The Wine List: Stories and Tasting Notes Behind the World’s Most Remarkable Bottles

Reynolds (How To Drink Wine), an award-winning sommelier, compiles a volume focused on the history, business, and culture of wine. Relating stories in chronological fashion, he begins in the late 18th century with Thomas Jefferson and his thirst for good wine and continues to the present with how social media influences wine sales. There is information about what’s on a wine label and how it is important to the quality of the wine, the size of wine bottles, the chemistry of wine and its impact on how wine tastes, and the price of wine and why it costs as much, or as little, as it does. Also included are sidebars on selected topics, such as climate change and its impact on wine production, as well as mini timelines. The text is accompanied by delightful illustrations in a surrealist style reminiscent of Magritte.