Book : Vinguide Alsace, Per Warfvinge

This book is in Swedish but this doesn't stop it being an excellent small guide to the Alsace wine region.

The book describes the different grapes cultivated in Alsace, booking an appointment to visit a winery, how to read a wine label, the cru system, viticultural techniques, organic and biodynamics, sparkling wines, cycling through the region, and the history of the region. The last half of the book is dedicated to profiles of wineries in Alsace. All of this is packed into less than 200 pages and well worth it.

The book can be ordered direct from Per's website.

Website : Per Warfvinge

Book : The Drops of God New World

This book is about two people trying to guess the identity of a wine chosen by the father of one of the men. The wine is from the new world. One of the men goes to Australia in search of inspiration and the other to the Napa Valley. The tasting notes that both of them use ar eout of this world. They both picture the the wines as a being in a setting (no descriptors if fruit and oak here!). In the end they both choose Syrah as the grape but it is the experienced taster who guesses right that it is a Manfred Krankel Sina Qua Non The Inaugural Eleven Confessions 2003; the looser chooses the 2004 Glaetzer Amon-Ra Shiraz. This book is worth reading to just see the wine tasting experiences.

Wine Mine Number 25, 1973

This magazine was published by Peter Dominic and priced at 15p in 1973. The magazine was published twice yearly from the summer of 1973 until this issue from whence it became an annual. This was the first issue to include colour (16 pages of photos from Italy). Peter Dominic was a chain of wine and spirit retailers in the UK (now defunct). It was started in  1939 by Paul Dauthieu (there was never a Peter Dominic) in Horsham. He sold his empire to International Distillers and Vintners in 1963 who preserved the trading name.

This magazine contains a number of small wine-related articles together with Peter Dominic's current price list. There are articles on Provencal drinks, being a wine buyer,the harvest at Chateau Monbousquet, wine-related columns about James Bond, the Les Gastronomes de la Mer Confrerie of the Loire, fun with wine glasses, touring around Italy, a vintage at Villa Gruenberg-Tiffany ora Newby, and the ever increasing prices rises of Bordeaux wines (nothing new there then !).

The price list makes for interesting reading. Mouton Cadet 1969 at 2.79 pounds, Chateau du Tetre 1970 at 5-7 pounds, Chateau Pavie-Macquin 1970 at 2.94 pounds, Chateau Leoville-Lascases 1967 at 8-10 pounds, and Chateau Pichon-Longueville-Lalande 1966 at 9-11 pounds (all price are per bottle). To contrast a bottle of Liebfraumilch Blue Nun  retailed at 1.55 pounds a bottle. A bargain was the Gran Sercial Solera 1835 Madeira from Blandy at only 3.43 pounds a bottle.

Your Vines and Wines, A Guide to Vine Growing Outside in Britain, Michael Jefferson-Brown

This book was first published in 1977 and my copy was the third impression printed in 1980. It is a small short book of  85 pages but it covers the basics of growing wine and table grapes in a climate like the UK quite well. It gives an overview of how to achieve site selection, what varieties to grow, pruning techniques (recommending Double Guyot where one has two fruting canes and two canes for fruiting next year, what to do during the year, how to propogate vines which sounds extremely simple, some pests and diseases but this section is not very detailed, winemaking, and some specific for growing in greenhouse conditions. All in all, this is a very good introduction to growing grapes in a cooler climate. The ISBN number is 0950580007. The author grows grapes (or did do in the late seventies and early eightees) in Whitbourne near Worcester, England.

Book : Wine Snobbery, An Insiders Guide to the Booze Business

I picked up a copy of Wine Snobbery, An Insider's Guide to the Booze Business by Andrew Barr, Faber and Faber from Amazon UK secondhand for 0.01 pounds. This is a fascinating book full of anicdotes such as high yields and how this was viewed in Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Gemany over the centuries, the methanol scandal in Italy, value for money bland champagne, time wasting wine judging, and the rise and fall and rise again of Lafite. There is some repetition in thi sbook but overall I found every chapter to be packed with new and interesting information. It would be interesting to do a follow up and see just how much of what is said is still valid today. I can thoroughly recommend ot this book to anybody interested in wine and its history in modern times.

Book : Grape-A-Hol

This book is written by Michael F. Spratt and Mark L. Feldman from Destuny Bay Vineyards in New Zeland. The book spends most of the time tryin to justify that we should be buying fine wines instead of grape-a-hol. Grape-A-Hol is fermented grape juice and alcohol: sounds like wine to me. I didn't get the point of this book really. Is it just Destiny Bay Wines complaining because they don't sell enough wine ? I Live in Sweden where all wine must be bought via the state controlled monopoly yet I have good access to a decent collection of good wines. Sure, the Systembolaget sell a lot of wines which are one-dimensional and no character but nearly all of them are drinkable and cheap so what is the problem. This book seems to be addressing a very small sector of the population who just like to drink wine which tastes ok. The want to pay an affordable price and it should taste ok. The reason people buy Grape-A-Hol instead of fine wine is the price; they can't afford to buy fine wine. Sorry guys, if you want people to buy fine wine then it has to be cheaper. What is fine wine anyway. The usual propoganda is used to describe fine wine in this book i.e. must come from one place, must be from a small producer etc etc. Who cares; fine wine is a wine that the drinker thinks is very good - it is a simple as that.

2011 Chilean Wine Regions Map

This was included in the bag I received when I registered at the last Wine of Chile trade tasting. I can recommend that you contact your local Wines of Chile office and asking for a copy. One side shows the whole of Chile and the locations of all wineries. The other side of the map describes all of the wine regions including climate, soil information, and grapes grown.

Falcon Crest

Falcon Crest is the name of a soap opera from the 1980s that is based around a power struggle between two families, the Giobertis and the Channings. The two main characters are Angela Channing and Chase Gioberti though a third power, Richard Channing, enters the scene in the second series. It is centred around a winery called Falcon Crest. Currently only the first two series are available on DVD. The third series is rumored to be released in 2012.

The first series focuses on the mystery surrounding the death of Jason Gioberti who is Angela's brother and Chase's father. Chase seems to spend all his energy on getting the vineyard property he inherited going and Angela spends all her energy on trying to make Chase and his family leave the fictional Tuscany Valley. In the end, Chase finds out in court, via Emma (Angela's daughter) that it was all an accident. Chase ends up with total control of Falcon Crest but unrealistically gives 50% back to Angela.

The second series focuses on the death of Carlo Agretti and his daughter's forced marriage to Angela's grandson, Lance. Chase's son, Cole, is suspected of the murder right up to the last episode when it is revealed that Angela's daughter, Julia, killed Carlo and tried to frame Cole.

I found the series to be much better than Dallas or Dynasty in that there was a story line running through all the episodes. The actual setting for Falcon Crest was Spring Mountain Vineyards in Saint Helena.

I also bought the book thinking that the series was based upon it but it turned out to be a just a  telling of the first two television series.

Website : Falcon Crest
Website : Falcon Crest Wikipedia

Book : Drilling For Wine, Robin Yapp

This book is a very humourous brisk walkthrough of Robin Yapp's life from Dentist to Wine Merchant. The first partof the book covers Robin Yapp's work in hotels, balancing dentistry and selling wine, setting up his first wine real wine business, visits to the Bordeaux, Loire, and Rhone. He recounts numerous funny anectdotes involving Cyril Ray and Edmund Penning-Rowsell. I would throughly recommend this book to anybody interested, or not interested, in wine.

Book : Gallo Be Thy Name, Jerome Tuccille

This book dwells upon the dark untold story of the Gallo family. It first focuses on the Gallo brothers, Joe and Mike. Joe was the grower and Mike was the dark sheep with the underworld "connections". The mysterious deaths of Joe and his wife are then covered. The causes are still today unknown: maybe it was suicide, maybe it was mob connections, maybe some other reasons.

The lives of their sons Ernest, Julio, and Joe. The picture painted in the book is that Joe gets the deal and does not profit from the success of the company; rightly or wrongly, it is not possible to decide one or the other based upon the evidence presented in the book.

Joe's son, David, is covered. He is presented as a misfit. David also dies in mysterious circumstances; in bathtub.

The Gallos are really only presented in a positive light when discussing Gina and Matt and their Sonoma venture.




Book Details
Gallo Be Thy Name, The inside story of how one family rose to dominate the U.S. wine market, Jerome Tuccille, 2009, Phoenix Books, Inc

Book : Chateau Lafite 1953 - and other stories, Malcolm Gluck

This book is a non-factual fiction book (Malcolm "Superplonk" Gluck's first foray into fiction writing) where each story is loosely associated to a particular bottle of wine.



The stories are quite varied and consist of a murder mystery, a young man's introduction to wine and his loss of virginity to his sister-in-law, a wine writer being replaced, a wine writer being setup to order a ridiculously priced bottle of wine at a restaurant, a man who retires from a factory, a women mistaken for being Jancis Robinson, a wine merchant who ends up at Tesco and meets a woman from South Africa, a bottle of wine made up of the contents of a spittoon, a wine writer who accepts perks which he shouldn't do, the preparation of the travel programme for a range of wine personalities visiting Argentina, a wine writer who writes under two identities, a female author who gets it together up one of her attendees at a book signing, a woman on a TV chat show, an old woman and man who live in the same block of flats and have a common interest in wine, and a TV presenter of a wine programme who can't smell a thing.

While some of the stories are much more interesting than the others, I would thoroughly recommend this book as a source of wine-related entertainment.

Book : Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking

Wine Drinking for Inspired Thinking is subtitled "Uncork Your Creative Juices" and is written by Michael J. Gelb.



The book consists of basically three parts. The first part is all about saying that when drinking wine one should activate the right part of one's brain. No reason is given or any examples why this makes one more creative.

The third part says that whilst drinking wine then one should write poetry. Again I am not clear how this makes anyone more creative.

The second part is the best and the part that I thoroughly enjoyed and made me happy that I had purchased this book. It discusses wine drinking in three different eras; the Greeks, the Renaissance, and the founding of America,

This book contains lots of interesting facts and small items all the way through. The quotes are exceptionally poignant as is the humour littered throughout.

Book : The Wild Vine, Todd Kliman

This tells the story of the Norton grape and a look at the current status in the USA regarding Norton. The modern day story centres around Jenni McCloud of Chrysalis Vineyards who is portrayed as a Norton fanatic and champion. The book tells the story of how a bottle of Norton won a gold medal at a wine competition in Vienna in 1873 and then has almost vanished off the radar only to be promoted by Jenni and few other ecentric vintners.



I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the history of Norton but was disappointed to hear that the grape is still in obscurity in the USA and simply a curiosity. It is a niche grape variety and will always remain so.

I would recommend this book to anybody interested in the history of viticulture and enology in the USA.




Website : Chrysalis Vineyards

Book : In an Out of Africa ... in search of Gerard Depardieu

Francis Gimblett, The Wine Adventurer, tastes a Moroccan wine made by Gerard Depardieu and then travels to North Africa to try to find similar or better wines. He visits Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.

This book is in two parts. The first is a travelogue about his exploits and mixes winery visits with colourful descriptions of the places he visits and episodes that happen whilst on route to these places. The second part of the book is a detailed description of each winery he visits and comes complete with tasting notes.



I found this book very entertaining and my only complaint is that there wasn't more of it.




Website : The Wine Adventurer

Book : Desert Island Wine

Desert Island Wine was published in 2007 by Miles Lambert-Gocs. The book consists of short stories around the theme of wine.



Unfortunately most the episodes were boring and trying to read. However, there were three gems. Firstly, an interview by a CNN correspondent with Dionysus, a profile of William Granville a terroirist who can deliver wine to match any desired terroir, and an interview with Brad Crostati owner of Gobs-of-Fruit vineyards.

Book : The Great Wine Swindle by Malcolm Gluck

This book covers what is wrong with today's wine scene. Topic covered include supermarkets, restaurants, wine shows, wine writers, high alcohol wines, organic wines, and wine guides.



On the whole this book was quite enjoyable. It had its irritating parts though. There were some inaccuracies. Malcolm Gluck comes across as being bitter towards other wine writers which is a bit tiring. He also fails to name names etc in a lot of cases. I did enjoy his "dig" at Raymond Blanc though. He complains about the language of wine reviews but his own published comments on 2003 Burgundies suffer the same maladies that he himself complains about.

I wonder who this book is aimed for since the wine fan will know most of the content already and it is too detailed for a novice who will lose interest.

Book : Wine by Andre Domine

The 2008 version of Wine by Andre Domine is a new completely revised edition. It weighs in at a mighty 900 pages. It was published by Ullmann Publishing in August 2008.

The book is a very good wine companion. There is something in the book for almost everybody. The book mainly focuses upon areas of the world and their wine producers and wines. North and South America, and Australia are given poor coverage whilst Europe is covered in depth including England and Wales, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. France gets 20% of the book with Italy and Spain getting about 10-15% each.

There are also good sections on wine and health, the chemical composition of wine, the history of wine, and wine and food pairing. For the wine knowledgeable then such subjects such as integrated pest management, barrel management, and vineyard management are covered; even esoteric subjects such as the manufacture of wine bottles are given the in-depth treatment.

I can thoroughly recommend this book both for beginners and experts alike.

The book can be purchased at Amazon online :



Website : Ullmann Publishing

Book : Vinträdgården

A new book has been published by Sveneric Svensson entitled Vinträdgården or Vineyard in English. It contains details and pictures of the author's small garden vineyard in Väröbacka and some details about making wine in the Swedish climate. The book costs 340 SEK including postage (or 240 SEK if you are a member of the Svenska Vinodlare organisation). Contact Anders Norberg at anders.norberg@effektiva.se or ring 040 664 67 52 for details.

Website : Svenska Vinodlare

Health and Safety for Wineries and Vineyards

A new book has been published "Health and Safety for Small- and Medium-Sized Wineries Handbook" by the British Columbia Wine Council relating to health and safety for wineries and vineyards. It would be useful for any vineyard/winery owner to read. Ignore the references to local organisations and documents and then most of it applies for wineries/vineyards in any part of the world. If you are thinking of setting up and winery and/or vineyard then this is a necessary read. It is freely available from the BC Wine Grape Council.

Website : BC Wine Grape Council

Book : The Billionaire's Vinegar

I just finished reading my copy of The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace; it is subtitled The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive bottle of Wine. It is published by Crown Publishers of New York. I picked my copy up at Chapters in Montreal for 29.35 Canadian Dollars but I have seen it at NK here in Stockholm.

The most expensive bottle of wine was a 1787 Chateau Lafite sold in 1985 to Malcolm Forbes who stored the bottle in unfriendly conditions leading to the wine turning to vinegar.

This bottle and other bottles purporting to have been ordered by Thomas Jefferson were discovered by Hardy Rodenstock who had been given them by somebody who found them behind the wall of a bricked-up cellar in Paris. Hardy Rodenstock has never given out the source of these bottles, he is also vague about the number of bottles found.

There are two questions, were these bottles really ordered by Thomas Jefferson? , and are they really what they say they are ?.

Christies and Broadbent should never have sold these on the premise that they may have been destined for Thomas Jefferson; this book presents no evidence of such a fact.

This book does not present Michael Broadbent in a good light. He comes across as an old woman, jealous of Sothebys and far too friendly with Rodenstock.

It is noted in the book that Rodenstock was found guilty of wine fraud by a court in Munich. The bottles were not found at the house that Jefferson lived at since that had been knocked down a logn time before the discovery. Also there is no mention of these bottles in any records produced by the meticulous Jefferson. All of this is hardly compelling evidence and would have been knows to Broadbent and Christies at the time of the sale.

The fight against Rodenstock is currently being led by William Koch who claims that the engravings on his four bottles are modern in origin whilst Christies are still claiming that they are genuine, despite not making public their report.

Colour photographs of all the so-called Jefferson bottles, at least the Koch ones, would have been a nice extra.

Website : Benjamin Wallace
Website : The Crown Publishing Group