Nat Decants

To fund her late-night vinous habits, Natalie MacLean holds down day jobs as a wine writer, speaker and judge. An accredited sommelier, she is a member of the National Capital Sommelier Guild, the Wine Writers Circle and several French wine societies with complicated and impressive names. Funny, brainy and unapologetically tipsy, her goal in life is to intimidate those crusty wine stewards at fine restaurants with her staggering knowledge.

Natalie's book Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass chronicles her last three years sipping, spitting and slogging her way through the international wine world to visit some its most evocative places and to meet some of its most charismatic, obsessive and innovative characters. The book has been described as A Year in Provence meets Kitchen Confidential then goes Sideways.

Red, White and Drunk All Over was recently chosen the Best Wine Literature Book in the English language at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. The competition receives more than 6,000 books from 60 countries each year. The awards were created at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany ten years ago to reward those who "cook and drink with words." The book also won the Culinary Literary Book Award in the Cordon d’Or international culinary arts competition and was nominated for the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction at the Atlantic Book Awards.

At the World Food Media Awards in Australia, Natalie was named the World's Best Drink Writer. The competition received more than 1,000 entries. An international and independent panel of 47 food and wine experts selected her from a short-list of 14 nominees from the U.S., Canada, U.K., New Zealand and Australia.

Natalie has also won four James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards for her writing about drinks, including the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, in memory of one of America's greatest food writers. This award was given out at the end of the ceremony for work of literary merit. She was also nominated for this award in 2005. Natalie has also won an unprecedented six Bert Greene Awards for excellence in food journalism, presented by the International Association of Culinary Professionals, five awards from the American Association of Food Journalists, four from the North American Travel Writers Association and three honorable mentions at the National Magazine Awards.

She has been nominated for the Louis Roederer International Wine Writer award, along with writers from the Financial Times of London, The Independent and Wine International. In the U.K., she has been nominated twice for Communicator of the Year award, hosted by the International Wine & Spirit Competition in London, England.

Her articles have appeared in more than sixty newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Reader’s Digest, BusinessWeek, Conde Nast Traveler, Time Out New York, enRoute (Air Canada), Hemispheres (United Airlines), Chatelaine, Saturday Night, The Age (Australia), Sydney Morning Herald, Wine Enthusiast, Wine International, Ritz-Carlton Magazine, Canadian House & Home, Worth, Canadian Business Magazine, Food & Drink, Ottawa Magazine, Grand, Upscale Living, Coastal Living, Ottawa Citizen, MD Canada, MD News, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, St Louis Post-Dispatch, Saltscapes, Halifax Herald, Pure Canada, Tasters Guild International, Vines, Wine Selectors, Wine Access, Wine Tidings, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, IE Money Magazine and President's Choice Magazine.

Natalie is the drinks blogger for Epicurious, the web site for both Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines. More than five million food and wine lovers visit the site every month.

Other than wine, her interests include highland dancing, which she taught for ten years, after placing fifth in the world championships in Scotland. A Rhodes Scholarship finalist, she studied nineteenth-century English literature at Oxford University, England; earned an honors Bachelor of Public Relations (MSVU, Halifax) and took an MBA with distinction (UWO, London). However, all of this training is irrelevant to her current preoccupation. Instead, she credits the long line of hard drinkers from whom she descends for her ability to drink like a fish—and for the motivation to write about it, in a transparent attempt to make it look respectable. (But if you really want to know how she got started, click here for an article or here for a radio interview.)

Natalie offers a free e-mail newsletter that will help you make choices from restaurant wine lists, match wine with food, get good value when you buy wine (including those from the monthly LCBO Vintages releases) and chuckle over the lighter side of wine. While she tackles each topic to learn something new, she never takes wine—or herself—too seriously.

Your e-mail address will be kept confidential. Natalie does this because she enjoys the occasional feedback that she receives from those on her list. To sign-up for her newsletter, use this short form or just e-mail her at . Please let others know about the newsletter too—the more, the merrier!