This year’s selection of notable wine books offers plenty of teaching moments.
This year’s selection of notable wine books combines armchair travel and education, as authors covered beautiful wine regions, enlightened us of how grapes are cultivated and made into the juice we drink.
A Year in the Vineyard, Sophie Menin and Bob Chaplin (CultureShock). This 160-page coffee table book is nicely bound and beautifully photographed with images of the vine’s life cycle from when they awaken from dormancy to the time they’re prepared for winer’s rest. I liked that as a thematic thread and it complements the two quotations the Japanese proverb the authors included as a preface: “The footstep of the famer is the best fertilizer.” I also appreciated that in addition to familiar images—horse-powered farming in Burgundy, rows of vines glinting in the sun, they ventured into the evocative and unimaginable—the odd moonscape of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Santorini’s basket vines, and also images depicting the backstory of climate change and its challenges.
Assouline produced two travel wine books, Wine & Travel France and Wine & Travel Italy, each following a similar geographic and editorial theme (and setting the format for expanding the series), winding through the countries’ respective regions and oriented around the wine lifestyle, including food, family and gorgeous scenery. Each is written by Michelin-starred restaurateur Enrico Bernardo, named “Best Sommelier of the World” in 2004—then age 27, the youngest to have achieved the honor—and includes a glossary and the sommelier’s personal choices for a wine cellar. The Italy book, filled with fetching images of la dolce vita, is 303 pages and the French edition, is 311 pages.
One Thousand Vines: A new Way to Understand Wine (Mitchell Beazley) by Pascaline Lepeltier is penned by another sommelier-author, this one of French origin and who made her name in New York City as a restaurateur, master sommelier and educator specializing in her native Loire Valley wines. Gorgeous illustrations by Loan Nguyen Thanh Lan, make this not only enjoyable and easy to understand but also elevate this from mere text book to coffee table status. The 348 pages are divided into logical categories: Reading Vines, covering viticulture basics—roots, leaves and grafts; Reading Landscapes, including climate and terroir and a discussion of preserving landscapes; and Reading Wines, the making, tasting and serving of it. Lepeltier concludes that wine, “as a mirror to our civilization,” is threatened by the same things that threaten society—aesthetics, commodification and contradictions, but also offers a joyful way to “resist a system that wishes to see us dispirited, delimited and deprived of meaning…” Perhaps that gives us a reason to drink more in 2025.
Who’s Afraid of Romanée-Conti: A Shortcut to Drinking Great Wines (Quadrill) by Dan Keeling, the London restaurateur and author and (Noble Rot restaurants and subsequent magazine), is an irreverent and rock and roll look at reviewing, choosing/buying and drinking wine from all walks (and producers) of life and at approachable price points. This is not a cheap wine guide, but, rather, an insightful, insider-y tour of great producers—many no strangers to professional wine buyers, but who are largely unsung to the masses—who make terrific wines that speak of place and history. The photographs by Benjamin McMahon give this a Hipstamatic feel (that retro smartphone photo app that was way cool way before Instagram) and the conversational tone makes you feel like you have a smart-*ss (but not insufferable) wine friend at your side.
Rebel School of Wine (Harvest) is a pretty groovy guide for novice wine drinkers. The subtitle is “A Visual Guide to Drinking with Confidence” and the author, perhaps the consummate millennial wine insider who produced the “Wine Riot” traveling wine festivals from 2000-16, is a good guide. While the book doesn’t cover new territory, it offers a fresh approach in a colorful format—perfect for that coming of age, wine-curious Gen Whatever in your life and an easy on the eyes (and brain) refresher for the rest of us.
Though not entirely new—the hardcover edition was released in 2023 and the paperback this year, I would be remiss in not mentioning a book that covers the immediate crisis in wine and one, sadly, that will only continue to be of timely concern. In Crushed: How a Changing Climate is Altering the Way We Drink (Rowan & Littlefield), journalist Brian Freedman abandons his usual jovial demeanor (check out his “Day Drinking with Brian” series @freedmansreports) to look at select examples of the good, bad and scary from his travels as a wine journalist through the lens of a changing climate. The good: southern England, once too chilly to produce wines, is now capable of producing world-class sparklers or “English Fizz.” The bad: profound weather events such as hail or an untimely and unexpected deep freeze can wipe out a harvest, such as what occurred in Texas in 2021. This is a solid read for anyone wanting to understand climate change on an immediate and personal level.