The stories behind America's finest wines, and the people and places that have made them so admired today.

American wine—once an object of ridicule—now holds its own against the world's best. But which wines are America's finest? Who makes them? In The Great Wines of America, Paul Lukacs selects forty wines that have helped elevate American wine to unprecedented heights. Each chapter contains the specific wine's history, the vintner's vision for it, a map of its terroir, and a list of successful vintages.

Not too long ago, American wine was an object of ridicule. When compared to the great growths of Europe, it played in the minor leagues—if it even played the same game. All that has changed. At the start of the twenty-first century, the finest American wines hold their own with the best made anywhere. But which wines are these? And who are the people responsible for them? Because American vineyards are largely devoid of tradition, American vintners have had to make choices unknown to their Old World counterparts. These involve which grapes to grow, where best to plant the vines, and, most important, how to create rather than merely emulate truly distinctive wines. The Great Wines of America tells the story of how those choices, made successfully, have elevated American wine to unprecedented heights of quality and renown. 40 maps, 40 photographs.

Customer Review: The Saints and The Winemakers

Paul Lukacs' lusciously readable volume is a tribute to American wine, and its very existence is a tribute to American wine drinkers. As he observes, it's a book that "[o]nly a generation ago...would have been regarded as a joke." [p.13} Of course, a generation ago was the ego-mad, lightly-smoked seventies when anything seemed posssible. In that generation, a few hundred Americans invested their time and their money in making wines and some of those wines ended up among the world's best.
Lukacs' book consists of forty portraits that are more about winemakers and winegrowers than about the wines themselves.
No matter. Their quixotic vision attached to a modest and very earthy end-a bottle of wine- makes for forty very interesting heroes and heroines. These are the people who invested lives and fortunes in wine at a time when that investment seemed romantic to very few Americans. When they began, they had little reason to believe that great wine was possible and not much reason for thinking that their countrymen would ever care about it if it were.
But interesting or even compelling subjects aren't enough to make a good book, and Lukacs's prose is, like a good wine, well balanced and generous. He wears his extensive knowledge of wine graciously and shares it easily. It's no small part of the book's charm that every chapter is loaded with information about the history and culture of wine so that the book ends up as worth studying as well as browsing. Having written a wine book myself, I appreciate the difficulty of the job. Best of all, the individual chapters are an endorsement for the idea that there is serious purpose in simple pleasures.
The Great Wines of America belongs on the same shelf, and a bit ahead of, Butler's Lives of the Saints. While Butler's saints are often difficult people, and their virtue something of a rebuke to the believing reader, Lukacs's pioneers are people we could imagine being ourselves. When they succeed, we do too. And besides, between saints and winemakers, who would you rather spend your time with?

Customer Review: Engaging look at key American wineries

This is a carefully focused look at the best of current American wines and wineries. The subtitle makes it clear that the wineries (and the vintners) share equal billing with the wines. The book is not intended to be read from front to back, but rather to be looked at from time to time, to learn more about a particular grape variety or wine-growing region.

The author has visited each winery, explains how it came into being, and quotes extensively the key persons involved with its success. The reasons for selecting the particular wine become evident as the chapter on it and the winery making it unfolds. The chapters are all about ten pages long, including a page of maps and a page giving the label and notes on vintages to buy and when they will be at their best.

The very long editorial review given above misses some key points. Perhaps the author simply read the book straight through (not what is intended, as noted above). However the chapter on Stone Hill Norton hardly could have been studied very carefully. Norton is the only grape variety in the book that is native to the U.S. It is not an eastern, labrusca, variety. Unless you have tried it (I have) you cannot seriously make an comparison of it with a "lush" cabernet sauvignon. The two grapes simply are different. They each can be truly outstanding, but not identical.

The editorial reviewer does make one accurate point: the chapters indeed ALL are informational. But that is the purpose of the book. The repetition claimed by that reviewer is so that the reader can start with any wine of interest. The variety of approaches used by the author are calibrated to the variety of wineries, some with a long history others very recent, some corporate and others small and family run.

There are many lists of "best" wines. They all give only brief justifications for the selections. This book does much more. It will be rewarding reading for novices and experts, alike.

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Customer Review: Good soucebook during trip

Doesn't cover all the wineries in the state in each region but a good companion for a winery-hopping trip in Washington given that there are few guides which offer this kind of specialty coverage. Good history and background information not available in the free publications found online for the various AVAs.

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In War, Wine, and Taxes, John Nye debunks the myth that Britain was a free-trade nation during and after the industrial revolution, by revealing how the British used tariffs--notably on French wine--as a mercantilist tool to politically weaken France and to respond to pressure from local brewers and others. The book reveals that Britain did not transform smoothly from a mercantilist state in the eighteenth century to a bastion of free trade in the late nineteenth.

This boldly revisionist account gives the first satisfactory explanation of Britain's transformation from a minor power to the dominant nation in Europe. It also shows how Britain and France negotiated the critical trade treaty of 1860 that opened wide the European markets in the decades before World War I. Going back to the seventeenth century and examining the peculiar history of Anglo-French military and commercial rivalry, Nye helps us understand why the British drink beer not wine, why the Portuguese sold liquor almost exclusively to Britain, and how liberal, eighteenth-century Britain managed to raise taxes at an unprecedented rate--with government revenues growing five times faster than the gross national product.

War, Wine, and Taxes stands in stark contrast to standard interpretations of the role tariffs played in the economic development of Britain and France, and sheds valuable new light on the joint role of commercial and fiscal policy in the rise of the modern state.

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Customer Review: Alsace or bust!

Having never been to the Alsace region, I cannot personally verify the accuracy of this book's information. However, I can vouch for its tantalizing pull compelling me to make the trip! This book is well organized and perfectly suited to the reader/traveller who is making a first aquaintance with the Alsace region of France. Though its main focus is introducing the many wines which are produced in this area, I found it to be very informative regarding the history, architecture, and other main attractions of the local cities, towns, and villages. I would definitely recommend it to the everyday traveller as well as the connoisseur interested in a wine touring holiday. The preface of the book includes a general introduction to the area, its local cuisines, and wine making traditions. Accompanied with many great pictures, the book then reviews numerous towns and villages which are chosen primarily for their wine making appeal. Each town is introduced with a brief historical background and charmingly described in prose that belies the practical layout of the book: "Possibly the most beautiful spot in the Turckheim is the Place Turenne, tucked behind the Port de France gate. If you spend an evening in the village, listen out for the singing night watchman, who continues a centuries-old Turckheim tradition. Each evening at 10 pm, armed with his halberd and lantern, he walks through the streets passing through each of the gates and warns inhabitants to 'watch their hearths and candles'." The book outlines the local hotels and restaurants in each town, including phone numbers and typical prices of these establishments. It also lists local places of interest, market times, and seasonal wine festivals. My enthusiasm to visit Alsace has been greatly enhanced by this book. I can almost taste the choucroute and Munster cheese, imagining myself ensconsed in one of the many delightful Alsatian villages.

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Hailed by the Wine Advocate as "perhaps the most gifted of all wine writers writing today," Jancis Robinson has been voted the Wine Writer's Wine Writer by her peers, dubbed "the undisputed mistress of the kingdom of wines" by France's Madame Figaro, and won the 1995 Wine Literary Award of the Wine Appreciation Guild. Holding the prestigious rank of Master of Wine, Robinson lectures and judges all over the world, and recently hosted a ten-part PBS series Jancis Robinson's Wine Course. She also edited The Oxford Companion to Wine, which won every major wine book award in 1995--including the Julia Child Cookbook Award (Wine, Beer, or Spirits) and The James Beard Book Award--and which has been praised by Frank Prial in The New York Times as "easily the most complete compendium of wine knowledge assembled in modern times," and by Anthony Dias Blue as "one of the definitive reference books on the subject."
Now, in Jancis Robinson's Guide to Wine Grapes, Robinson provides wine aficionados with a handy, on-the-spot guide to the most central aspect of wine making--the grapes themselves. Here are over 850 grapes, ranging from such widely acclaimed vines as Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Muscat, Pinot Noir, Riesling, and Sauvignon Blanc, to economically important if less distinguished vines such as Airen, Grenache, Muller-Thurgau, Trebbiano, Syrah, and Rkatsiteli. Robinson offers a fact-filled introduction--discussing everything from rootstocks and wine blends, to vine pests and disease--and glossary of technical terms (from botrytis and carbonic maceration, to fanleaf and foxy, to skin, sugars, tannins, and yield). She then examines the world's grape varieties in alphabetical order, describing the basic characteristics of the wine produced by the grape (dry, sweet, high or low acidity, the bouquet), its likely quality, the regions that produce the best wine, and, if a blended wine, the blends that yield the best results. (As an added guide to the wine a grape might produce, the Guide includes an easy-to-use visual aid: a horizontal bar with a band which shows the range of quality, from ordinary to superb.) Robinson also shares much fascinating wine history, her deep insight into the wine industry, and more important, her own judgment on a wine. And Robinson does not hedge in judging a wine: discussing Carignan, France's most planted red wine, she comments "Its wine is high in everything--acidity, tannins, color, bitterness--but flavor and charm. This gives it the double inconvenience of being unsuitable for early consumption yet unworthy of maturation." And for Trebbiano, the most planted white grape in Italy (and with Ugni Blanc, which is the name of the grape in France, the second most planted white grape in the world), Robinson notes "the word Trebbiano in a wine name almost invariably signals something light, white, crisp, and uninspiring."
Perhaps most important, this portable book can be used in the store as a buying guide. With Robinson's Guide, simply find the grape variety on the label--or, if not listed, turn to Robinson's unique Grapes Behind the Names appendix in the back--look up the entry on that grape, and you will discover everything you need to know to make an informed decision to buy or pass. With Jancis Robinson by your side, you can evaluate a bottle of wine on the spot, no matter where, when, or by whom it has been produced.

Customer Review: If you don't know wine grapes, you will!

Everything you ever wanted to know, and everything you needed to know about grapes!

Customer Review: Brilliant, of course!

What can you say about the most comprehensive encyclopaedia of wine grapes written by the world's foremost expert on the subject, when that person also happens to be a clear and charming writer as well? If you want to know about grapes, find out from the woman who has offered her entire cellar to the person who can outstrip her knowledge on the subject. Wonderful!

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Customer Review: Makes Dining in Chicago Even Better

American liquor laws are intricate, confounding, and disparate, varying widely from state to state, county to county and even block to block. As Jean Iverson notes in this update to her 2005 guide to bring-your-own-bottle restaurants, the southeast corner of State and Division was voted dry in the 1980s, and no new restaurant within 100 feet of a school, church, or library stands a chance of snagging a liquor license. Chicago's own colorful history regarding the sale and consumption of alcohol continues on, with the granting of liquor licenses inextricably intertwined with ward politics, zoning, and other delights of life in the Windy City.

Chicago is also a city of world-class restaurants, of course, and many of them are surprisingly affordable--all the more so if you can buy your booze at the neighborhood liquor store. Iverson's book--slim enough to slip in a purse or a jacket pocket--is an indispensable resource for budget-conscious diners, as well as for those who want, say, a J & G Baumann vin de pays des Côtes de Gascogne 2006 as they peruse the menu, and nothing else will do.

Iverson has researched scores of restaurants, from family-run storefront cafes to upscale hot spots, and compiled her findings in this easy-to-use guide. A comprehensive list of BYOB restaurants from A to Z is complemented by tidbits of history, etiquette tips, help with choosing the right wine for the evening's cuisine, a guide to wine shops and liquor stores, and listings organized by type of fare and neighborhood. Found yourself in Albany Park with a taste for Scandinavian food and a bottle of Grenache in your bag? Iversen has the dining destination for you!

This second edition updates information from the original, and has been expanded to include BYOBs in the 'burbs, nontraditional BYOB dining spots such as local theaters, and restaurants with liquor licenses that still allow you to bring your own.

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As a boy, writer Jay Mackintosh spent three golden summers in the ramshakle home of Joseph "Jackapple Joe" Cox in the tiny English town of Kirby Mockton.  Jay found solace in old Joe's simple wisdom and folk charms, in his stories of far travel and wild adventure, and in his astonishing ability to make anything grow lush and luxurious.  And then there were Joe's "Specials," his homebrewed wines, each bottle containing the sparkle of something truly magical.  The magic was lost, though, when Joe disappeared without warning one fall.

Years later, Jay's life is stalled with regret and emnui.  His novel Jackapple Joe was his artistic zenith, but it had been published ten years earlier and he has not been able to write a serious work since.  When an unsolicited real estate brochure arrives in the afternoon mail, he impulsivley abandons every urban thing he knows.  sight unseen, he purchases a farmhouse in the remote French village of Lansquenet, in an attempt to recapture the magic that vanished twenty years ago.

Now Jay is packing up a few belongings-and the last remaining bottles og Joe's "Specials"-and relocating to the sleepy village rich in stories of its own is calling to him.  There, in the strange yet strangely familiar place-and in the dark, guarded secrets of a reclusive woman and her young child-Jay Mackintosh hopes to find himself again.  for he feels that somehow, as impossible as it seems, "Jackapple Joe" is waiting for him there.

A lovely and lyrical novel of myriad enchantments, Blackberry Wire is a rare treat for the mind, the heart and the senses from an extraordinary literary talent.

Customer Review: blackberry wine

excellent!--- if you liked 'chocolat' its more of the magic--in fact some of the characters and events from 'chocolat' are mentioned in 'blackberry wine'

Customer Review: I Prefer Tea....

I have mixed feelings about Blackberry Wine, unfortunately more negative than positive. For the first ten chapters I despised this book: I didn't care about the characters, couldn't care about the plot and wanted nothing more than to just get through the thing so I could move on to another story. Even though the chapters are short, fifty-seven pages is more than I want to wait for a story to get interesting.

Blackberry Wine describes the life of Jay, a one-hit-wonder in the literary arena who fell victim to the freshman curse and now lives as a writer of trashy sci-fi novels and part-time fantasy-conference attendee. One day he impulsively buys a farmhouse in France that brings back childhood memories and moves in, hoping to find what he thinks he's lost. Via astral projection, his friend/mentor Joe, visits the farmhouse to continue giving the advice he started in Jay's youth. Jay the adult reverts back to the child he was time and again in his bitterness at being abandoned by the old man's sudden parting, continuing the legacy. Blackberry Wine is written as a piece of commercial fiction, but has definite elements of fantasy that feel out of place. This inconsistent tone added to my discomfort.

One of the reasons I had trouble with this book is because of the way Jay is written. Personally, I thought he was schizophrenic, but I don't think that was the author's intention. He seems like an intelligent person, but has the insight of a fifteen-year-old boy coupled with a dog's manic need to defend his territory (or in this case, Jay's righteous indignation). Jay's lack of maturity and poor decision-making ability mark him as a victim, a martyr, so I had trouble caring about him.

This book jumps back and forth in time about every other chapter which I found distracting. The copious descriptions were a bit much and repetitive: how many times did I have to hear about the canal, or that something was yeasty- an odd word to be given such prominence? And don't get me started on the magically animated bottles of wine....

On the upside, once the story warmed up it was engaging. Jay's garden renovation and the relationship with his neighbor and her daughter were nice, the practical peculiarities of Joe added color and interest and the French townspeople formed a nice backdrop. All in all I thought Blackberry Wine was flawed, but it did have moments.

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This book, published by Faber & Faber, is poorly structured and edited-not up to the usually high F&F standard. Christopher Fielden has provided a prodigious quantity of words, dutifully arranged in sentences and paragraphs. The effect on the reader who might be looking for useful, accessible and specific information on the wine regions, wine houses and vintages of the important producers of Latin America is wearing. The index is next-to-useless,skim-reading is the only way to track down a wine or producer of interest. There appears to be no addressal of vintners, as opposed to growers who produce their own wines. For Chile, I recommend Hubrecht Duijker's Wines of Chile. It is both accessible, accurate in content and well-written.

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This witty little volume, first published in French in 1936, extols the many joys and benefits of wine. Wine drinkers will take pleasure in Gaston Derys's quaint appreciation of the grape, and art lovers will admire Raoul Dufy's joyful watercolors. Reflecting the exuberance and Žlan of an earlier day, Derys takes us back to a time when the doctor's favored prescription was an amiable glass of wine. In Derys's ode to wine, here translated into English, we discover that the medicinal and therapeutic uses of wine are many: it assists in fighting typhoid, infant sicknesses, and diabetes; it exerts a positive effect on one's character, beauty, and creativity; and it lends a fortifying power to athletes and soldiers. Supported by the comments of French doctors as well as Dufy's beautifully reproduced paintings, Derys's argument to raise a glass of wine becomes pleasantly irrefutable.

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Customer Review: California Wine

I found this to be an outstanding book full of useful information. I loved the history of individual wineries and the people who make it work. All in all, if you love California wine and want to know more about it, this is the book for you.

Customer Review: Comprehensive walkthrough on California

This is a fine book. 650 pages crammed with information, such as regions (counties), producers, wines, vintages in abundant amounts. I have to agree with earlier posts on most points. Some (more) labels would've been nice, although. Interesting statistics are also added (eg grape variety) and description on grape types. A good book for the beginner as well as the 'half-pro'. Includes description of vintages up to 1997 (book is 2nd edition, printed in 99). All-in-all : recommendable..:-)

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