60 books like Natural Wine

I could almost immediately smell the gorgeous scent of citrus wafting from the pages of this beautiful book through the magic of Helena Atlee’s precisely detailed writing.

Who would have thought that the story of Italy’s varied and numerous citrus plantations would take me on a journey all across the country, from Sicily’s west coast to the fragrant lemon gardens of Lake Garda, and in time from when the Arabs introduced bitter oranges up to the workings of the citrus industry today.

I love this book because it simply tells the fragrant story of how fruit, in various manifestations, has come to be cultivated all around the country and to represent something of the soul and the spirit of the Italian people.

First published in 1820, this book reminds us that nefarious practices have always been used by food producers, and that these practices are generally intended to boost profits with little concern for human health. ‘There is death in the pot!’ the author tells us in his preface, and he goes on to catalogue how products such as beer and bread, cheese and cognac, olive oil and vinegar were all being adulterated or counterfeited. More unusually, he goes on to explain case by case how the layperson can unmask the fraudsters with a little knowledge of home chemistry. Unfortunately for his readers past and present, technological developments since 1820 have allowed unscrupulous purveyors of human sustenance to develop countless new ways of disguising poor-quality or badly-deteriorated food.

As an Englishman living in France, this short story resonates with me on so many levels in a topsy-turvy sort of way. Babette is a foreigner (French) living in a foreign land (Norway), and the key part of this foreignness is the contrast between the piety of the two spinsters who employ Babette as their cook, and her supposedly hedonistic French approach to food and life, including a murky past in which she may have been an arsonist during the Commune of Paris. In truth, Babette is an artist who expresses herself through her cooking, and when she wins the lottery, she spends all the money on a single dinner for her hosts instead of buying a ticket home to France.

This book is only available in French, but I include it because it provides such an impressive overview of a period when French cooking began to establish itself as Europe’s pre-eminent cuisine. I referred to it frequently during my own research into French gastronomy. In a few short pages we learn about the emergence of the first celebrity chefs and food critics, the evolution of how food was served in polite society in France and other parts of Europe, and the way in which new ingredients such as maize and potatoes became staples of the peasant diet. There is also a section on Napoleon’s own culinary preferences, which reveals more about the tastes of the common soldier than the general.

If I had to choose only one wine book to own and use, this would be it. It contains thousands of entries of varying lengths and complexity, all clearly written: do you want to know where the wines of Cadillac come from and what they taste like in fewer than a hundred words? Here it is. If you want to know how climate change is affecting vines and wines around the world, its three big pages will tell you. What is the wine called PX? Would you like to know all about California and its wines? France? China? What is biodynamic agriculture? Who are the most famous wine writers and what did they write about? Almost anything you might want to know about a wine-related subject is in this book. There is nothing else like it.

Wine writer, and now friend, Alice Feiring has often been controversial, but she has always been a champion of the kinds of wines I love, natural wines that are allowed to tell the story of where they are grown and the people who steward them. Her book Naked Wine came out in 2011, just a year after my first very small vintage of natural wines. In her own tale of making wine in Oregon and her journey tracing the roots of modern natural wine in France, Spain, and America rang so clearly for me from her stories of a wine made in a fixer-upper farmhouse in France replete with scorpions to a vineyard cum garden of Eden scented with mint and thyme in Spain, I realized I not only loved wines that told stories, but writers who tell the stories of wine and place.

This book, an icon of its… show more.

Today Argentina along with her malbec wines are held in high regard. It wasn’t always this way. This is a pacey rich journey through four centuries telling how ‘wine is not just a drink, it’s a story’. Full of characters, anecdotes, wine, business…Argentine style…like the hospital stay where a doctor’s recommendation is the best bottle of wine on the hospital’s café menu.

Every marathoner needs hydration along the race. So it is with a long reading session. Some sessions call for a hot cup of coffee or tea. Some call for cocoa or a sparkling water or carbonated mix. Then there are times when a nice colorful glass of vino fit the occasion. I have always had an interest in chemistry and did quite well at it in school. This book was valuable to me as a newbie vintner. The author is English and he takes the reader through the process while giving tips and recipes and showing the equipment needed to produce your own unique beverage. The book is packed full of information about competitions and where to get supplies and which wines to make during the calendar year. It is an older book and references companies in England, but I would recommend it to anyone who might long to try… show more.

I majored in history and have always been fascinated by anything related to the Second World War and, more recently, wine. When I saw this book on the shelves, it was easy to pick it up. Like a fine bottle of wine between friends, I consumed this book in one sitting.

The more I learn about the ‘war to end all wars,’ the more disturbed my understanding becomes. This wasn’t solely a war over land, or even power, it was economic in origin and to this day was one of the greatest transfers of wealth in our planet’s history. At least in France, a significant portion of that wealth was grown, produced, and stored by the French Vignerons, the winemakers of the most famous wine regions.

Reading of their heroic exploits in Champagne, Bordeaux, and Burgundy to hide, save, and preserve their wines, heritage, and dignity made for a gripping… show more.

Gerald Asher is a wine writer who is celebrated for his range, his knowledge, his ability to see below the surface of things, and his compelling writing style. This book of essays about wine is one of my favourites, ranging as it does from wines with food, in which he goes in unexpected directions, to whether or not and how to decant wines, to drinking wine in Greece surrounded by the gods, to wines from Portugal and California and Oregon and Italy and France. He takes me to places I’ve never been and to wines I’ve never drunk, all with no effort on my part. Along the way, I learn and I enjoy. What a pleasurable book!