After reading this intriguing book, a glass of wine will be more than hints of blackberries or truffles on the palate. Written by the author of the popular, award-winning website DrVino.com, "Wine Politics" exposes a little-known but extremely influential aspect of the wine business - the politics behind it. Tyler Colman systematically explains how politics affects what we can buy, how much it costs, how it tastes, what appears on labels, and more. He offers an insightful comparative view of wine-making in Napa and Bordeaux, tracing the different paths American and French wines take as they travel from vineyard to dining room table. Colman also explores globalization in the wine business and illuminates the role of behind-the-scenes players such as governments, distributors, and prominent critics who wield enormous clout. Throughout, "Wine Politics" reveals just how deeply politics matters - right down to the taste of the wine in your glass tonight.

Featuring more than two hundred in-depth winery profiles, this definitive guide is the best single source of information on world-renowned pinot noirs from California and Oregon. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of a grape variety considered by many to produce the ultimate food wine, John Winthrop Haeger offers this expanded, updated companion volume to his award-winning "North American Pinot Noir. "Here, with three times the number of winery profiles, he focuses exclusively on what he calls the Pacific Pinot Zone, stretching from the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon to Santa Barbara in California and extending up to thirty miles inland. An introductory essay provides an indispensable view of pinot noir in the United States--including the dramatic effect that the movie "Sideways "has had on its sales and production.
"Pacific Pinot Noir" features:
* Detailed descriptive tasting notes and selected vertical tastings
* At-a-glance graphics conveying information on tasting rooms, prices, and production for each winery
* Regional maps showing key viticultural areas
* Contact information for each winery

A brand new wine buyer’s guide will be launched this month, a guide that classifies South Africa’s top reds, whites, rosés, bubblies, dessert wines and ports, unique in featuring those cellars with the best track records and pin-pointing the top wine routes on the basis of reviews by the world’s top wine judges. From MapStudio, a leader as regards maps and travel publications both in print and online, My WineRoute cuts to the chase like no SA wine guide has done before. The book showcases the country’s very best wine producers, with illustrated profiles including information about the owners and the winemakers, the farms’ history, the wines that the cellars are most famous for as well as the business hours, wine tasting fees, contact information, where they are in the winelands, plus details of where to eat and where to stay at these leading cellars, in amongst the vines. What makes My WineRoute extra special are the detailed maps pin-pointing the location of every cellar, important landmarks and places of interest. The cartography spans all of the main wine regions, districts and wards and the maps are such that you can plan your trip according to whatever your preferences might be – scenic drives, routes according to certain wine types or varieties, day-trip itineraries including lunch venues or where to go when time is short. My WineRoute also includes recommendations in terms of the best restaurants, B&Bs, guesthouses and hotels, the markets and picnic spots, galleries and museums – those in the countryside, on the farms. Moreover, the guide’s event calendar is useful should you want to plan a trip around one of the shows or festivals in the Cape Winelands.

California is home to more than 700 wineries, and California's premier wines are recognized throughout the world. This is a comprehensive guide which traces the Golden State's wine industry from its mission period and gold rush origins, down to the planting and vintage statistics of the year before publication. All aspects of wine are included, and wine production from vine propagation to bottling is described in straightforward language. The book includes entries for 750 wineries, both historical and contemporary, more than 100 wine grape varieties from Aleatico to Zinfandel, and wine types from claret to vermouth. Each entry is given a historical context.

California's Napa Valley is one of the world's premier wine regions today, but this has not always been true. James T. Lapsley's entertaining history explains how a collective vision of excellence among winemakers and a keen sense of promotion transformed the region and its wines following the repeal of Prohibition. Focusing on the formative years of Napa's fine winemaking, 1934 to 1967, Lapsley concludes with a chapter on the wine boom of the 1970s, placing it in a social context and explaining the role of Napa vineyards in the beverage's growing popularity. Names familiar to wine drinkers appear throughout these pages-Beaulieu, Beringer, Charles Krug, Christian Brothers, Inglenook, Louis Martini-and the colorful stories behind the names give this book a personal dimension. As strong-willed, competitive winemakers found ways to work cooperatively, both in sharing knowledge and technology and in promoting their region, the result was an unprecedented improvement in wine quality that brought with it a new reputation for the Napa Valley. In The Silverado Squatters, Robert Louis Stevenson refers to wine as "bottled poetry," and although Stevenson's reference was to the elite vineyards of France, his words are appropriate for Napa wines today. Their success, as Lapsley makes clear, is due to much more than the beneficence of sun and soil. Craft, vision, and determination have played a part too, and for that, wine drinkers the world over are grateful. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of World War II, wine merchant, gentleman soldier and cricketer Ian Maxwell Campbell casts an affectionate and occasionally wistful look back at the Golden Age of wine, when Bordeaux was affordable, Burgundy's finest vintages tended towards cannibalism and other wines could be... well, surprisingly attractive. Among the tales of convivial drinking and anecdotes involving Winston Churchill and WG Grace, the author paints a vivid picture of a pre-war (and pre-phylloxera) wine world whose horizons were about to expand beyond all imagining. Wayward Tendrils of the Vine, though, is much more than a collection of reminiscences. As Neal Martin points out in his Introduction: "The title alone is a perfect allegory for how we learn about wine, how knowledge grows organically over time, never knowing what the next bottle will teach us, how it might alter preconceptions or where it might lead." The Classic Editions breathe new life into some of the finest wine-related titles written in the English language over the last 150 years. Although these books are very much products of their time - a time when the world of fine wine was confined mostly to the frontiers of France and the Iberian Peninsula and a First Growth Bordeaux or Grand Cru Burgundy wouldn't be beyond the average purse - together they recapture a world of convivial, enthusiastic amateurs and larger-than-life characters whose love of fine vintages mirrored that of life itself.