For the past year or so I have been buying wine books faster than I can read them, but instead of slowing down my purchasing it seems to be picking up. I am the first one to say that the best way to learn about wine is by tasting and experiencing, but it’s great to have the literature to support it and get into more depth on what you are drinking. My home library has a vast range from fiction to encyclopedic, but the common theme on my bookshelves is wine. Sometimes I will pick up a book and read just a chapter, and put it back only to pick it up again months later, and that’s just how I read through my wine library.
Below is a great article (‘An Invitation to Read, Sniff, and Taste’) on some current favorite wine books out there. We have a large selection in the tasting room and have just recently stocked up for the upcoming holidays. So come by, taste, and peruse. Books make great gifts for wine lovers, as long as you include a bottle of wine as well!
BOOKS about wine are no substitute for drinking wine. But these six new selections can help to better understand what’s in the glass, and what’s in the minds of those who make wine and consume it.
Jonathan Nossiter is the wine world’s own special irritant. In manner and style, his new book, Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25), like his 2004 movie “Mondovino,” is annoying, polarizing and provocative. It raises questions that deserve to be considered, yet his technique and style may turn off potential converts. As portrayed by Mr. Nossiter, the world of wine today is a Manichean battleground, where the soulless forces of homogenization — Robert M. Parker Jr., Wine Spectator, etc. — have turned wine, a true emblem of individuality, community and culture, into (gasp) a commodity.
“Do people across the world really want all these alcoholized sodapop concoctions,” he asks, “or are they conned and bullied by marketing and the collusion of the market into submitting to them?”
Mr. Nossiter raises other, more interesting, issues. Why is it that we resort to the absurd language of tasting notes to try to beat a wine down to its most obscure aroma and flavor? Does wine, like great art, illuminate the deepest ideas of what it means to be human? Or is it craft? How does something agrarian at heart retain its integrity in a post-industrial world?
These are all important questions, yet Mr. Nossiter draws attention away from them with regular showoff references to obscure avant-garde film directors and philosophers. He interrupts his lecture to meet with Burgundian winemakers he respects, like Christophe Roumier and Dominique Lafon. When he settles down to listen, we can all learn something…
Click Here for the rest of the article written by Eric Asimov for The New York Times
Joanie Hudson, Director of National and International Marketing, Santa Barbara Winery / Lafond Winery & Vineyards
The Holiday season is the best time to consume magnums (equivalent of two 750mL bottles of wine), or big bottles, as the larger gatherings of people are able to drink all of that wine in one evening. It is also an impressive addition to your meal presentation. Magnums lie on my cellar floor in special boxes on their sides, and I always reach for them at holiday occasions to add to the memorable aspects of the evening. 
Recent Comments