Favorite Wine Books [3]

SPECIFIC WINE REGIONS & ISSUES:

•  Campbell, Christy: The Botanist and the Vintner, Algonquin Books, 2006.

1871 was an extremely bad year for France. France lost the Franco Prussian War, Emperor Napoleon III was exiled, Paris was taken over by the Communards – but worst of all, all the vineyards in France began to die and no wine was produced in France for another 30 years. This delightful book describes the scourge of Phylloxera and how France eventually recovered.

• Dovaz, Michel, and Michel Guillard: Bordeaux: Legendary Wines, Assouline, 2014.

This lavishly illustrated and luxurious book is slightly cheaper than most of the legendary wines which it so lovingly describes. And certainly, once opened, it will last much longer than all of them – once opened.

• Kliman, Todd: The Wild Vine, Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2010.

For those oenophiles interested in the early and unsuccessful attempts to produce wine in the young United States, this book explores the fascinating story of the Norton Grape.

• Pitte, Jean-Robert: Bordeaux/Burgundy, University of California Press, 2012.

It is an endless debate, never to be settled, which is best – the wines of Bordeaux or those of Burgundy? This delightful book offers no conclusion but explores all delicious aspects of the question.

• Potter, Maximillian: Shadows in the Vineyard, Twelve, 2014.

Based on the original article in Vanity Fair magazine, this ‘crime thriller’ of a book describes the criminal attack on one of the world’s most prestigious vineyards – Romanée-Conti. In telling his story, he also examines all the unique features of this famous wine region.

• Taber, George: Judgment of Paris, Scribner, 2006.

In addition to containing marvelously comprehensive descriptions of European and Californian winemakers’ art and passion, it is also contains the only eye-witness account of the famous wine-tasting afternoon in Paris in 1976 which dramatically changed the world of wine forever and ever.