Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
I don’t thank anyone who wants to develop an education in wine can do so simply by tasting. It’s critical. Yes. But without including significant “book learn’in” in your wine education, you will be bereft of a real education. This should be easy to understand. If you simply taste wine, you really have only a tiny window into the world of wine. The student needs history. The student of wine wants an understanding of the background of grapes. We want…
There is something very idiosyncratic about Andrea Frost’s new book, “Through a Sparkling Glass”. It’s not like most wine books, yet has a structure many who imbibe in wine literature will recognize instantly. Subtitled “An A-Z of the Wonderland of Wine”, the new issue from Hardy Grant Books is nominally an encyclopedia of wine terms (or at least terms related to wine). Frost’s short sections on topics such as Gruner Veltliner, Old World-New World, Scores, Decanting and other familiar terms…
Culture. It is a combination of many things including facts, fictions, legends and landscapes. Take my own Napa Valley. Valley culture is built on the facts of great wealth being produced here by old hands and newcomers to the winemaking industry that is largely sustained by a foundation of working poor Mexicans. The fiction that anyone can enter and be a part of this good and expensive life simply by moving to this region is a part of the Valley’s…
Where the topic of American wine is concerned, there are really only three approaches to writing a book on the subject: 1) Telling the history of American Wine, 2) telling the history of a palate’s interaction with American Wine and 3) describing the current state of American Wine. A new book set to be published by the University of California Press on February 1st, American Wine, takes the latter and probably most useful approach for the vast majority of consumers…
I tapped open my iPad last night to get back to a book I am in the process of devouring and noted the many books that are held in that device. I hadn’t noticed it before then, but the display of this collection of reading material reminded me of something I hadn’t looked at in a long time. I got up from my reading chair and paced into the next room, flipped on the lights and there it was: a…
