ll love. Breaking new ground and revealing new connections, The Dirty Guide to Wine organises wines not by grape, not by region, not by New or Old World, but by soil. The same winning qualities found in a Bordeaux might be found in a Californian Chardonnay. Feiring provides a clarifying account of the traditions and techniques of wine-tasting, demystifying the practice and introducing a whole new way to enjoy wine to sommeliers and novice drinkers alike.

In 2011 when Alice Feiring first arrived in Georgia, she felt as if she'd emerged from the magic wardrobe into a world filled with mythical characters making exotic and delicious wine with the low tech of centuries past. She was smitten, and she wasn't alone. This country on the Black Sea has an unusual effect on people; the most passionate rip off their clothes and drink wines out of horns while the cold-hearted well up with tears and parse emotional toasts. Visiting winemakers fall under Georgia's spell and bring home qvevris (clay fermentation vessels) while rethinking their own techniques. But as in any good fairy tale, Feiring sensed that danger ran shotgun with the magic. With acclaim and growing international interest come threats in the guise of new wine consultants aimed at making wines more commercial. So Feiring fought back in the only way she knew how-by celebrating Georgia and the men and women who make the wines she loves most, those made naturally with organic viticulture, minimal intervention, and no additives. From Tbilisi to Batumi, Feiring meets winemakers, bishops, farmers, artists, and silk spinners. She feasts, toasts, and collects recipes. She encounters the thriving qvevri craftspeople of the countryside, wild grape hunters, and even Stalin's last winemaker-while plumbing the depths of this tiny country's love for its wines. For the Love of Wine is Feiring's emotional tale of a remarkable country and people who have survived religious wars and Soviet occupation, yet managed always to keep hold of its precious wine traditions. Embedded in the narrative is even hope that Georgia has the temerity to confront its latest threat-modernization.

"I want my wines to tell a good story. I want them natural and most of all, like my dear friends, I want them to speak the truth even if we argue," says Alice Feiring. Join her as she sets off on her one-woman crusade against the tyranny of homogenization, wine consultants, and, of course, the 100-point scoring system of a certain all-powerful wine writer. Traveling through the ancient vineyards of the Loire and Champagne, to Piedmont and Spain, she goes in search of authentic barolo, the last old-style rioja, and the tastiest new terroir-driven champagnes. She reveals just what goes into the average bottle--the reverse osmosis, the yeasts and enzymes, the sawdust and oak chips--and why she doesn't find much to drink in California. And she introduces rebel winemakers who are embracing old-fashioned techniques and making wines with individuality and soul.
No matter what your palate, travel the wine world with Feiring and you'll have to ask yourself: What do I really want in my glass?

A compact illustrated guide to the emerging and enormously popular category of natural wine, a style that focuses on minimal intervention, lack of additives, and organic and biodynamic growing methods.

Today, wine is more favored and consumed that it's ever been in the United States--and millennials are leading the charge, drinking more wine than any other generation in history. Many have been pulled in by the tractor beam of natural wine--that is, organic or biodynamic wine made with nothing added, and nothing taken away--a movement that has completely rocked the wine industry in recent years. While all of the hippest restaurants and wine bars are touting their natural wine lists, and while more and more consumers are calling for natural wine by name, there is still a lot of confusion about what exactly natural wine is, where to find it, and how to enjoy it. In Natural Wine for the People, James Beard Award-winner Alice Feiring sets the record straight, offering a pithy, accessible guide filled with easy definitions, tips and tricks for sourcing the best wines, whimsical illustrations, a definitive list to the must-know producers and bottlings, and an appendix with the best shops and restaurants specializing in natural wine across the country, making this the must-buy and must-gift wine book of the year.