Sommelier, award-winning writer, wine and food pairing diva and prodigious drinker.

Wine is just a drink for some people; an obsession for others. No matter where you are on that spectrum, you'll find Natalie MacLean an engaging speaker. Funny, brainy and unapologetically tipsy, MacLean uses her wit and practiced hedonism to make learning about wine thoroughly enjoyable. An accredited sommelier and much-loved columnist, she can help both novices and connoisseurs deepen their appreciation of wine from the grape to glass.

Named by Elle magazine as one of the top 30 power women in Canada, MacLean is a member of the National Capital Sommelier Guild and the Wine Writers Circle. She is the drinks blogger for Epicurious, the website for both Bon Appétit and Gourmet magazines. More than five million food and wine lovers visit the site every month. Her regular wine columns in print reach another 5.1 million readers. McLean writes a monthly coloumn for The Globe & Mail's national Report on Business magazine among the roster of other food and lifetsyle publications where her columns appear, including Ottawa magazine, Grand, Saltscapes, and her frequent contributions to the LCBO Food & Drink guide, Canadian House and Home, Sharp for Men and Active Adult magazine. Her free wine e-newsletter is read by more than 87,000 wine lovers in 36 countries. It helps readers make choices from restaurant wine lists, match wine with food, get good value when they buy wine and chuckle over the lighter side of wine. To sign up, visit www.nataliemaclean.com.

In her book, Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine Soaked Journey From Grape to Glass, she sweeps readers behind the scenes of the international wine world, visiting its most evocative places and meeting its most charismatic personalities. The book has won multiple awards, including The Best Wine Literature Book in the English language at the Gourmand World Food Awards and the Culinary Literary Book Award at the Cordon D'or International Culinary Arts Competition.

MacLean was also named The World's Best Drink Writer at the food media awards in Australia, has won four James Beard Foundation Journalism awards, including the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, and has been the recipient of six IACP Bert Greene awards for excellence in food journalism. A Rhodes Scholarship finalist, she studied nineteenth-century English literature at Oxford University, England and earned a Masters of Business Administration with distinction at the University of Western Ontario, London

To fund her late-night vinous habits, MacLean holds down day jobs as a wine writer, speaker and judge. Her unswerving goal in life is to intimidate those crusty wine stewards at fine restaurants with her staggering knowledge. So too can your group after listening to and drinking with Natalie MacLean!

• Wine: How to taste and describe wine
• Wine: How to buy wine and choose from restaurant lists
• Wine: How to cellar and serve wine
• Wine: How to pair wine with food and entertain
• Wine: How wine is marketed and sold

"Never pedantic, but always erudite and eminently readable - and often laugh-out-loud funny - MacLean's book is a terrific beginning for the new wine connoisseur. Here one will find advice and information on everything from cellaring to proper stemware, how to order wine in a restaurant, differentiations of grape varieties and regions, the myths of winespeak, and much more; in other words, a great jumping-off point for more serious exploration if one becomes so inclined."
- Rex Pickett, author of Sideways

"Who better than Natalie MacLean to lead us through the world of wine? She takes us to the best vineyards and the deepest cellars, knows how to spot the eccentric geniuses and charms them as she charms us, with self-deprecating, irreverent prose and steely objectivity. Above all, she reminds us that behind the oenology and the marketing hype, wine is a warm and sensual treasure, to be drunk - and written about - with love."
- James Chatto, wine editor, Food & Drink,
restaurant columnist, Toronto Life

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