Wine Books We Need
I have a pretty decent library of wine book.They run the gamut from reference to "How-to’s" to memoirs. In the course of work I refer to my library often. Still, I don’t always find what I need.
WINE BOOKS THAT NEED WRITING
The Comprehensive California Vineyard Atlas
This collaboration between a GIS expert and a terroir expert is the most detailed look at California’s vineyards ever written. Not content to simply show the shape of appellations by drawing lines on a map or to point out Napa’s most famous vineyards with dots, this book delivers delivers an outrageously detailed layout of nearly every vineyard in California with property lines, elevations, names of the vineyard, ownership and small "vinographies" of each vineyard. Every wonder who owns that little 2 acre vineyard you drive by every day and what’s planed there?
Wine Battles: The History of Fight Over Wine Sales
The battles over who gets to sell wine to who and who gets to deliver it has raged the United States for over 100 years. The recent Supreme Court decision on the matter is just the most recent skirmish. The same battles took place before and following prohibition. The common thread running through all these battles is money and power. The history of these fights and challenges is replete with a cast of fascinating characters, heroes, and villains, all demonstrating that wine is for more than sipping. It’s a tool in the pursuit of power
TO-KALON: The History of California Wine Through the Eyes of a Vineyard
Perhaps California’s longest famous Vineyard, Napa Valley’s To-Kalon Vineyard has been produced coveted grapes for over 100 years. How are the changes in California Viticulture and winemaking over a century reflected in a single vineyard. To-Kalon has the answers.
The International Who’s Who of Wine. By Kitty Kelly and Marvin Shanken
Why does the vocation of winemaking and grapegrowing attract attract the world’s most interesting people? Is this fanciful field the perfect outlet for the out-sized egos among us? Is it like the arts, the place where creative types gravitate toward? Who are today’s most important and most beautiful people in the wine business. The famed writer of "Bio-hype-ographies and wine’s most famous publisher creates the first "Who’s Who" for the wine industry and reveal the secrets only they know and dig up
The Life & Death of Wine
If wines did not have the ability to outlive us all, they would not carry the cache nor the mystery that we tend to invest them with. This ability to mature, evolve and slow deteriorate over sometimes decades is what makes them so much like we who drink them (murder?) and make them the most iconic of products. This book examines the process by which wines age, how they change and explores the question: In an era of instant gratification, does it matter any more if wines mature?
The Wine Lover’s Guide To the Internet
Wine-stained and wet keyboards be damned! This modest effort looks at the resources and avenues for quenching the wine lovers thirst existing on the Internet. From the outposts of print wine magazines on the web to "wine bloggers, this little book shows the imbiber where to go to get their fix. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the flow chart that shows how various forms of Internet wine sites relate to or have evolved from from another. The perfect gift for anyone with a few minutes to spare.
WineStats: Wine Today & Yesterday
Of use only the most fully devoted wine geeks and to members of the wine trade, WineStats tell the history of wine, vineyard and wine drinking in the form of graphs and charts. Need to know what percent of wine produced in Europe was red in 1931? This book has it. How much wine has Chateau Lafite produced every vintage going back two centuries? Page 144. What the average number of days it takes Chardonnay to ripen in the world’s various growing regions? That’s here in a nifty bar graph.
WineWords: Short Stories on Wine by America’s Greatest Writers
This Collection of short stories edited by Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates who wine has inspired words beyond that collection of odd adjectives you see on back labels. Among the stories included in this groundbreaking collection are Issac Asimov’s though provoking take on nano-communities entitled "Tiny Bubbles", mystery writer Robert Parker’s short murder caper entitled "Broken Bottles," and vampirist Anne Rice’s disturbing take on the confluence of blood-letting and and winemaking entitled "Lestat’s Last Harvest"
These are great ideas – you should copyright them for sure. Also, not sure if one exists already, but there needs to be a “How-to” book for folks interested in breaking into the industry. Or a Web site. Australia has a great one (Web site for that matter) but the US seems to lack one — then again, maybe that is a good thing, though. Then everyone would want to work in the industry I suppose.
i could use WineStats, the California Atlas and the Who’s Who right now and everyday. better get on the job; each one sounds like a lifetime of dedicated work. and for the wine stories, don’t forget Roald Dahl’s diabolical “Taste.”
And What Do Wine Experts READ?
So every expert needs to learn their expertise somewhere. Either you are born and raised in a winery or your dad is a sommelier, or you go the more traditional route…you study (gasp!). There is a lot more to wine that meets the aficionado’s eye, and …