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An indispensable book for every wine lover, from some of the world's greatest experts. Where do wine grapes come from and how are they related to each other? What is the historical background of each grape variety? Where are they grown? What sort of wines do they make and, most importantly, what do they taste like? Using the most cutting-edge DNA analysis and detailing almost 1,400 distinct grape varieties, as well as myriad correct (and highlighting almost as many incorrect) synonyms, this particularly beautiful book includes revelatory grape family trees, and a rich variety of illustrations from Viala and Vermorel's seminal ampelography with century-old illustrations. Combining Jancis Robi...
There are nearly 1,400 known varieties of wine grapes in the world—from altesse to zierfandler—but 80 percent of the wine we drink is made from only 20 grapes. In Godforsaken Grapes, Jason Wilson looks at how that came to be and embarks on a journey to discover what we miss. Stemming from his own growing obsession, Wilson moves far beyond the “noble grapes,” hunting down obscure and underappreciated wines from Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, France, Italy, the United States, and beyond. In the process, he looks at why these wines fell out of favor (or never gained it in the first place), what it means to be obscure, and how geopolitics, economics, and fashion have changed what we drink. A combination of travel memoir and epicurean adventure, Godforsaken Grapes is an entertaining love letter to wine.
Mountainous terrain, volcanic soils, innumerable microclimates, and an ancient culture of winemaking influenced by Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans make Italy the most diverse country in the world of wine. This diversity is reflected in the fact that Italy grows the largest number of native wine grapes known, amounting to more than a quarter of the worldÕs commercial wine grape types. Ian DÕAgata spent thirteen years interviewing producers, walking vineyards, studying available research, and tasting wines to create this authoritative guide to ItalyÕs native grapes and their wines. Writing with great enthusiasm and deep knowledge, DÕAgata discusses more than five hundred different native I...
In a lively gastronomical tour around the world and through the millennia, Uncorking the Past tells the compelling story of humanity's ingenious, intoxicating search for booze. Following a tantalizing trail of archaeological, chemical, artistic, and textual clues, Patrick E. McGovern, the leading authority on ancient alcoholic beverages, brings us up to date on what we now know about the creation and history of alcohol, and the role of alcohol in society across cultures. Along the way, he integrates studies in food and sociology to explore a provocative hypothesis about the integral role that spirits have played in human evolution. We discover, for example, that the cereal staples of the mod...
A must-have volume for all wine lovers and those who love orange wine. Written by renowned orange wine expert and award winning writer Simon J. Woolf, Amber Revolution is the world's first book to tell the full, forgotten story of this ancient wine (white wine made like a red wine) and its modern struggle to gain acceptance. It is a tale of lost identity, the fight for survival, and pioneering winemakers--from the Caucasus to the Adriatic. White grapes are left in contact with their skins for days, weeks or months during fermentation, creating stunning complexity, unusual aromas and intense flavors. The extended skin contact gives these wines bold amber, russet, or orange tints. The techniqu...
In an increasingly interconnected world wine market, evolving consumer demands, technologies, and climate have all contributed to large shifts in global patterns of production and consumption of wine. These shifting patterns of wine production and consumption have entailed changes in the vineyard in terms of total area planted, production practices, and the mix of grape varieties grown. In this book, for the first time, we have a detailed empirical picture, country by country and region by region within countries, of which varieties of grapes have been grown where, and how those varietal choices have changed over time. This statistical compendium will be directly useful for anyone interested in knowing about and understanding the changing patterns of production of wine and wine grapes around the world. It also will serve as an invaluable resource for economists and others who seek to analyze those patterns and their causes.
Written by the expert on Madeira wine, this is the definitive guide.
With over 800 entries on how and where wine grapes grow, how they taste, how they relate, and the sort of wines they produce.
This book explores one of the most significant medieval saints’ cults, that of St. Maurus, the first known disciple of Saint Benedict. Despite the centrality of this story to the myth of medieval Benedictine culture, no major scholarly work has been devoted to Maurus since the late nineteenth century. Drawing on memory studies, this book investigates the origins and history of the cult, from the ninth-century Life of St. Maurus by Odo, abbot of Glanfueil, to its appropriation and re-shaping by three powerful abbeys through to the thirteenth century—Fossés, Cluny, and Montecassino. It traces how these institutions deployed caches of mostly forged documents (many translated here for the first time) to adapt the cult to their aspirations and, moreover, considers how the cult adapted itself further, to face the challenges of the modern world.