Post-run cool-down on back porch with a glass of water and @rparr’s Secrets of the Sommeliers
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Category Archives: Wine Books
Liquid Memory
I recently finished reading Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters
The central idea of the book is that “wine is among the singular repositories of memory known to man.”
Why is wine unique in its relation to memory? Because it is the only animate vessel of both personal memory – that of the drinker (or maker) and the subjectivity of his experience and the memory of that subjectivity – and communal memory. That is, it is communal to the extent that a wine is also the memory of the terroir, which the wine expresses as an evolving, active taste. As communal memory, it is above all an expression of place as a communal identity, the history of the civilization of that place and the history of the relationship to its nature (especially soil, subsoil, and microclimate).
Like many of Nossiter’s assertions, this may be a bit overblown, but I find myself being sucked in by the romance of the idea nonetheless.
Despite the showy intellectualism of the above quote (and much of the book), the other stated goal is to de-snobify wine, deflate the anointed critics and get you to trust your own palate. Yet the overall sense one gets is that if he overheard you ordering wine in a restaurant, he’d definitely be judging you and putting you in one of two categories: savvy or ignorant.
That said, I really enjoyed reading the book. If you flipped through my copy of this book, you’d find countless circled and underlined passages, notes of agreement and disagreement in the margins, and even a few inspired (but poor) drawings. The book is provocative and cerebral. It makes me fall in love with loving wine if that makes sense.
Whether you are sympathetic to the sentiment of the book or not, it will stretch your thinking about wine. And thinking about wine is almost as fun as drinking it (at least for this geek). I hope you read it if you haven’t already. To encourage that, I plan to share some of my favorite quotes from the book in blog posts over the next few weeks. I’ll start here with this one:
When I enter a wine shop or when I scan a restaurant wine list, I feel a surge of excitement, like someone arriving at the doorstep of a potential love affair.
“Corked” Book Review & Giveaway
I received this book as a sample and thought “This could be interesting.” Father-daughter road trip through France, hitting all the classic wine regions (except Bordeaux – “Fuck Bordeaux” as they say in the book). Should be fun.
Memoirs can be hit-or-miss, though. And if you don’t connect with the author’s “voice” it can be tough sledding. And I did not find myself connecting with Ms. Borel, her inner torment or issues with her dad.
Basically, Ms. Borel has some issues, her wine-loving overbearing dad has some issues and she joins him on this “wine trip to end all wine trips” hoping it will help them connect. Now, I knew this was a memoir, not a wine book, but the wine felt REALLY secondary to the angst here. I hung in there, hoping to get to some good wine-geekery or even some good armchair travel, but those moments were too few and far between for me. In a way, it reminded me of Julie & Julia, the memoir by Julie Powell about an unhappy woman who decides to cook her way through Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking. That book, too, was a bit to angst-y for me. But if you like that book, you very well could like this one.
I’m going to see if I can talk my wife into reading and reviewing this book here on the blog. As a fan of the memoir (travel and otherwise), she may have a different take.
I have an extra copy of the book, so let’s do a little giveaway. Leave a comment about a memory you have of (1) your parents and wine or (2) a wine-related road trip. I’ll put all commenters names in a hat and draw a winner and ship you the book.
(If you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.)
Book Review: A Vineyard in Tuscany
A post over on Wannabe Wino just brought to my attention the Wine Book Club, which has been run by Good Wine Under $20. Apparently participation has been light and this month is going to be the last. That’s a shame. Coincidentally, during my vacation last week, I finished the book they’re reading this month: A Vineyard in Tuscany by Ferenc Máté. Since I just learned about it last minute, I can’t do a proper book review, but I thought I’d whip off a quick post to participate in this last installment of the book club.
This book is the memoir of an ex-pat author, Ferenc Máté, who lives in Tuscany (with his wife and young son) and decides he wants to buy a little vineyard land adjacent to his property. Things don’t work out as planned with that purchase and it sends him on a quest for a new property where he can fulfill his twin desires of rebuilding a ruin and owning a vineyard.
Máté paints a very inviting picture of life in Tuscany (has anyone written a book that makes Tuscany seem anything less than idyllic?), with its slowed-down lifestyle, charming neighbors, interesting characters and delicious food and wine. What appeals to me about his writing is the sense of community with his neighbors and the various locals who help him with his rebuild and vineyard planting, and the connectedness to the land and the seasons. As these sort of books always do, it makes you question “modern life”, the rat race, suburbia and all that — sparking fantasies of leaving it all behind and moving somewhere where they “get it.”
Of course, following the author’s footsteps would require quite a bankroll. He doesn’t provide a lot of specific dollar amounts (other than the “going rate” of $10K per acre for vineyard land, a price he never actually got, yet it got me thinking…), but the overall cost must have been massive. In addition to the purchase price of this 13th century friary and dozens of acres of vineyard land, he employed masons and carpenters and other workers for almost 2 years straight.
The only other quibble I have with the book is what I’ll call the false-self-deprication. There’s a lot of “oh, I’m this crazy Hungarian who just has to have the original tiles restored – aren’t I a weirdo?” But you can tell he’s totally proud of it. It just got a little old for me after a while. We get it — you did everything the right way, the hard way, the perfect way. You don’t have to pretend it’s some kind of personality flaw.
But overall, I really enjoyed the book. Highlights for me include:
- the visit from the vineyard consultant-type who walks the land and talks about which grapes to plant on which parcels. (He plants Sangiovese, Merlot, Cabernet and Syrah)
- The discussion of all the detailed decisions that have to be made when planting a vineyard (vines per acre, row spacing, trellising, direction of the rows, etc.)
- the anxiety of the final days before harvest, when they’re trying to decide exactly when to pick and avoid late rains
If you like to daydream about having you’re own vineyard, this book will give you plenty of fodder.