The Wild Vine by Todd Kliman
Bingo 19: White Whale This book has possibly been on my shelf for 10 years; I can’t remember when I bought it, but it’s a hardback with a Borders sticker. And The Wild Vine was published in 2010, so I’m guessing it hadn’t been out too long when I picked it up. Either way, even if you go with when Borders went out of business, this book has been on my shelf a while. It’s framed as a journalist setting out to chronicle the not […]
Stalin's Wine Celler by John Baker, Nick Place
…for which I am very proud. I’ve said often enough that I find the book recommendations from Audible (My main source of audiobooks) a little bit rubbish. But occasionally it comes through for me — like, I never knew I needed to read a biography of the HMS Erebus, but that turned out to be a fantastic read that readily started spruiking to everyone. I also didn’t know that a book about potential wine-crime might also pique my interest, but here we are: I cut […]
Intoxicating: Ten drinks that shaped Australia by Max Allen
There is a widespread myth that Australia’s Indigenous peoples were introduced to alcohol by European settlers, and were susceptible to drinking a lot of it because they’d never had it before. The first chapter of this fascinating book blows that myth away with descriptions of fermented gum tree sap and how it had been used long before the arrival of rum and wine. This is both a really good book about alcoholic drinks and about history. The author, a journalist and wine writer, goes to […]
The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith
Elena is a toad, though she knows she knows that she should be a witch. Thus starts The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith. Elena breaks the curse on herself and returns to her home, Chateau Renard, a famed vineyard in France. What she finds is that her home has been sold to a lawyer-turned-winemaker who, instead of relying on a vine witch to support and augment the growth, harvest, and fermentation of grapes into wine, relies on science to create his wine to disappointing […]
A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage
I need to clean off my coffee table. I remembered something from A History of the World in 6 Glasses, but then couldn’t find the book to confirm it. I figured maybe I’d finished it way earlier than I thought and had given it away. But no, it was just buried under stuff on the coffee table. Turns out, I hadn’t quite finished it either. The premise is a history of cultural development around the world as it connects to the general history of the […]
Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste by Bianca Bosker
The main two things you need to know when considering my review is that (1) I don’t know anything about wine and (2) I do like witty, smart writers. If you know a lot about wine and you don’t like journalists inserting personal asides into non-fic, your feelings about this book will probably differ from mine. Writer/sommelier Bianca Bosker’s book is educational, funny, and at times inspiring. It pairs nicely with A History of the World in Six Glasses. That work gives you a great introduction […]
