Luxury Travel Review

Unquenchable book cover
Unquenchable book cover

Following the success of her book Red, White and Drunk All Over Natalie MacLean, a sommelier and writer, set about finding well priced wines in several countries. Five years later, the results of her travels and research were outlined in Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines (Penguin USA, $15.99) first published last year in hard cover and most recently in paperback just in time for the end of year holidays. In the 344-page book, written in a conversational style MacLean insists good wine can be found at affordable prices.

She shares wine appreciation and food pairing tips and favorite value wines and wineries from eight regions: North America, Germany, Australia, southern Italy, the Mediterranean, Argentina, Chile and South Africa. She also includes a list of resources for the regions and a list of her notes, wine picks and top value producers in the back of the chapters. In each region she visited between 30 and 40 wineries and tasted thousands of wines. Wine can be complex without being complicated, she says in the book.

Natalie MacLean, author, Unquenchable

Natalie MacLean, author, Unquenchable

“I’ve spent the past several years traipsing around the world, visiting wineries, tasting their offerings, and searching for the world’s best inexpensive wines,” said MacLean in promotional materials. “The narrative is as familiar as Arthur’s quest for the grail and as naïve as the little bird’s plaintive search for the affirmative in Are You My Mother?”

MacLean, named the World’s Best Drinks Writer at the World Food Media Awards in Australia, won the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award from the James Beard Foundation and the M.F.K. Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing from Les Dames d’Escoffier International. Her wine columns in print reach 5.1 million readers, her complimentary wine e-newsletter has a following of 145,000. For 15 years she was a competitive Highland dancer.

Author photo courtesy of Natalie MacLean, book cover photo courtesy of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.


Unquenchable book cover

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