For the Love of Wine: My Odyssey through the World’s Most Ancient Wine Culture

Hailed as one of the strongest advocates for traditional Georgian wine making (the country not the state), Alice Feiring puts her award-winning style to work in her book For the Love of Wine: My Odyseey Through the World’s Most Ancient Wine Culture, a lovely and appetizing exploration of the world’s most ancient wine culture.

Feiring brings an astute sense of observation to her work, and the sense of Georgia—its culture, even the very smells on the air—permeates her narrative. If readers don’t want a glass of wine and to throw together the recipe at the end of each of her richly-detailed chapters, then I don’t know what to say. Feiring’s passion for good wine and sustainable practices suffuses the entire book, leaving readers feeling sated, but still voracious for more. From history to prehistory to ecology, agriculture, geology, and the culinary arts, this book celebrates anything and everything that is traditional Georgian wine. It’s an evocative and surprisingly interesting topic, told by a writer with obvious passion and insight into, arguably, one of the original craft, artesian practices.