Book Review: Tor Kenward's Reflections of a Vintner

I have the good fortune of being able to call Tor Kenward friend. I have shared golf carts with him on Florida courses, sat through multiple Tor-led tastings of his wines, dined with him in Napa Valley, hosted him on one of my Covid-era Instagram Live Chats, and walked the Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard with him and Andy Beckstoffer (along with a group of Orlando-area wine enthusiasts). 

I consider Tor a great story teller and a raconteur so it was with great anticipation that I awaited his telling of his Napa story. The book -- Reflections of a Vintner: Stories and Seasonal Wisdom from a Lifetime in Napa Valley -- arrived a week ago and I buried myself in it immediately. 

Tor arrived in Napa at one of the most consequential times in the history of American -- nay New World -- wines: a group of unheralded Napa Valley winemakers had just bested some of the greatest Burgundy and Bordeaux wines in the now-famous Judgment of Paris. While not dealt with as a whole, either temporally or thematically, the book indicates significant improvement/growth in Napa in the following areas from that period to today and delves into Tor's role along the way.

• Massive growth in the number of wineries resulting from an improved acceptance of Napa products in the broader marketplace
• Tolerance for outsiders -- Napa has gone from being a town where they preferred to not have the sun set on visitors to being a veritable Disneyland for adults
• Has grown from a single eating spot where the locals hung out to a destination spot for foodies. French Laundry, for example, is a Michelin Three Star establishment.
• Wine criticism focused on Napa wines. This had the impact of raising awareness of Napa wines among consumers as well as forcing wineries to up their game. Tor mentions the Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, the New York Times, and, more recently, Anthony Galloni's Vinous. He is good friends with Jancis Robinson and is a fan of her work beyond the borders of Napa.
• Philanthropy -- the establishment and increasing importance of the Napa Wine Auction as a source of funds for area charities
• His own personal education - Tor came into Napa with limited practical wine knowledge and no formal wine education yet was able to acquire knowledge from international and local contacts and, buttressed by late-life UC Davis certification, was able to launch his own successful wine brand.
• All for one and one for all - winemakers in the valley have always been there for each other understanding that (i) a rising tide lifts all boats and (ii) I might be the one in need of help tomorrow.
• Preservation of Napa as an agricultural space -- Tor mentions efforts to keep developers at bay and Andy Beckstoffer's initiatives to ensure that his vineyards will never be anything but.

As described in the book, at the time of Tor's entry, and for some time thereafter, giants roamed the Valley: André Tchelistcheff (the Father of California wine); Robert Mondavi (led the way in the sales, distribution, and promotion of American wine while focusing on quality improvements); Mike Grgich (known for his world-beating Chardonnays out of Chateau Montelena; and Warren Winiarski (exceptional Cabernet Sauvignon's and wine as a culture), among others. And Tor walked among these giants, and supped with them, and learned the origin of their strengths, and applied those learnings first to his efforts at Beringer and then in his own enterprise.

Tor started out at Beringer Vineyards and, over the next 27 years, helped to build a wine company "known to collectors for its single-vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays." Over those 27 years Tor developed a deep knowledge of Napa and European terroirs and winemaking practices. And it was this reservoir of knowledge that he tapped into when he retired from Beringer in 2001 to launch, along with his wife Susan, his own venture: TOR Kenward Family Wines.

But the book could quite easily have been named Reflections of a Vintner, Foodie, and Winelover because Tor, due to his role at Beringer (and Beringer being owned by Nestlé) gained access to the greatest wineries and winemakers of the Old World, tasting some of the worlds greatest wines and learning lessons along the way. In addition, he served on a number of boards of institutions whose goal were to advance the food culture within Napa Valley and, in those positions, met, and interacted with, the leading lights of the burgeoning food culture. He has played a key role in the founding and furtherance of the food scene that has now become a key part of the Napa experience.

So this is a telling of the most productive period of Napa Valley's history but it is not a sweeping tale. Rather, it is a close-in history, limiting itself mostly to events surrounding Tor and his interactions with the leading lights that he has interacted with over the two phases of his Napa life.

While I enjoyed the context and content of Tor's Napa history, there were a few areas of dissonance. Tor tells the tale of doing some writing on his website during the pandemic and those writings being some of the source material for the book. That becomes evident in the fact that there is no journey in the book, no sense of traversing history. Further, there is duplication of themes and anecdotes which should have been edited out to make it less obvious that the book is a compendium of past writings. An attempt has been made to stitch the chapters together by having each headed with a winemaker's activity during the course of a calendar month. This material would have been more valuable if curated in a single spot because, as it stands, it generally has no relationship to the remainder of the chapter.

The book is relatively thin and there is some filler in the form of quotes (in oversize type0 and info boxes. In my view these do not add to the book and I found slightly distracting. The book contains quite a few pictures and I found those very interesting in that they showed Tor over the years plus they captured visuals of the major players along the way.

A definite read if you are a lover of Tor, Tor wines, and Napa history.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Book Review: Peter Liem's Champagne

Champagne lovers are swimming in a sea of plenty with the recent release of three high-quality books on the topic: David White's excellent But First, Champagne, Robert Walters' Grower-focused Bursting Bubbles, and the subject book, Peter Liem's Champagne. If you could only buy one of the three, I would strongly recommend the latter. This book is a tour de force that is backed by the author's 10 years of living among, and writing about, the Champenois and their wines.

Source: penguinrandomhouse.com

In objective and thrust, The Liem and Walters book mirror each other. They both feel that the traditional Champagne Houses and methods consign the beverage to a place that is atypical when compared to other fine wines. Rather than celebrating "place," Champagne celebrates the winemaking and blending processes. But having lived in Champagne for over 10 years, and having tasted myriad vin clair wines, Liem has come to the conclusion that Champagne can be a terroir-expressive wine (the same conclusion reached and proffered by Walters).

In the Preface of his book , Liem states, "The contemporary movement in Champagne ... is, rather simply, the acknowledgment of champagne as a wine like any other":

... a new generation of producers are asking a more complex and detailed set of questions, employing more conscientious viticultural techniques and deepening their understanding of agricultural expression to present a more precise portrait of place ... this proliferation of new champagnes offers an unprecedented opportunity to glimpse the intricacies of Champagnes's terroir.

 There are challenges still to be solved on the way to defining this terroir:

It is still not yet possible to write a comprehensive analysis of Champagne terroirs, given the lack of tools and information available compared with other historic regions. However, it is my hope that this book can in some small way help to push the dialogue further toward acknowledging champagne as a terroir-expressive wine, and to provide a foundation for envisioning that."

The chart below shows the organization of the Peter Liem book and, at first blush, it covers all the bases of what one would expect from a wine-region-based book. As a matter of fact, there is some similarity to the White book both in terms of organization and practice. In terms of practice, some of the same devices (sidebars, etc.) are employed effectively in both books. But there are significant differences in coverage areas; where White eschews coverage of viticulture and viniculture, those areas are critical elements of the Liem book -- and are handled masterfully. But even in the areas of similar coverage the assurance and depth in the Liem book is surpassing.

What distinctively sets Liem apart from the competition, however, is his treatment of terroir.

The conventional approach to regionalizing Champagne shows Champagne's vineyards extending over 4 districts (shown in the map below), 20 sub-regions and 319 villages.  The districts are Montagne de Reims, Vallée de la Marne, Côte des Blancs, and Côte des Bar.

Source: champagne.fr

In Champagne, Peter Liem expands the districts from four to seven. The new schema: divides the Vallée de la Marne into the Grand Vallée and the Vallée de la Marne; adds the Coteaux Sud d'Épernay; and combines the disparate zones between the heart of Champagne and Côte de Bar into a single sub-zone. The construct of this schema is illustrated in the map below.

Liem walks us through the villages associated with each of these sub-regions and the lieux-dits of note in each of these villages. He provides descriptions of the soils of these Grand Cru and Premier Cru vineyards, and included lieux-dits, and details the types of wine they produce. He tells of conversations and tasting with the principals producing wines from these terroirs. The granularity is unparalleled.

At the conclusion of each section on the reconstituted districts, Liem provides recommendations for terroir-expressive wines from that region.

The book is beautifully packaged in a two-compartment box set with one compartment containing the book and the other reproductions of long-lost maps of the Champagne region. The front cover is adorned with a picture of multiple bases of Champagne bottles and rich golden text listing the book title and the author's name. The paper on which the book is printed is thick and rich and the included photography compares very favorably with that employed by Walters, for example.

Source: Peter Liem's Champagne

I strongly recommend this book.

©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Book Review: Robert Walters' Bursting Bubbles -- A Secret History of Champagne and the Rise of the Great Growers

I first became aware of Robert Walters through his writings in The World of Fine Wine and, as a matter of fact, drew heavily on his writings for posts on whether Champagne can be considered a fine wine and the characteristics of grower-producers in the Champagne region. His writings were incisive and thought-provoking and the memories provided the impetus for me to acquire his book when it was published.

The book, according to the jacket text, takes us on a journey to visit some of the "artisanal" producers who have arisen in the Champagne region over the past 20 years while also revealing "a secret history" of the region and dispelling "many of the myths that still persist about this celebrated life style."

It is probably challenging to release your Champagne effort in the same year as Peter Liem introduced his epic (Champagne) and shortly after David White brought his excellent effort (But First, Champagne) to market. The David White book is exceptionally strong on the history of Champagne (as is the Liem book) and provides excellent synopses of the sub-regions, negociants, and grower-producers. The Liem book is strong on the production side but sets out to change the way we think of the terroirs of Champagne and Champagne as a terroir wine.

Walters argument is, that for the most part, Champagne is not a terroir wine. As a matter of fact, "for most commercial Champagne, much of the wine's aroma, flavors, and texture comes from the winemaking process rather than from the grapes themselves." Champagne, as he sees it, is a highly manipulated beverage whose prestige is largely due to excellent marketing. And, the success of the current product set, using the current practices, motivate strongly for the status quo.

There is a small group of growers, however, who have bucked the generic approach in pursuit of the goal of Champagne as a wine reflective of its terroir. These producers apply viticultural practices designed to yield ripe fruit (anathema in the region) and cellar practices that are less manipulative in order to produce wines that are more expressive of their terroirs. Walters characterizes the methods of these "Superior Grower Producers" as follows:

• Own or manage their own vineyards
• Make wines from their own grapes
• Begin with a desire to make wines that reflect their origins
• Single-vineyard or single-commune wines
• Manage the vineyards with little or no chemical input
• Biodynamic or organic
• Plow the soil
• Seek lower yields than customary for the region
• Pursue intense fruit so that lower dosage is needed
• Use dosage in minimal amounts (when used) to balance acidity
• Mature slowly; no fining or filtering.

The products emanating from this process are wines first and Champagne second, according to Walters.  They are drier, more vinous, clean, pure, and long of finish.  They tend to age well and, in his view, are better with food than a traditional Champagne.

The Growers that fit this mold include Egly-Ouriet, Selosse, Agrapart, Larmandier-Bernier, Jérome Prévost, and Cedric Bouchard. In discussing Selosse and Egly, Walters states thusly:

I have often heard comparisons in France between Anselme Selosse and Francis Egly. These two are certainly the most iconic grower-producers in their respective areas and grape varieties: Egly in the Montagne de Reims and with Pinot Noir-dominant wines, and Selosse in the Côte des Blancs with Chardonnay-dominant wines (for the most part). In many ways, they are the foundation stones of the great grower movement and as such they share much common ground. Both blazed trails that others could follow. Both were heavily influenced by Burgundy. Both aim for fully ripe fruit and harvest significantly later than their colleagues. And both utilise the barrique as their maturation vessel of choice. Undoubtedly, Selosse, as a more outspoken, open and charaismatic figure, has been far more influential on the grower movement in general, yet the Egly legacy is also significant.

This is a very small group of players (less than 5% of Champagne exports come from this group) and is declining in number as members yield to the siren song of increasing grape prices.

Walters does an excellent job of detailing why Champagne is not, for the most part, a great wine (when compared to the characteristics used to define great wine in broader France) and telling the stories of the grower-producers. He builds psychographic portraits of these growers and then tries to trace these traits into their wines.

I have issues with the organization of the book though. I found the cover art to be intriguing but thought that the title layout was a bit too much (By the way, a more playful slipcover is employed in the Australian market. I like it.).

There are maps on the inside back and front covers which show the locations of the producers but there is no context when you first see them and there are no references within the book to them. The author spends a lot of words describing travels between the locations while a reference to the maps might have sufficed.

The content is organized roughly as follows: Topic #1; Mythbusting; Producer visit; Mythbusting; Topic #2 ... This breaks up whatever flow there is/should be. The reader probably would have been better served by a more cohesive organization with the mythbusting topics all put into one place in an Appendix or elsewhere. I was not exactly sure of the benefits associated with busting these myths once again anyway.


©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Book Review: A Vineyard in Napa

In its April 30, 2000 issue, Wine Spectator crowned Araujo, Bryant Family, Colgin, Dalle Valle, Grace Family, Harlan, Marcassin, Screaming Eagle, and Hillside Select as cult wines, placing them squarely at the pinnacle of the US wine industry. Doug Shafer's (with Andy Demsky) A Vineyard in Napa traces the path of Shafer Vineyards from a gleam in his father's eye to that exalted position alongside the most heralded producers in the nation.

While Hillside Select is iconic, the winery and its principals have not received the credit, or achieved the rock-star status, that have accrued to individuals like Robert Mondavi and Paul Draper. The winery has achieved excellence in relative obscurity because its story has not been told. This book is an attempt to begin to address that issue.

At its heart, A Vineyard in Napa is a feel-good, coming-of-age story. It is the coming-of-age story of John Shafer, the patriarch of the family and a reluctant publishing industry executive in Chicago, who piled his family into a car and drove them from Chicago to Napa (the wife had the good sense to fly to San Francisco) and, in so doing, set the wheels in motion for the creation of one of America's greatest wines. We feel good about the way John confronts and overcomes adversity to attain both personal and business success.

John Shafer at 2013 Shafer Premiere Napa Valley event

It is the story of Doug, who left Chicago thinking that he would be spending his time in California on the beach only to find out that Napa was not exactly a beach destination. He initially wanted to teach after college but returned to Napa after overcoming the idealism which had set him on that path in the first place. It is about him coming of age first as a winemaker then as the helmsman of a leading winery with responsibility for charting the business course, navigating the booms and busts inherent in Napa Valley wine production, leading a team, and maintaining the firm's position with customers, vendors, distributors, the Napa Valley community, and relevant governmental organizations.

Doug Shafer keeping a customer happy at a wine dinner

It is the coming-of-age story of Elias Fernandez, the current winemaker. This son of farmworkers went to college and earned an Enology degree and worked tirelessly and selflessly alongside Doug as Assistant Winemaker before eventually being appointed Winemaker and being recognized as Winemaker of the Year by Wine & Spirits and as a leader in the Latino Community in a White House ceremony.

Elias Fernandez (center) at 2013 Shafer Premiere Napa Valley Event

It is a coming-of-age story for Napa which grows from a "backwater" to one of the best-known wine regions in the world; a region whose wines went from Rodney-Dangerfield status to the giant killers of the Judgment of Paris; and a region that has produced some of the legendary names in wine (Robert Mondavi, for example).

It is a coming-of-age story for the winery. Starting as a gleam in John's eye, its first manifestation was as a grape grower. The first wine produced was the 1978 Cabernet Sauvignon (single vintage) followed by a purchased-fruit Chardonnay in 1980 and revisiting the Cabernet Sauvignon in 1982. It is a story of steady expansion of the range of offerings while maintaining production at levels which ensured that they were not overextending and adding beneficial technologies and practices (solar and sustainability, for example) in order to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness.

The narrator of the story is Doug Shafer who, having grown up with Napa, Stags Leap District, and the winery, is eminently qualified to tell the story. I have met and interacted with Doug on many occasions over the years -- Premiere Napa Valley events (barrel tasting and auction as well as events at the winery), at distributor tastings in Florida, and at a dinner held in his honor at my home -- and his unselfish, inclusive nature is reflected in the book. He distributes credit for the success of the winery where it belongs rather than using the book as a vehicle with which to hog the limelight. His humbleness and willingness to reach out and engage across the spectrum is one of his endearing (and enduring) characteristics.

Despite the book's liberal use of footnotes and citations, a comprehensive index, and publication by the University of California Press, this is no scholarly tome. Rather, it is a conversational, accessible romp through the growth and maturation of the family, the vineyard and the region. More Yahoo News than New York Times, it is characterized by short, punchy chapters and a very personal story telling style. This is a quick read. And you will feel better for having done so.


©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Review of Marcus Samuelson's Yes, Chef: a memoir

Marcus Samuelson's Yes, Chef: a memoir (Random House, 2012) is a multi-faceted, semi-anthropological, page-turner of a book that traces the author's life from his origin in the wind-blown, sun-drenched, fly-infested deserts of Ethiopia to the pinnacle of the chef scene in New York City, one of the world's gastronomic capitals. 

The book is, first of all, the quintessential American tale; the rise from obscure origins to the pinnacle of the chosen field.  Marcus was born in a map-challenged village in Ethiopia and was adopted, along with his sister, by a loving, Swedish-resident, middle-class family after the untimely death of his birth mother.  From his early years in Sweden, Marcus trained to be a soccer player but, after being booted off the team due to his (relatively) delicate physique, he turned to cooking, an activity that he had grown to love while helping his grandmother prepare family meals.  The book traces his struggles to gain a foothold in the industry and the travels to countries far and wide in order to pursue opportunities.  His efforts paid off  in the end with accomplishments to include: (i) Executive Chef at Aquavit, a NYC restaurant focused on Swedish cuisine; (ii) winning Top Chef Masters; (iii) serving as the guest chef for President Obama's first state dinner on the occasion of the visit of the Indian head of state to the US; and (iv) opening his own restaurant (Red Rooster) in Harlem.

But within that overarching story, there were a number of sub-stories, the first of which, in my view, is a cautionary tale about the collateral damage of blind ambition.  One of the first victims of this effect was his first girlfriend.  Once he received the "staging" appointment in Switzerland, he had broken up with her mentally.  When she followed him to Switzerland, he put her into a position where she was forced to pull the eject button.  While working in Austria, Marcus got involved in a one-weekend stand with a young woman and she became pregant as a result.  His thoughts were on the negative implications that this would have on his career and he gladly walked away when she told him that she would make no claim on him.  He did not return to Sweden for the burial of his Father or Grandmother (both of whom he had had loving relationships with) because to do so would mess up his current situation.

Another subtext was his indebtedness to the women who were a part of his life and supported him in his endeavors.  His birth mother, who walked 75 miles to the hospital in Addis Ababa to ensure that they got medical help for the TB that was ravaging their bodies.  Marcus and his sister survived the ordeal; his mother did not.  For the nurse who took them in after they had spent six months in the hospital.  She had very little for her and her own kids but whatever she had, she shared.  His sister Linda protected him fiercely (even though she was only five-years old) in their adoptive home until she attained a level of trust of their adoptive parents. She was also key in establishing links back to their relatives in Ethiopia.  His adoptive mother who was a rock of Gibraltar all through his life.  Unquestioning love.  Once she found out that he had a baby on the way, she took the responsibility of sending support payments for the kid with the proviso that he would repay her when he began earning. The mother of his daughter who was strong enough to allow him to walk away and went on to raise this daughter plus two kids from her own later marriage.  When Marcus eventually came back into his daughter's life, this woman did not point a finger of blame or scorn in his direction.  She was happy that he was finally playing a personal role in his daughter's life.  And, finally, his wife, who became one of his links back to the old old world while helping him keep his feet squarely planted on the ground in this his new.

A third subtext -- what it takes to succeed in today's world of celebrity chefs -- is inseparable from, and is almost subsumed within, (i) the story of trying to be a successful chef while cooking black and (ii) his search for his identity as an Ethiopian-born black male, who was adopted and raised in a middle-class community in Sweden by a white middle-class family, who began to develop a sense of his otherness when one of his classmates chucked a basketball at him and asked him if he wanted to play neger ball.  His struggles in this arena was exacerbated by the fact that he had chosen a profession where blacks were not well represented and his interactions with some chefs (notably, and disappointedly so, the chef at Negresco in Nice) seemed to indicate an institutional bias towards the status quo.  His first trip to the US opened his eyes to the diverse societal mosaic that was possible and brought a realization that this was the type of environment within which he wanted to operate.  Linking up with his Ethiopian roots gave him a grounding and foundation for identity construction going forward while moving to Harlem and opening a restaurant there tied him to the historic past of that community and provided him with the opportunity to meld his identity with that community as it undergoes its rennaisance.  Marcus started out not wanting to be seen as a black chef but by the end of the book he had embraced that "condition" thoroughly.

This book is beautifully written and masterfully edited.  The opening chapter is powerful, gripping, and of literary caliber.  While reading that chapter I felt as though I was walking in the desert with Marcus, his mom, and his sister as they made their way from the home village to the hospital in Addis Ababa.  His mom did not make it out of the hospital.  At the conclusion of the first chapter I had to climb up out of the book to gain respite from a heavy dosing of emotion.  The book hits its highest emotional notes whenever the author turns toward Ethiopia.  The story is presented in short, concise, impactful chapters and I read it in one sitting on a flight between Orlando and Portland, OR.  This is a definite read.


©Wine -- Mise en abyme

Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920

Andrew P. Haley's Turning the Tables: Restaurants and the Rise of the American Middle Class, 1880-1920 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011) is a tightly integrated, culturo-historical look at the late 19th century-early 20th century war of prominence between a previously non-existent middle class dining culture and the dominant elite dining culture of the day.  The book, which is based on the author's Ph.D thesis, assiduously covers the forces that led to the birth and evolution of the middle class dining culture - and the impact on its aristocratic counterpart -- from a historical perspective but is equally thorough in enumerating and analyzing the cultural issues (power, class, gender, agency, and cultural change, among others) that arose during the course of this confrontation.  As the author sees it, "... modern restaurant culture was the product of a clash between the upper and middle classes."

At the highest level, this is a simple and straightforward story, especially when viewed from the perspective of the book's Table of Contents: (i) The aristocrats possess and hold the high ground of culinary standard-setting; (ii) the fledgling middle class seeks to emulate, but fails miserably; (iii) the middle class counters by creating their own battlefield and, because of their numbers, they change the dynamics such that the middle ground they occupy now becomes the strategic locus; and (iv) the aristocrats, and their support structure, are isolated on their now rocky outcropping.  But it is the numerous threads within this overall narrative that the author plumbs so magnificently that makes this book as interesting and rewarding as it ultimately is.

According to the author, in the mid-19th century, the aristocratic class in the US began to assert its dominance through the establishment of dining norms (cuisine, rituals, consumption locale) and consumed conspicuously according to those norms.  The American aristocracy had begun traveling to Europe and sought to copy the culinary habits and practices of their European counterparts.  In order to gain the patronage of these aristocrats, US restaurants began catering exclusively to their needs to the exclusion of all other groups.  The cuisine demanded by the elite was French; the chefs were French; the food was expensive and dispensed in courses; there was a set order in which utensils were used; the head waiter determined the seating arrangements; women could not eat alone; and tipping was required to ensure a good seat and meal.

On the other side of the fence, so to speak, stood the "nascent" urban middle class: managers, bureaucrats, small-scale entrepreuners, and professionals who lived in the suburbs and commuted in to the city daily.  The members of this group sought to imitate the practices of the elite but found themselves unable to do so.  According to the author, "... the middle class rejected the elite restaurant not only because the ... restaurant was expensive and inaccessible but also because they found that the values they were coming to see as their own ... were manifestly not the values enshrined by the elite restaurant."  This state of affairs led the middle class to avoid the elite restaurants -- where they were not welcome anyway -- and to colonize available non-elite eating places and associated (in many cases ethnic) cuisines and, through group dynamics, forced those restaurants to develop a style of cuisine, service, and environment that was suited to their tastes.  The author refers to this as the "democratization of dining" and the creation of a "cosmopolitan" cuisine.

This democratization of dining had significant implications for the restaurant industry as ownership of middle-class-type restaurants increased from 13,000 in 1880 to 165,000 in 1930 while:

• The bastions of elite cuisine (Delmonico's in NY, for example) fell by the wayside
• There was a movement from the elite meal courses to the middle-class plate dinners
• English-language menus replaced French-language menus in elite restaurants
• Menus were broadly simplified
• Middle class women won the right to dine unaccompanied in a restaurant
• French cuisine went from a position of dominance to being just another ethnic cuisine
• The elites lost their positon as cuisine standard setters and the middle class donned that mantle.

The author drew on period newspaper articles, restaurant menus, restaurant journals, and culinary magazines as source material for his thesis and this book. 

The battle for culinary prominence was fought on many fronts and the author chose to treat these topically, rather than temporally, resulting in a slightly disconcerting duplication of assertions and hypotheses from chapter to chapter.  At the end of the day, however, this may have been the only way to do justice to this expansive subject and it only minimally detracts from the excellence of the tome.

The battle for culinary prominence was not an end in and of itself, according to the author.  By acting as cultural change agents in the culinary sphere, the middle class gained the confidence to make consumer choices and launched the consumerism that came to be the hallmark of middle classdom.  If this is truly the case, then the culinary batlle was more than a seminal event; it would have been the gateway to an era.

© Wine -- The View From Orlando

The Hybrid George M. Taber: Review of A Toast to Bargain Wines

George M. Taber, author of the famed Judgement in Paris, participated in a number of panels, and gave the Keynote speech at the recently held European Wine Bloggers conference (Brescia, Italy, October 12th - 14th), all on the same topic: storytelling.  In these public appearances, Mr. Taber mentioned his soon-to-be-released book A Toast to Bargain Wines -- even reading some passages from the book in an early morning workshop -- and I, at that time, resolved to acquire and read said tome when it became available.

The full title of the book is A Toast to Bargain Wines: How innovators, iconoclasts, and winemaking revolutionaries are changing the way the world drinks.  I found some dissonance between the title and the layout of the book, on one hand, and the title and the content on the other. 

In Taber's three previous books (Judgement in Paris, To Cork or not to Cork, and In Search of Bacchus), an average of 280 pages was devoted to the telling of the "story." In this book, what I consider "the story" runs for approximately 158 pages, with another 123 pages taken up by a buyer's guide to bargain wines; material which, in my humble opinion, and based on the title, is referential and, as such, would have been better positioned in an appendix. I read the "story" component of the book and set the reference material aside for use when needed. It is not clear to me that this is the best medium for delivery of point-of-use information such as a wine-buyers guide anyway. If you are in the grocery store and decide that you want to purchase a bargain wine, an electronic reference source would have greater utility.

In contrast to its prominence within the book, the presence of the buyer's guide is not indicated in either the main or sub- titles. At the wine bloggers conference we were told that our stories should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This story has a beginning, a middle, an end, and a buyer's guide.

In terms of organization, the book is divided into three major sections: A Global Business in Turmoil; The Iconoclasts; and The Wine Revolutionaries.  Each of these sections is preceded by a short introductory paragraph which, in my view, could have been aggregated at the front of the book to provide an overall roadmap.  I needed a navigation aid through the first four chapters; something to tie them to the title.  The first chapter (titled Embarassing Moments in Wine History), for example, seemed to have no place in the book until Mr. Taber ties it to novice tasting capability in a closing paragraph.  In Brescia Mr. Taber had recommended using an anectdote as a "grabber" to start a story and, maybe, that was the intent here but, if so, it had me faked out.

The book was slow-moving and somewhat non-specific through Chapters 3 and 4.  In the chapter titled Unravelling the Mysteries of Taste, Mr. Taber spends a lot of time on Tim Hanni and his battle to have the wine establishment understand that people taste differently.  The inclusion of Hanni's Taste Sensitivity Assessment was interesting as it helped in understanding some of the differences between reviewers' reports and helped me to understand where I stood on his scale.  While interesting, this chapter seemed broadly applicable and no significant attempt was made to tie it to the main topic of the book.  I raise the same issue with the chapter on wine judging competitions.  At the end of the story Mr Taber tried to tie these all into the reader being an arbiter of his/her own taste but by this time the damage had been done.  The attempt to correlate should have been done up front.

The story reached its pinnacle in the wine revolutionaries section and, specifically, the stories around the introduction of Two Buck Chuck and [yellow tail].  This is George Taber at his best, tieing primary and secondary sources together in a tightly spun yarn which is both entertaining and revealing.

One of the sessions at the European Wine Bloggers conference was titled Stories Never Told.  One of the shortcomings of this book is that it does not adequately tell the consumer story.  Iconoclasts, winemakers, gatekeepers all get their day in the sun; not so the customer.  When the writer segments the market, it is from the producer/retailer perspective: luxury; ultra-premium; premium; low cost; and extreme value.  No attention is paid to population segmentation of the type that has been discussed by Lorey and Poutet and Marion Demoisser -- and written on extensively in this blog -- which segments customers by drinking profile: regular drinkers; occasional drinkers; and non-wine drinkers.  The issue that I would have liked to see addressed was whether the bargain wines covered in the book are penetrating the regular-drinker segment (as implied in the subtitle) or whether they are increasing the number of drinkers by positively impacting the actions of the occasional and non-wine-drinking customers. This is a story that is of exceptional importance, especially to markets such as France which is experiencing declines in regular drinkers and increases in occasional and non-wine drinkers.

I have bought George Taber's books in the past because of his capabilities in research and storytelling.  In this book, Mr. Taber makes himself a part of the story.  Beginning in 2009, he blind-tasted five or six wines per day in order to come up with the final best buy list included in the book.  In the section on gatekeepers, Mr Taber warned us about their role and positioning as arbiters of taste, yet he plays the role of gatekeeper in this book.  And he does not even alert us as to his Sensitivity Taste Assessment so that we can get a sense of where his taste lies; that is after warning us in the body of the document to pick a gatekeeper who is most aligned with our taste and to then stick with that individual. 

I get the storyteller Taber brand; the jury is still out on the hybrid (storyteller-gatekeeper) Taber.

Book Review: Romancing the Vine -- Life, Love, and Transformation in the Vineyards of Barolo

Allan Tardi's Romancing the Vine: Life, Love, and Transformation in the Vineyards of Barolo (New York, St. Martin's Press) is a working man's version of Edward Steinberg's The Making of a Great Wine: Gaja and Sori San Lorenzo (Hopewell, NJ, Eco Press) with a number of contrasting wrinkles which serve to blur the similarities.  Both books follow the Nebbiola grape through the viticultural and vinicultural procesess of a single year -- 1989 for Steinberg, 2002 for Tardi -- with Steinberg focusing on a single vineyard (Sori San Lorenzo) in the Barbaresco DOCG and the powerful owner of that vineyard, Angelo Gaja.  Tardi's tale is cast, contrastingly, in Castiglione Falleto, a little village in the Barolo region -- about 10 miles from Barbaresco -- and covers the author's experiences with a small vineyard (Le Munie), a small winery (Parusso), and the inhabitants of the village.

Tardi may have tried to do too much in the 316 pages of this book.  It is foremost a book about journeys:  the journey of the grape from vine to wine, and then on to grappa and vineyard fertilizer; his journey from American citizen to dual American-Italian citizensship; his journey from acclaimed New York City Chef to Barolo cellar rat; his journey into the heart, and bed, of Ivana, his self-described polar opposite; and, finally, a journey into the heart of a small Piemontese village and discovery of its inhabitants and their rituals.

The wine story in the book is tame and unscintillating and suffers from Tardi's diversions into the other journeys previously described.  For example, at the conclusion of the chapter on Harvest, he launches into a discourse on terroir and tasting terroir before going on to the activities in the winery.  It seemed misplaced.  Where Tardi excels is in his description of the local haunts and characters and the festivals that are so much a part of the Piemontese summer.  His descriptions of the Festa della Bussia -- a 5-day food, music and wine festival -- and Fair of the Fat Bull, give us a Langhe-eye view of life in this region. 

The author has a disconcerting habit of placing recipes at the end of a chapter closest to where he himself experienced that food item initially.  This is almost nuisance-like in that recipe-reading entails a different mindset than the pleasure-type reading that one applies to a book of this type.  Reading  a recipe is work.  I think that readers would have been better served if the recipes had been collected into an appendix at the end of the book.

The book ends rather abruptly.  Prior to the end, the author had been engaged in deep thought about his working future as well as the future of the relationship with Ivana.  To the extent that those thoughts were explored, I felt that they would be resolved in some fashion prior to the close of the story.  They were not.  The journey is incomplete, both for the reader as well as the author.  While Steinberg's tale has clarity and depth -- diamond-like -- this book has unresolved issues.

Book Review: When the River's Ran Red

When the River's Ran Red (Palgrave MacMillan, 2009) is Vivienne Sosnowski's telling of the travails that beset the American wine industry as a result of Prohibition and how the players in this fledgeling industry survived this misbegotten experiment in social engineering.  It is a historical tale with a good ending for the producers of wines and spirits, those who made their living getting product from the producer to the consumer, the consumer, and government tax receipts.  Not so for the "Drys" and those employed in "enforcing" the Prohibition statutes.

The book -- arranged into 10 chapters, and 200 pages long (exclusive of front matter, notes, bibliography, and index) -- has six main themes: the development of the American wine industry prior to the passage of the constitutional amendment ushering in Prohibition; the preparation, or lack of same, of the winemakers for the onset of Prohibition; the broader social and political battle that was waged over the Prohibition issue; winemakers' initiatives to "ride out" Prohibition; the battle for repeal; and the euphoria accompanying repeal.

The book begins slowly, somewhat dry and peppered with numerical data and historical facts.  We are made to know that the Franciscans were probably the first to grow grapes in California (1823), followed by George Yount in the 1840s, and that Agoston Haraszthy, a Hungarian emigre, brought in clippings to Sonoma.  The role of the early immigrant Italian families in the development of the wine industry in Napa and Sonoma counties is explained in some detail.  The names read like a roll call from the wine hall of fame: Seghesio, Simi, Passalacqua, Foppiano, Cuneo.  Despite the effects of Phylloxera and the San Francisco earthquake, the domestic industry had raced past imports, going from a ratio of .03:1 gallons-consumed in 1850 to 3.5:1 gallons-consumed in 1896.  The 1910 census showed a total of 145 million grape vines in California.

The author paints a broad-brush picture of the national battle leading up to the institutionalization of Prohibition with the passage of the 18th Amendment.  We learn of the Drys -- the forces in favor of passage -- and their arguments and the counter arguments of the Wets -- the forces arrayed against passage. We learn that, in California, "Prohibition was a confrontation between North and South, a war between Southern California's Presbyterian dominated Protestants, who had hailed from Arkansas and Oklahoma, and the multi-ethnic inhabitants of the Catholic dominated north, many of whom had come from Italy, France, and Spain, where wine was an integral part of life."

The author impresses upon us the deleterious effects of Prohibition on the domestic winemaking industry.  Prohibition had a loophole which allowed for home winemaking -- up to 200 gallons per year without incurring a tax liability -- and this was, initially, a boon for grape growers.  But the lack of relevant transportation infrastructure, as well as shady operators all along the supply chain -- eventually brought this safety net crashing down.  California went from 700 registered wineries at the beginning of Prohibition to 137 at its repeal; and many of the survivors had to resort to bootlegging and other "unsavory" practices in order to survive.  The author recounts these stories in an unvarnished fashion; as she does their encounters with Prohibition Agents and the rampant corruption associated with all aspects of Prohibition.

This book makes for good reading.  The author surrounds the dry historical facts with flowing, gripping descriptions of the anthropology, geography, agriculture, and environment of America's premier wine-growing regions.

Book Review: Liquid Memory

Jonathon Nossiter's Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters, with its treatment of taste, power, and globalization, is a very good cultural anthropology treatise.  Those treatments, plus its treatment of "winespeak", selected wine regions, abdication of wine culture by a number of wine regions, and the psyche and philosophy of some of the leading Burgundian vignerons, makes this one of the best wine books I have ever read.

The author is a filmmaker, probably best known for his film Mondovino, a documentary on the impact of wine globalization.   He has studied Greek language, literature and history; worked as a sommelier; lived in Paris (where his father was stationed as an international correspondent); and is currently living in Brazil, where there is a body of socially conscious, some would say reactionary, literature and film.  All of these influences are reflected in this work.  The author describes the book as an "involuntary guidebook" and a "polemic against all those critics and arbiters who purport to speak with authority and are taking most of the fun and almost all of the culture out of wine these days."  Its purpose, stated in the Introduction, is to "attempt to transmit something of the sensual and intellectual delight that wine has brought me since childhood" and its audience is those who are "skeptical of jargon, defensive snobbery, or any one of power that obstructs the uncovering of one's own taste."

The book is organized along three broad themes.  In the early sections, the author is focused on defining and identifying taste.  For most of its second half, the author is focused on coming up with alternatives to the dreaded winespeak. In the last part of the book, it is Mondovino redux (somewhat) as the author decries the effects of globalization/homgenization on the world's wine regions and the contributions of Michel Rolland and Robert Parker to this "travesty."

In the introductory section of the book, the author engages in a thought-provoking discussion of wine as liquid memory (the title of the book) and as a medium for an evolving transmitter of terroir as it changes in the bottle (In the first chapter the author acknowledges that there are forces arrayed against the notion of terroir. Terroir, he says, is not "a reactionary, unquestioning clinging to tradition."  Instead, it is a "will to progress into the future with a firm rootedness in the past ... a way to counteract the relentless homogenization of certain global forces.").  From this base he continues on to a discussion of taste and power and how important it is for an individual to be the arbiter of his/her own taste. "The moment you abdicate responsibility for your own taste is the moment you voluntarily abdicate your own freedom."

The first two chapters appeared to be as much about film as it was about wine and I found this disconcerting.  The author was liberal in his use of analogies and these analogies were always drawn from the world of film and film making.  Two especially jarring practices were the gratuitous use of "flashback" and imbuing us with the pervasive sense that we were reading "the Making of Mondivino."  At one point the references to Mondovino were so thick and so fast that I wondered whether Mondivino should be a pre-requisite to the book. But he rights the ship and takes us on a journey to some of his favored (and not so favored) restaurants, wine bars, and wine shops in Paris and through gripping, in-depth interactions with Burgundian vignerons Jean-Marc Roulet, Christophe Roumier, and Dominique Lafon.

This is a well-written, thoughtful, and thought-provoking book written with a filmmaker's eye for detail and clearly presents the author as a learned individual possessing excellent breadth as well as depth.  The author is not at all ambivalent about what he thinks is wrong with today's wine culture or who is responsible for the current state of affairs.  He is laudatory of Burgundy, Italy (with the exception of the Super Tuscans), Germany and Austria for not succumbing to the siren song of Parker-influenced, American-market-driven taste and excoriates Spain (especially), Argentina, and Chile for yielding their internal winemaking traditions (in the case of Spain going back centuries) to the Rolland/Parker vision of what taste is.  Regardless of where you stand on the issue, this book is a must-read.

Book Review: In Search of Bacchus

Having built up great respect for George Taber based on his two previous works (Judgement of Paris and To Cork or Not To Cork), I was vey excited when I was informed by a friend that he had written a third book called In Search of Bacchus.  I took immediate steps to obtain a copy.  The book, published by Scribner, and subtitled Wanderings in the Wonderful World of Wine Tourism, is the story of the authors' exploration of "... wine tourism in twelve of the world's most interesting wine regions."

The book is structured as a series of 12 essays, each covering a wine region, with each essay followed by a two- to three-page accounting of a unique experience the author had had while in the region.  For example, the author bungy-jumped while in New Zealand and went to a "Black Tie in the Bush" event while in Margaret River, Australia.  Bookending these essays are a Prologue and a Conclusion.  The book deals with wine and wine tourism in the twelve wine regions but beyond that there is no connective tissue that ties it into a cohesive whole.  The use of an individual named Zimmerman in the Prologue as the jumping-off point for the entire book seems somewhat contrived.

In the Prologue, the author says that he set out to explore 12 of the world's most interesting wine regions but does not indicate why he settled on the number 12 nor did he define interesting.  In the discussion on the Bordeaux region, the author mentions that determining the best wine region in France, for the purposes of the book, was the hardest of the wine region decisions that he had to make.  This seems to indicate that he selected the best wine region in each country for inclusion in the book. If that is so, why is Margaret River the area selecetd for Australia?  Further, why is Georgia covered in the book and Austria, Romania, and Greece not included?  Why was China, the seventh largest producer, and sixth largest consumer, not included as the Last Frontier (the section in which Georgia was covered)?

While the author does not provide any insight into the structure of the book, or the order in which the essays are recounted, the internal structure of the essays are, for the most part, fairly consistent.  The essay generally begins with a historical overview of the wine region and its grape-growing experience and then launches into a discourse of the wine-tourism experiences of selected wineries in the region.  Within this overall framework, the author drops "rice grains" regarding places to stay, eat, drink, and visit.

The book begins with a fascinating discussion of Napa Valley and the prominent role that the late Robert Mondavi played in the development of wine tourism in the valley (the author has the disconcerting habit of referring to it as "the Napa Valley") as well as the battle between grape growers and wineries in Napa to define what was a winery and what activities a winery could undertake.  The outcome of this battle is the main reason that wineries do not, for the most part, have hotels and/or restaurants on their properties.  In the Napa Valley essay the author had particularly harsh words for Darioush ("Darioush Winery is a monument to Khaledi's homeland and its culture, but an insult to the wine culture of the Napa Valley") and Castello di Amoroso ("... might look fine in Tuscany, but stands out in jarring juxtaposition to its surroundings in the Napa Valley") wineries.

After discussions on South Africa (Stellenbosch) and Argentina (Mendoza) , the books begins to become formulaic and that detracts from the telling of the stories. It almost becomes less of a book for immediate consumption and more of a reference which one would consult before going on a trip.  The book continues with Chile (A Colchagua Valley), Australia (Margaret River), New Zealand (Central Otago), Spain (Rioja), Portugal (Douro Valley), France (Bordeaux), Germany (Rheingau and Middle Mosel), and Georgia (Kakheti).

When I first encountered the book, I thought it was going to be a pure travel book covering the author's travel in the regions and reported in the first person.  Such a book would be aimed at the wine tourist and would have the journey and experiences as the connective tissue.  Those first person experiences have instead been relegated to after-thought status at the end of each essay.  It is not clear whether the audience for the book is a tourist, tour operators, or wineries who have not drank the Kool Aid of wine tourism and I think that this lack of laser-like focus on the consumer (of this book) diminishes it slightly.

The historical narratives in the book are excellent and informative and Taber's writing style is easy on the senses. Based on his prior works, I think that Taber's strength is his methodical research (historical in the case of Judgement of Paris; technical in the case of To Cork or Not to Cork) and that skill is in evidence in this book in his historical treatments. Taber takes us up close and personal with some of the leading winemakers in these regions and even allows us to see them in unexpected situations as when Santiago Achaval, the founder of the Achaval-Ferrer winery grabs a guitar and provides the entertainment during an asado in Argentina. In the conclusion he tries, with some success, to impart the lessons learned, some of which could be applied by the adventurous tourist in order to improve the experience. 

During the narrative, I tried to make a note of every wine Taber mentioned.  This soon became tiresome, however, and I allowed my list to lapse.  You can imagine my surprise and pleasure when I got to the Appendix and saw that Taber had compiled that list for me, arranged by region and price in $US.  Sweet. While this book does not approach the prior two in stature, it probably should be in every wine tourist's backpack.