"After years of writing about wine for magazines and newspapers, I'm thrilled to let you know that I'm publishing my first book on the subject this fall," writes Natalie MacLean in her widely circulated e-newsletter, Nat Decants.

In Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass, which will be arriving in Canadian stores on August 29, MacLean takes her readers behind the scenes of the international wine world - exploring its history, visiting its most evocative places, and meeting its most charismatic personalities.

The book's Canadian version will be published by Doubleday Canada. The American edition will be brought out by Bloomsbury and be in stores on September 19. The book will also be published in The Netherlands in October, and in the UK in April 2007.

"One person who read an early copy described it as A Year in Provence meets Kitchen Confidential then goes Sideways," writes MacLean. "Granted, this was after she had several glasses of wine."

In the blurbs provided by MacLean, the author of Sideways, Rex Pickett, says the book is "eminently readable - often laugh-out-loud funny." The venerable Hugh Johnson, author of The World Atlas of Wine, writes: "There's everything here: old stories and new, an inquiring mind and bags of enthusiasm."

The inventor of the Wine Aroma Wheel, Ann Noble, who's a Professor of Viticulture at the University of California, Davis, is positively enthusiastic. " A galloping read, which educates, entertains and amuses," she says. "[Natalie] is the George Plimpton of wine writers; she shares insights from her 'day in the life of' a vineyard worker, a winemaker, a wine sales person and a sommelier. Exciting tidbits also include insider report of the feud between well-known wine experts."