Mouthfeel: Confessions of a Wine Slut is the story of one woman’s search for love and livelihood in wine country.
The first memoir to present an authentic and opinionated view of the Sonoma County wine business.

About Mouthfeel
Working in a winery tasting room is not always the beautiful experience the bucolic setting would suggest. A glance behind the “Employees Only” door often reveals an intimidating landscape of high drama and low morals, where good taste meets bad manners.
This is where I got my start in the wine business.
I took a series of tasting room jobs where I encountered winemaker egos, owner disaffection, manager duplicity, customer boorishness, and a certain ‘Animal House’ mentality among cellar workers. I suffered them all just to be closer to the wine. I was, by then, a total wine slut.
I moved from grape to grape – funky petite sirah, dumb pinot noir, Rued chardonnay, cheap champagne – and I practically obsessed about California’s native wine, zinfandel.
As time went on, I became more determined to expand my vinicultural knowledge so that I can write about wine. But although I crave acceptance in the industry, I always end up feeling like an outsider.
Mouthfeel is currently seeking a publisher.
Please contact Author Mari Kane to get the proposal and manuscript.
About Mari Kane
My interest in fine wine was sparked while working as a professional photographer in San Francisco between 1989-1993, shooting cover stories for Wine Spectator magazine and drinking Hawks Crest Cabernet.
In my twelve years in Sonoma County I worked in no less than eleven tasting rooms, which has to be a record.
In many ways, Mouthfeel is similar to the book and movie, Sideways. But, where Sideways was about fictional male outsiders looking in to the industry, Mouthfeel presents the viewpoint of a real-life woman working on the inside, looking out.
Mouthfeel has even more obscure wine talk, more vine-crazed characters, and a reasonable enough amount of sex to amuse wine enthusiasts around the world.
I now reside in Vancouver, Canada where I write about the British Columbia and California wine industry on my blog, TastingRoomConfidential.com, as well as other wine blogs and magazines.