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Book Review: Red, White, and Drunk All Over by Natalie MacLean
Review by Jessica Yadegaran Do readers really care about active yeasts and secondary fermentation? Or do they long to understand wine's seductions, and its otherworldly sense of place? Do they care about a region's production, or would they rather hear how a glass of juice resembles a curvy redhead, and why it makes them feel the way it does? You know, drunk. This is among Natalie MacLean's first points in Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass. A descendent of Celtic alcohol-lovers and livers, MacLean, a sommelier, writes first and foremost from a sensual... continue reading 
- Posted by: Jessica on May 9, 2008 6:45 PM
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Book Review: House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler
Review by W. Blake Gray. Carlo Rossi was a real person: a relative of Ernest and Julio Gallo. In the 1970s, the Gallos launched a new jug wine and decided "Carlo Rossi" (though he actually went by "Charlie.") had the right ring to it. Now he's famous and synonymous with cheap wine. This is not a bad thing: songs and even a band have been named after him. And people who buy Carlo Rossi wine do not turn up their noses at it -- it's bringing pleasure into their lives. It seems that Robert Mondavi may be headed down the... continue reading
- Posted by: Blake on April 14, 2008 9:02 PM
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Book Review: First Big Crush by Eric Arnold
Review by Christy McGill. Have you ever daydreamed about a different life? Perhaps one set in some sun-dappled, far-flung wine-making countryside where rows of grape vines bursting with perfect fruit are transformed with the help of your touch into magnificent wine? A better question might be—has anyone with even a cursory interest in wine actually not harbored this fantasy? Eric Arnold, a 20-something former joke and copywriter decided to chuck it all, leave New York and take his version of that daydream to the next level. What resulted is First Big Crush: The Down and Dirty on Making Great Wine... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on April 5, 2008 10:40 PM
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Book Review: The Oxford Companion to Wine by Jancis Robinson
As casual wine lovers, we live in the daily romance of wine. We thrive on the pleasures of a great glass with a wonderful meal, a fabulous bottle shared with a friend, or the exciting first taste of a new grape variety. But lurking just under the surface of this delightful, even magical world, lies a deeper more complex universe of wine made up of history, geography, geology, meteorology, organic chemistry, geopolitics, economics, philosophy, and more. Some are content to always experience wine in the most casual of ways, but nearly every wine lover I know has at some point... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on March 18, 2008 11:41 PM
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Book Review: A Wine Miscellany by Graham Harding
Review by Jessica Yadegaran. Did you know that the world’s oldest single vine is in the Slovenian city of Maribor? Or that the Italian Ministry of Justice supports a Roman jail’s production of Novello wines to the tune of $600,000? And how about this: the world’s largest wine list belongs to Bern’s Steak House in Florida. The restaurant stocks half a million bottles and employs ten wine waiters. Gems like these make up Graham Harding’s A Wine Miscellany: A Jaunt Through the Whimsical World of Wine. Harding, chairman of the Oxford Wine Club and director of a specialist wine importer,... continue reading
- Posted by: Jessica on February 20, 2008 11:28 PM
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Book Review: Love by the Glass by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher
People fall in love with wine every day, and many never realize that it is happening. They just wake up one day and they can't imagine a life without it. Frankly, the same is true when we're talking about the people that we love -- unless there's a bolt from the blue, much of the time we never even realize just when, exactly, we started loving the person that we end up spending the rest of our lives with. The mysterious pull that wine and love have on our souls is similar enough that it comes as a surprise to... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on February 3, 2008 8:49 PM
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Book Review: The Botanist and the Vintner by Christy Campbell
They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but many of the events of the past were so dependent upon the knowledge of the times, that there is simply no way they could ever occur again. Indeed, those of us who are alive today take certain moments in history for granted, precisely because our modern experience blinds us to the extent of the crisis that these events most certainly represented at the time. Such is the case for the modern wine lover, who enjoys a bottle with the carefree ignorance that there was... continue reading
- Posted by: Alder on January 18, 2008 11:57 PM
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Book Review: I'll Drink To That, by Rudolph Chelminski
Review by Wanda Hennig “The story of how Beaujolais reached its present prominence is worth a look because it encapsulates so much not only about the wine itself but also about France and the French themselves: this quick, talented, nervous, occasionally maddening but altogether admirable people.” So writes Rudolph Chelminski in the opening chapter of his book about Beaujolais: the wine (or more aptly, wines); “the” Beaujolais,” as he reminds readers to call the region; and Georges Duboeuf—known as “Mr. Beaujolais” in the wine world. Duboeuf is the driven “French peasant” of the title, seemingly an intuitive marketing genius, who... continue reading
- Posted by: Wanda on January 11, 2008 11:59 PM
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Book Review: Washington Wines & Wineries by Paul Gregutt
Review by Cole Danehower When I read James Laube advising in a recent Wine Spectator column that “Many Washington reds . . . make for good alternatives to their counterparts from California,” I could almost feel the heat of Paul Gregutt’s blood boiling. Gregutt is a well-known wine writer and authority in the Pacific Northwest and the author of the just published Washington Wines & Wineries: The Essential Guide. Gregutt is a partisan of Washington wine quality. I could easily imagine he might have claimed that many Washington reds would make good replacements for their California counterparts! Frankly, he’d... continue reading
- Posted by: Cole on January 4, 2008 3:45 PM
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Book Review: Sweet Wines by James Peterson
Review by Jennie Schacht. In the world of wine, the sweet ones get short shrift. But veteran cookbook author James Peterson doesn’t mind. His book, Sweet Wines: A Guide to the World’s Best with Recipes, covers the territory that wine writers often leave behind. Peterson’s discussion of the wines, accompanied by his own evocative photographs, covers this complex subject clearly and succinctly. After a context-setting introduction, he takes us on a geographic voyage through the thirteen most important countries producing sweet wines, describing major regions and the wines for which they are best known. Sidebars point to interesting details, top... continue reading
- Posted by: Jennie on December 28, 2007 1:04 AM
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Book Review: Hip Tastes by Courtney Cochran
Review by Jessica Yadegaran. Millennials, there’s much to celebrate. Not only did wine out sell beer last year, but you are officially the fastest growing segment of the wine consumer market. Good times, indeed. So if you’re young and trendy – or both – and looking for a solid introduction to wine, you’ve found it in Courtney Cochran’s Hip Tastes: The Fresh Guide to Wine. Cochran is the brains behind the uber-popular San Francisco-based Hip Tastes events, where 20-somethings relish PB & J and Tater Tot pairings for their wine against a techno beat. She’s infused her first book with... continue reading
- Posted by: Jessica on December 21, 2007 10:45 AM
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Book Review: At Home in the Vineyard by Susan Sokol Blosser
Review by Tim Patterson. Oregon’s Sokol Blosser Winery prides itself on a number of “firsts” it has scored over the years, for everything from its wine to its architecture. Now co-founder Susan Sokol Blosser has written the first account of the rise of Oregon wine by a pioneering industry insider, and it’s a good one. When Susan and her husband, Bill (the whole scheme was his idea) planted their first vines in 1971, they had none of the relevant skills and experience—no background in growing grapes, making wine, or running a business. They, and a lot of other people in... continue reading
- Posted by: Tim on December 14, 2007 11:11 PM
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Book Review: Vino Italiano: The Regional Wines of Italy
Review by Bill Rohwer. With dozens of wine regions, hundreds of grape varieties, and several overlapping classification systems, Italian wine is not a subject for the faint of heart. The authors of Vino Italiano certainly have the credentials to write an authoritative account. Joseph Bastianich co-owns (with Mario Batali, who lived and cooked in Italy for some years) five Italian restaurants and an Italian wine shop in New York City, as well as owning two Italian wineries, one in Toscana, another in Friuli; David Lynch is the wine director at one of these restaurants and a prolific wine writer.... continue reading
- Posted by: Bill on December 7, 2007 8:01 PM
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Book Review: North American Pinot Noir by John Winthrop Haeger
Review by Cole Danehower. If I were a grape, and someone wanted to write a book about me, I’d pray that someone was John Winthrop Haeger. Haeger’s singular work, North American Pinot Noir, is a model of precise scholarship translated into cogent and flowing narrative. Thankfully devoid of the purple prose syndrome so prevalent in writing about Pinot noir (for example, Oz Clarke calls Pinot “seductive, sultry, steamy, sinful if possible,” while Serena Sutcliffe says that “to unlock the flavors and smells of fine Burgundy is to attain a hedonist’s nirvana.”), the volume should serve as the prototype for sober,... continue reading
- Posted by: Cole on November 30, 2007 4:50 PM
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Book Review: What to Drink With What You Eat, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg
Review by Jennie Schacht. If you have ever anguished over what to serve with your perfectly poached salmon, or what to prepare for your dinner guests toting wines they brought back from South Africa, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg have advice for you. 2007 International Association of Culinary Professionals “book of the year” winner What to Drink with What you Eat: The definitive guide to pairing food with wine, beer, spirits, coffee, tea—even water—based on expert advice from America’s best sommeliers is the current sine qua non of wine and food pairing, with 230 pages listing over 1500 pairing suggestions... continue reading
- Posted by: Jennie on November 23, 2007 5:36 PM
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Book Review: Decantations, by Frank Prial
Review by Derrick Schneider. Frank Prial’s New York Times wine articles educated and entertained subscribers for more than 25 years. His small piece of the Dining section whisked readers into historic chateaux, through renowned vineyards, and into hearing range of the business’s most interesting people. Food and wine lovers no doubt looked forward to his articles, but they were ephemeral works destined to be the next day’s birdcage liner. Devotees can now trawl through the Times’ online archives to find them, but they might prefer to pick up Decantations: Reflections on Wine by The New York Times Wine Critic which... continue reading
- Posted by: Derrick on November 16, 2007 4:00 PM
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Book Review: Educating Peter, by Lettie Teague
Review by Jessica Yadegaran. If wines were movies, what would be your Citizen Kane? After all, one man’s genre-defining epic is another man’s Roadhouse. That’s the premise of Lettie Teague’s Educating Peter: How I Taught a Famous Movie Critic the Difference Between Cabernet and Merlot or How Anybody Can Become an (Almost) Instant Wine Expert. Teague, an executive editor at Food & Wine magazine, spent a year weaning her dear friend Peter Travers off fatty Chardonnay and into the nuanced arms of Riesling and Pinot Noir. Entertaining and easy to read, it is an ideal ride for the budding wine... continue reading
- Posted by: Jessica on November 10, 2007 11:47 AM
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Book Review: The Science of Wine: From Vine to Glass, by Jamie Goode
Review by Tim Patterson. Jaime Goode is one of the best popular science writers in the English language, and fortunately for us, his subject is wine, not cosmology or tropical diseases. Trained in biology, a former scientific editor, his Wine Anorak website (and accompanying blog) is a major presence in internet wine and the original source for many of the ideas explored in this fascinating, mind-opening book. The Science of Wine isn’t a textbook on grape growing or winemaking, though it covers a lot of that ground. Its chapters are focused on key concepts and controversies in the serious wine... continue reading
- Posted by: Tim on November 3, 2007 9:11 PM
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This page only has the last sixty entries in this category. If you're interested in digging farther into my archives, you'll want to use the complete list of archives to access my articles by month.
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May 2008
Most Recent Entries
Book Review: Red, White, and Drunk All Over by Natalie MacLean Book Review: House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler Book Review: First Big Crush by Eric Arnold Book Review: The Oxford Companion to Wine by Jancis Robinson Book Review: A Wine Miscellany by Graham Harding Book Review: Love by the Glass by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher Book Review: The Botanist and the Vintner by Christy Campbell Book Review: I'll Drink To That, by Rudolph Chelminski Book Review: Washington Wines & Wineries by Paul Gregutt Book Review: Sweet Wines by James Peterson
Favorite Posts From the Archives
Masuizumi Junmai Daiginjo, Toyama Prefecture Wine.Com Gives Retailers (and Consumers) the Finger 1961 Hospices de Beaune Emile Chandesais, Burgundy Wine Over Time The Better Half of My Palate 1999 Királyudvar "Lapis" Tokaji Furmint, Hungary What's Allowed in Your Wine and Winemaking Why Community Tasting Notes Sites Will Fail Appreciating Wine in Context The Soul vs. The Market 1989 Fiorano Botte 48 Semillion,Italy
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Required Reading for Wine Lovers
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