59 books like Noble Rot

I just love how this book looks, first of all. It has an elegant, art deco, classy vibe that really sets the mood, and your mood is an important part of enjoying a good cocktail, or any drink for that matter.

There are some cocktails in here I know I'll never make, I'm not going to mix up my own bone tincture, but that doesn't matter. This isn't so much a recipe book for the home mixologist as it is a coffee-table collection of inspiring drinks.

When I leaf through the pages and look at all the gorgeous photographs, it sets me dreaming of which bars I want to visit next. That being said, it still features plenty of cocktails I'll want to whip up the next time I have guests over.

No book can ever tell you, definitively, what tastes good. This one can tell you why certain things taste good to you, which is a much more interesting subject to dive into.

I found it fascinating to learn just how much all the other senses are involved when it comes to eating and drinking, it really is the most sensory-stimulating activity in our lives. Ok, perhaps the second most.

This book also goes into a subject that's close to my heart: learning to become a better taster. So many people seem to think your skill at this is fixed at birth. That's not true! If you're anything like me, then you'll love how this book opens up a whole dimension of aroma and flavour and makes your world all the richer for it.

We're back to drinks proper with another feast for the eyes. This book has a deep appeal to me because I've always been a francophile. France has pulled at me from the earliest family holidays through to the years I lived in Paris.

Now, back in London, there's a bittersweet nostalgia in the mix. This book captures a lot of what I miss from those years because it's not just about the drinks but also the culture that surrounds them.

It reminds me that a drink is always an occasion. It doesn't have to be a fancy one either. There's the domestic and quotidian side, too, like preparing a café au lait the French way in one of those ridiculous footed bowls; they're totally useless to drink from yet somehow all the more appealing for it.

Ok, you got me: this isn't a drinks book. But if you're interested in drinks, properly interested, I mean, above and beyond a fondness for getting drunk, then you're interested in flavour.

This book sets my mind racing about the combinations I could conjure up between drink, garnish, and snack. Just imagine, you open a page at random, and there's Segnit's pairing of caraway and poppy seed. Delicious! How much more so might it be next to a nice glass of Madeira, or perhaps something that's sat for a while in a sherry cask taking on all those flavours?

Another one: sesame and shiso. Ok. I know some gins flavoured with shiso. This could work. I flick through this book, and a million new paths open before me, leading me on to tasty treats.

Mike Veseth is a writer and economist. His book offers insight into the economics and business of wine via analysis, anecdotes, and entertainment.

Branded industrial single varietal (single grape type) wines simplify the wine shelf and help wine-lovers to understand wine as they start their wine journey, but they also dumb down wine and destroy part of what makes wine so special: its unique ability to take us to a place, a time, a person.

Mike asks if this trend toward standardisation will kill wine or if there will be a swing back to small lot wines. I found the case studies he explored enlightening. This book sheds new light on the complicated business of wine.

An inspiring story of how prejudice in the wine world was brought into focus which started a revolution in the way wines from around the world are viewed. It uncovers the people and places involved in shattering conventional wisdom and demonstrating that exceptional wines can be produced in many countries. So well told is this story, that it inspired the film Bottle Shock.

A booze book fit for the big screen, it follows eccentric wine collectors pursuing their unicorn of unicorns, a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux supposedly once owned by Thomas Jefferson. It eventually sells for $156,000 at auction, and then things get even stranger as mysteries unravel and con men enter the scene.

A page-turner like no other.

The 1855 Classification created quality tiers for wines from a number of districts in Bordeaux: the famous First Growth (Premier Cru) wines and their Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Growth counterparts. There’s been only one change since then (a Second Growth promoted to First) and people still pay high prices for these wines based on a ranking that is more than 150 years old. Dewey Markham’s book tells the story of the Classification and shows that the wines that topped the list in 1855 were also ranked highest in earlier lists and that the rankings were based on price rather than intrinsic quality. It’s a well-documented book that brings history to bear on the way we look at some of the most prestigious wines of Bordeaux.  

This is fiction masquerading as non-fiction. Published in 1893 but now re-published – do try to get a copy with the original illustrations – the story is about two upper-class female cousins from Ireland who receive a letter commanding them to go to Bordeaux to tour the vineyards. They know nothing about wine, except that a glass and a half of Château Lafite caused one of the cousins to snore quietly over her dessert. Nor do they know about Bordeaux or how to use the Kodak camera they were given to take photographs. Nevertheless, off they go, two intrepid young women braving the French hotel-keepers, the carts, the country people, and the owners. It is witty, historic now, and fun to read.

This is the best general survey of French wine in English, from someone who not only teaches the history of modern France at his local university, but who also reviews and writes about wine for his city’s newspaper. As both an academic historian and a journalist, Phillips has written a riveting account of how wine was first introduced to France under the Romans, how many of the vineyards later came under the control of the Catholic church in the Middle Ages, how the French state attempted to control and regulate the production of wine in the nineteenth-century, and how smaller wineries are now trying to cope with the global commercialization of the wine industry. Just a great primer on French wine.