88 books like The Story of Wine

What could be more French than champagne? In this fascinating book, historian Kolleen Guy shows that, surprisingly, our idea of champagne as part of French national identity was only created and popularised at the turn of the 20th century.

I enjoyed how she details the debates and discussions amongst grape growers, winemakers, and government officials, and shows how champagne’s rise to glory was never guaranteed.  This book has been hugely influential to me because it shows how (and why) to scrutinize the popular history of food and drink by demonstrating how the mystique of champagne was created. This is an academic book, but Guy’s writing is clear and accessible.     

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.  

Terroir is the notion that the environment that grapevines grow in is imprinted on the wine they produce. It was universally accepted for several decades but is now hotly debated, as scientists have debunked the idea that certain soils and rocks transfer flavour and texture to wine. In the 1920s Burgundy became the first region to embrace the idea of terroir and in her book, Marion Demossier examines the circumstances that gave rise to it and the way that terroir was adopted and adapted by wine regions throughout the world so that wine producers could claim that their wines expressed ‘a sense of place’. This excellent book cuts through much of the marketing nonsense about wine.

Owen White’s excellent book has given Algerian wine the place it deserves in the wine history of both Algeria and France. Wine production, introduced to Algeria by French settlers in the late 1800s, was an anomaly because the majority Muslim population of the colony did not drink. But it became essential to the French wine industry because it was commonly blended with the then-anemic wines of southern France to make wines with colour and strength. Even so, many French wine producers regarded Algeria as a rival and there was a constant tension between producers who needed Algerian wine and those who resented it. It was resolved when Algeria won independence from France and the wine industry there went into steep decline. 

Hugh Johnson is one of the most famous, and certainly the best-selling, of all the world’s wine writers. This book was first published in 1989 and has held the field ever since. It’s a glorious sweep of the history of wine from the beginning to about thirty years ago, with masses of illustrations, which is one of the glories of the book. A new edition was published in 2020, which brings it up to the present, but it lacks maps and illustrations. On the other hand, he hints at what he thinks about scoring wines by numbers: he’s not keen, preferring sniffing and tasting and then using stars to indicate the quality. What, after all, is the perceived difference between a 91 wine and a 92? And why start at 50?

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.

I loved this book because it reads like a thriller but contains little-known wine history. Dinkelspiel follows the history of one of California’s early wine families, the Hellmans, when the California wine industry was located around Los Angeles.

She also documents a wild scandal of wine fraud and arson in the early twenty-first century by following a precious bottle of nineteenth-century wine from their legendary but forgotten Rancho Cucamonga vineyard. I really admire this book because it balances passion and delight in wine with a frank description of the abuses that have dogged the wine industry for centuries.  

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.

I loved this book and couldn’t recommend it highly enough. It reads like a modern-day thriller, made all the better as it's based on true-events. It’s a well-told story involving Thomas Jefferson, Chateau Lafite Wine, Christie's Auction House, Masters of Wine, and Billionaires that had me turning the pages as fast as possible. I loved all the historical details and the well-researched nature of this gripping tale.

What I enjoyed most about the book was its exploration of the perceived value we place on wine and how we reconcile that perceived value with how far we would go to obtain such items at any cost. As this recounting demonstrates, there are at least two sides to every story and sometimes many more. I hope to read more by this author and hope he explores other famous stories of theft, fraud, and betrayal in the world of wine.

Alice’s book is a manifesto against homogenization, wine consultants, and 100-point scoring systems.

She travels to the Loire and Champagne in France, to Piedmont in Italy, and to Spain. She reveals what goes into industrial wines, the mechanical treatments like reverse osmosis, and the additives like yeasts and enzymes, tannins, sawdust, and oak chips.

This book is an excellent compendium of anecdotes, interesting people in the wine world, and why natural wine is good. You’ll learn about the world of wine, but especially about the world of wine through the lens of Alice Feiring’s passion, natural wine.