The Reader's Shelf—The Wine List: A Literary Tasting

By Nancy Pearl -- Library Journal, 7/15/2006

Visiting local wineries has become a very enjoyable pastime for vacationers. Many areas of the country now have their own Wine Trails, excellent for introducing people to new wines and wineries as well as providing economic support to small vineyards. California, of course, is a leader in domestic wine production, but don’t overlook your own backyard. This list of wine-related titles, both fiction and nonfiction, keeps the focus on American vineyards and just might lead you to sample a little of the grape yourself.

When Mike Weiss’s wife asked about what goes into a bottle of wine, the journalist decided to track a year in the California wine industry through the dark green glass of a single bottle of Fumé Blanc. The resulting series of stories he wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle has been repackaged as A Very Good Year: The Journey of a California Wine from Vine to Table (Gotham: Penguin Group (USA). 2005. ISBN 1-59240-129-5. $26; pap. 2006. ISBN 1-59240-211-9. $14). Weiss’s account is educational, suspenseful, heart-rending, and altogether human.

In My First Crush: Misadventures in the Wine Trade (Lyons: Globe Pequot. 2005. ISBN 1-59228-610-0. $22.95), author Linda Kaplan details the challenges that she and her husband encountered when they decided to move from Des Moines to a vineyard in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Kaplan’s sense of humor shines through as she describes the naïve optimism with which they took on this experiment. Eventually their hard work pays off as their Panther Creek Winery goes on to produce award-winning wines.

Serving as a nice accompaniment to the aforementioned titles is Vineyard: A Year in the Life of California’s Wine Country (1998, o.p.). Andy Katz’s lush photos depict the morning fog, the rolling hills, and even the migrant grape harvesters, while Joy Sterling’s text describes daily life at the Iron Horse Vineyards in Sonoma County.

Seasonal changes and the history of the land are but two of the myriad factors that determine the quality of wine from year to year. For a detailed account of how the local geology affects winemaking, take a look at Steve Heimoff’s A Wine Journey along the Russian River (Univ. of California. 2005. ISBN 0-520-23985-7. $24.95).

Although by no means exhaustive, ­Matthew Debord’s Wine Country USA: Touring, Tasting, and Buying at America’s Regional Wineries (Rizzoli, dist. by Random. 2005. ISBN 0-8478-2670-8. $35) offers a nice sampling. Focusing on ten areas of the country, Debord (former editor of The Wine Spectator) highlights some lovely wineries on his “Tasting Trails,” accompanied by breathtaking photography.

Many cookbooks have been inspired by life among the grapevines, but in The Vineyard Kitchen: Menus Inspired by the Seasons (HarperCollins. 2003. ISBN 0-06-001396-6. $32.50), chef ­Maria Helm Sinskey has clearly poured her heart and soul into it as well. A co-owner with her husband of Robert Sinskey Vineyards, she tells of her family’s kitchen lineage, from Europe to California’s Napa Valley. She arranges her menus according to the seasons and even adds her own poetry for inspiration.

Wineries and the wine world offer a rich setting for fiction. In Nadia Gordon’s mysteries—Sharp Shooter (Chronicle. 2002. ISBN 0-8118-3462-X. pap. $11.95), Death By The Glass (Chronicle. 2003. ISBN 0-8118-3678-9. pap. $11.95), and Murder Alfresco (Chronicle. 2005. ISBN 0-8118-4630-X. $23.95)—Sunny McCoskey is a chef and a respected Napa Valley restaurateur, which, of course, gives her access to the bold and the beautiful social goings-on among the vintners and their underlings. Fame, wealth, glamour, and envy mixed together and left to ferment can only lead to one thing—murder.

Known for her sweeping family-with-many-secrets sagas, Barbara Delinsky sets The Vineyard (Pocket. 2001. ISBN 0-671-03650-5. pap. $7.99) in Rhode Island, where Natalie Seebring is the grand matriarch of Asquonset Vineyard. Six months after her husband of 58 years dies, Natalie announces her marriage to Carl, the longtime vineyard manager. What is she thinking? Curl up with this one and a nice glass of merlot.

Originally published in 1942, The Vineyard (Univ. of California. 1997. ISBN 0-520-21090-5. pap. $15.95) gives the reader a look at the wine industry’s infancy on the West Coast prior to the years of Prohibition. Author Idwal Jones immigrated to the United States from Wales in 1902. He became a journalist and published a handful of novels while gaining a reputation as an expert on the viticulture of California. His novel’s heroine, the “spirited” Alda Pendle, is also an expert on the growing of grapes.