Talk with Alice Feiring 

ALICE FEIRING

When my parents separated, at the beginning of the 1980s, my father moved in with his new partner, Phyllis, in the apartment of her former husband and wine enthusiast, Arthur. One day when I went to visit my father, I went to see Arthur’s wine cellar where the ceiling was very low, even for me and I’m only 5 feet tall. It was dusty and way too hot. I couldn’t see anything of interest until I stumbled across a bottle of Giovanni Scanavino, a 1968 vintage Barolo. Even though it had been kept in really poor conditions, it was magnificent. It was my first real emotional encounter with Barolo and it has stayed with me ever since.

ALICE FEIRING

The book was commissioned but it was so exciting to write and for the people I met. Nancy and John Lasseter, the founders of Pixar, Ryan Seacrest, the host of American Idol, and the entrepreneur Rick Ryan, for example. They had designed some gorgeous places, spent a lot of money on Roman temples and cathedrals dedicated to wine. Generally speaking, I realised that it had a lot to do with ego.

ALICE FEIRING

I live on the top floor of a New York apartment building. I am very disorganised, and haphazard. There are around 300 bottles just about anywhere I can find room to put them. Looking for a wine among the 300 bottles I have at home is sometimes challenging but I know what I have and I like rediscovering wines I had forgotten about. If I was a consultant helping people build a wine cellar, I would say, “Do as I say and not as I do!” (smiles).

ALICE FEIRING

We should have a cellar for the wine we can drink right away, another for age-worthy wines and another for in-between wines. We should also store the whites, the sparkling wines and the reds separately but also the skin-contact wines I love so much. And within these sections, we would arrange the wines by country then by region.

ALICE FEIRING

Absolutely not! There are natural wines for quaffing, designed for early drinking, but if you go to the Châteaubriand (the chef Inaki Aizpitarte’s restaurant in the 11th arrondissement of Paris), Denmark or Japan, for example, you will find very mature vintages of natural wines. Wines from wineries like Stoppa, in Italy, that undergo lengthy maceration and maturation in the cellar, are designed to last. Generally speaking, natural wines full of tannins, which protect wines in the same way sulphur would, have substantial ageability. Recently, I drank a ‘basic’ 2000 vintage Pinot noir by Fred Cossard and it was still really fresh. Wines by the Haquet sisters, who pioneered natural wine in Anjou, were still drinking well after many years. Same for Sébastien Dervieux, aka ‘Babass’, who took over some of their vineyards, or for wines by Château Musar in Lebanon. I have drunk some of their pre-1966 vintage wines that until then were made without sulphur. When a wine is well-structured and well-balanced, it can age.

ALICE FEIRING

You need to gain knowledge, read and talk to your wine merchant. You have to go meet the winegrowers, taste and develop your palate.

ALICE FEIRING

I am a pessimist by nature. I think that everything is a disaster (laughs). Seriously, natural wine is here, it’s not a passing fad. But it is necessary for the winegrowers to receive support, from the States, so that they can exist and for wine to be accessible, not like the bunch of mustard leaves I buy for $8 in New York. We mustn’t buy food or drink in the same way as we buy a necklace at a jeweller’s.

ALICE FEIRING

During lockdown, I took refuge at home. My partner, who’s a bit of a hypochondriac, was on the other side of Manhattan. I bought a lot of wine and drank it alone. I began to write about the issue for a magazine and my agent called me to commission an essay on wine. I didn’t think anyone would read it, so I had the idea of conjuring up my memories as an excuse for talking about wine, as a way of breaking into people’s minds. Ultimately, it produced 15 chapters where I talk about things like resurrection after a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a former musician who had a stroke and healed through pruning vines, and how I nearly became Nina Simone’s assistant after taking her a Loire Chenin by Domaine Huet.

ALICE FEIRING

I don’t feel pride, but I am happy when I feel I’ve had an impact. One day, an old wine connoisseur who only had top labels of conventional wines in his cellar, told me that he had given everything away or sold it after reading my first book, ‘Naked Wine’ [published in French, Le Vin Nu, by Jean-Paul Rocher] and subsequently only bought natural wine. I’ve done my bit.