Here are 100 books that Wine and War fans have personally recommended if you like
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I became intensely interested in wine while working in a Michelin Star kitchen where understanding how flavours work together, developing nuances in my palate, and an interesting wine list combine. Enthusiasm and passion led to success in wine examinations at the highest levels, working in wine retail, travelling the globe visiting amazing vineyards, and wineries, meeting iconic winemakers, influential vineyards managers, as well as other luminaries in the world of wine. The greatest benefit being many new friends and lifelong special memories. Along with the wine tastings I give, The Periodic Table of Wine is a way to share discovering wine and the joy it brings to new audiences.
Americans have quite a different relationship with alcohol compared to Europeans. This book uncovers the background of how Prohibition came about, how influences other than alcohol were key, along with the ingenuity of people on both sides of the debate to put their case or dodge the restrictions. Full of stories that explore the men, indomitable women, bootleggers, and economic as well as social forces and hypocrisy involved in the establishment and eventual repeal of Prohibition laws across America.
A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the US Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages.
From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing.
Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrent’s dazzling…
I became intensely interested in wine while working in a Michelin Star kitchen where understanding how flavours work together, developing nuances in my palate, and an interesting wine list combine. Enthusiasm and passion led to success in wine examinations at the highest levels, working in wine retail, travelling the globe visiting amazing vineyards, and wineries, meeting iconic winemakers, influential vineyards managers, as well as other luminaries in the world of wine. The greatest benefit being many new friends and lifelong special memories. Along with the wine tastings I give, The Periodic Table of Wine is a way to share discovering wine and the joy it brings to new audiences.
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.
As wine connoisseurs know, Argentine wine was once famously bad. The grapes were overwatered, harvested in brutal heat, fermented in enormous cement pools, aged in antiquated oak vats, and then watered down and adulterated. The final product was industrial plonk, drinkable only on ice. But in 2001, a Cabernet Sauvignon / Malbec blend beat Napa and Bordeaux's finest in a blind taste test. Suddenly, Argentina emerged as a premier wine region with a champion varietal-what best-selling author Benjamin Wallace calls "the humble Malbec." How did this happen?
Ian Mount's vivid journey through Argentina's Wild West explores the alchemy of weather,…
I became intensely interested in wine while working in a Michelin Star kitchen where understanding how flavours work together, developing nuances in my palate, and an interesting wine list combine. Enthusiasm and passion led to success in wine examinations at the highest levels, working in wine retail, travelling the globe visiting amazing vineyards, and wineries, meeting iconic winemakers, influential vineyards managers, as well as other luminaries in the world of wine. The greatest benefit being many new friends and lifelong special memories. Along with the wine tastings I give, The Periodic Table of Wine is a way to share discovering wine and the joy it brings to new audiences.
An entertaining story of how the mystery of why vines were withering and dying in swathes in the late 19th century was solved. Campbell brings these ugly miniscule root munching girls interestingly to life by intertwining amusing yarns of the sometimes eccentric methods and people of the time involved in the eventual discovery of the solution to the dying vines.
A historical investigation into the mysterious bug that wiped out the vineyards of France and Europe in the 1860s - and how one young botanist eventually 'saved wine for the world'.
In the early 1860s, vines in the lower Rhone valley, and then around Bordeaux, inexplicably began to wither and die. Panic seized France, and Jules-Emile Planchon, a botanist from Montpellier, was sent to investigate. Magnifying glass in hand, he discovered the roots of a dying vine covered in microscopic yellow insects. The tiny aphid would be named Phylloxera vastatrix - 'the dry leaf devastator'. Where it had come from…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I became intensely interested in wine while working in a Michelin Star kitchen where understanding how flavours work together, developing nuances in my palate, and an interesting wine list combine. Enthusiasm and passion led to success in wine examinations at the highest levels, working in wine retail, travelling the globe visiting amazing vineyards, and wineries, meeting iconic winemakers, influential vineyards managers, as well as other luminaries in the world of wine. The greatest benefit being many new friends and lifelong special memories. Along with the wine tastings I give, The Periodic Table of Wine is a way to share discovering wine and the joy it brings to new audiences.
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.
The only reporter present at the mythic Paris Tasting of 1976-a blind tasting where a panel of esteemed French judges chose upstart California wines over France's best-for the first time introduces the eccentric American winemakers and records the tremendous aftershocks of this historic event that changed forever the world of wine.
The Paris Tasting of 1976 will forever be remembered as the landmark event that transformed the wine industry. At this legendary contest-a blind tasting-a panel of top French wine experts shocked the industry by choosing unknown California wines over France's best.
George M. Taber, the only reporter present, recounts…
I have visited all the major wine regions since I developed my passion for wine as a Sommelier and Beverage Director in luxury hotels in London and around the world. To learn more about wine, I studied to become a French, Italian, and Spanish Wine Scholar, joined the Champagne Academy in France, and recently completed a two-year Diploma in Wine at the WSET School in London. I’ve also worked two harvests as a winemaker at Mission Hill Winery in British Columbia in 2020 and Trius Winery in Niagara, Ontario in 2021. My novels are inspired by my studies, work experience, and travels through the world’s best wine regions.
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.
The rivetingly strange story of the world's most expensive bottle of wine, and the even stranger characters whose lives have intersected with it.
The New York Times bestseller, updated with a new epilogue, that tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it.
Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery,…
I have visited all the major wine regions since I developed my passion for wine as a Sommelier and Beverage Director in luxury hotels in London and around the world. To learn more about wine, I studied to become a French, Italian, and Spanish Wine Scholar, joined the Champagne Academy in France, and recently completed a two-year Diploma in Wine at the WSET School in London. I’ve also worked two harvests as a winemaker at Mission Hill Winery in British Columbia in 2020 and Trius Winery in Niagara, Ontario in 2021. My novels are inspired by my studies, work experience, and travels through the world’s best wine regions.
I first read this incredible book based on real events following a California winemaker friend's recommendation. I was immediately captured by this true story that reads like a modern-day thriller and details the sudden rise, devastating spread, and unlikely solution to halting the world-conquering, grapevine-killing aphid phylloxera. No other event in winemaking history has so profoundly impacted the history and modern-day status of viticulture and viniculture worldwide.
The impacts of phylloxera echo through to this day in the grapes that are grown in vineyards and the wine in our bottles. I loved this book for its detailed exploration of wine history and its breathless retelling of science versus superstition. Much like the recent debates surrounding the origins, spread, and prevention of COVID-19, this book tells an eerily similar tale of man versus nature and the battle of arguments on both sides of a global pandemic.
In the mid-1860s, grapevines in southeastern France inexplicably began to wither and die. Jules-Émile Planchon, a botanist from Montpellier, was sent to investigate. He discovered that the vine roots were covered in microscopic yellow insects. What they were and where they had come from was a mystery. The infestation advanced with the relentlessness of an invading army and within a few years had spread across Europe, from Portugal to the Crimea. The wine industry was on the brink of disaster. The French government offered a prize of three hundred thousand gold francs for a remedy. Planchon believed he had the…
The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.
This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States…
I have visited all the major wine regions since I developed my passion for wine as a Sommelier and Beverage Director in luxury hotels in London and around the world. To learn more about wine, I studied to become a French, Italian, and Spanish Wine Scholar, joined the Champagne Academy in France, and recently completed a two-year Diploma in Wine at the WSET School in London. I’ve also worked two harvests as a winemaker at Mission Hill Winery in British Columbia in 2020 and Trius Winery in Niagara, Ontario in 2021. My novels are inspired by my studies, work experience, and travels through the world’s best wine regions.
I always wondered why the rules and regulations surrounding alcohol production, sales, distribution, and consumption were so irregular in America. Reading this fascinating book told me everything I needed to know.
The prohibition of alcohol via the infamous Volsted Act, which was enacted in 1919 and was in effect between 1920 and 1933, when the 18th Amendment was finally repealed, changed America forever. Bootleggers, Tommy guns, and gangsters proliferated during this tumultuous era.
I was engaged by Peck’s well-researched foray into the global drinks industry and his conclusions connecting the age of prohibition to modern-day policies impacting every facet of the drinks industry in the US today.
Spirits are all the rage today. Two-thirds of Americans drink, whether they enjoy higher priced call brands or more moderately priced favorites. From fine dining and piano bars to baseball games and backyard barbeques, drinks are part of every social occasion.
In The Prohibition Hangover, Garrett Peck explores the often-contradictory social history of alcohol in America, from the end of Prohibition in 1933 to the twenty-first century. For Peck, Repeal left American society wondering whether alcohol was a consumer product or a controlled substance, an accepted staple of social culture or a danger to society. Today the legal drinking age,…
I have visited all the major wine regions since I developed my passion for wine as a Sommelier and Beverage Director in luxury hotels in London and around the world. To learn more about wine, I studied to become a French, Italian, and Spanish Wine Scholar, joined the Champagne Academy in France, and recently completed a two-year Diploma in Wine at the WSET School in London. I’ve also worked two harvests as a winemaker at Mission Hill Winery in British Columbia in 2020 and Trius Winery in Niagara, Ontario in 2021. My novels are inspired by my studies, work experience, and travels through the world’s best wine regions.
This book blew my mind. It is the antithesis to the previous book I recommended reading, Wine & War, and essential reading to understand both sides of a morally complicated time and issue. Just as there were many heroic acts to save French wine from Nazi plunder, there were also many collaborators amongst the winemakers navigating through challenging times trying to survive and keep their domaines, maisons, and chateaux afloat.
It’s always easy to look back on history from the safety of the present; however, casting judgment on individuals and their actions shouldn’t be done lightly. The book reads more like a historical textbook but shouldn’t be overlooked or discarded based solely on its prose or limited subject matter.
I highly recommend this book. It delves into the ever-fascinating history of French wine and the compromises that were made by regular people trying to survive during the Second World War…
During the Second World War, French wine was hardly a trivial product. Indeed, following the Fall of France, it proved to be one of the most valuable French commodities in the eyes of the Nazi leaders. In 1940, 'Weinf hrer' (official delegates and wine experts appointed by Berlin), were sent to all the wine regions of France to coordinate the most intense looting that the country had ever seen.
Alongside the very ambiguous relationship of the Vichy Regime and the collaboration of many French professionals with the occupiers, this immense programme of wine collection was a drama that many would…
I’m the daughter of a Californian grape farmer, and have driven tractor, picked grapes, and tied vines. Whilst at Berkeley, I travelled around Napa Valley tasting wines whilst riding pillion on a 750 cc motorcycle; at Oxford I discovered European wines. Thereafter, I was a professor of modern and contemporary history in London, writing nearly a dozen books, and continuing to explore wines with my husband. I have wine in my bones. I now travel around the world tasting it, writing about it, judging it, and leading tasting tours, all the while continuing to drink it. I am currently writing a book on the global history of wine.
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!
A Napa Valley Cabernet, a French Burgundy, an Orvieto Classico shared among friends in the Umbrian hills—every wine has a story, and Gerald Asher tells it best. Asher, longtime wine editor of Gourmet magazine, has an unsurpassed knowledge of vineyards, wineries, and wines. He also has the refreshing ability to write about wine informatively and entertainingly, without technical jargon. Now in paperback, Asher's delightful Vineyard Tales evaluates wines from around the world—from secret sun-drenched vineyards on Crete to the celebrated Champagne houses of France—setting each wine in the context of a region's history and culture. In addition, Asher offers an…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan. The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced, it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run the…
I knew nothing about wine and drank it only rarely until I went to Paris as a graduate student in the 1970s. Even then, I couldn’t afford more than basic plonk. It was not until I started doing research in Dijon every summer in the 1980s, making great friends in the process, eating and drinking at their dining tables, and visiting their favorite vignerons with them for dégustations, that I began to appreciate wine, not just as a fantastic beverage, but as a social and cultural creator. And as a historian, Iappreciatethat drinking wine thatcomesfrom vineyards planted in the Middle Ages connects us withour ancestors inthe past.
If terroir is about place, Loftus shows us one particular place in rural Burgundy, and especially the people living there who grow the grapes and make the wine. These vignerons help us understand that good wine is made in the vineyard, not through any manipulation after the harvest in a fermentation tank or oak barrel. Loftus also shows how wine influences local politics, as in 1879 when the village elders petitioned the French government to add the name of their most famous vineyard—Montrachet—to the name of their town, Puligny, thus allowing their Grand Cru vineyard name to appear on the label of humbler bottles bearing just the village name, following in the footsteps of Nuits-St. Georges, Chambolle-Musigny, Aloxe-Corton, and dozens of other Burgundian villages.
The sleepy village of Puligny-Montrachet produces the greatest white wines in Burgundy, famous throughout the world, but the place itself is unknown to outsiders. The lives of its inhabitants are shaped by the rhythms of the agricultural year, punctuated by the intense activity of the harvest, when the noise of tractors echoes down the narrow streets as the grapes are carried to the cellars.
This vivid and evocative journal of everyday life in rural France takes us through the cycle of the seasons, from the bonfires of the winter prunings to the celebrations of the feast of St Vincent. We…
