Three very different books and a superb magazine are each outstanding Christmas presents for seriously committed wine lovers.
Authentic Wine: toward natural and sustainable winemaking (University of California Press) by Jamie Goode and Sam Harrop MW is an ever-interesting and very well balanced discussion of all of the issues surrounding the hand-made versus refinery-made wines. Whether you are looking at terroir, biodynamics plus sustainability, cultured and wild yeasts, wine faults, the carbon footprint of the wine industry, ‘natural’ as a marketing concept..... It’s all there. I took the book with me on a long plane trip, thinking I would read it briefly before moving on to better things, but found I could not put it down. It does not rely on technical jargon, nor assume a practical knowledge of winemaking, but nor does it talk down to the reader. Thoroughly recommended.
Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Inbooks, hard cover, 272 pages, 55 b/w photographs, $39.95
It took it’s time reaching me, but I finally got my hands on Remington Norman’s Grand Cru, The Great Wines of Burgundy Through the Perspective of its Finest Vineyards. Published by Kyle Cathie Limited, hard cover, 238 pages, it is printed on high quality paper and features great photography throughout, with a new take on vineyard maps in Burgundy using a Google-type approach, and overlying contour lines. The maps alone are worth the $80 RRP. For Burgundy lovers it is an absolute must. You can dip in and dip out, chase a little-known statistic or amble through the discussion of pinot clones and the family tree of the major grape varieties. I knew that pinot noir was an ancient variety (more than 2000 years old), but did not know that it is believed to be a fore-father of dureza which crossed with mondeuse blanc in around 100 AD in the Northern Rhone Valley to produce syrah.
Distributed in Australia by Simon & Schuster.
Then there is the fifth edition of the Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia by Tom Stevenson. This exceptional reference book has 736 densely-packed, small but clear typeface of extraordinary coverage. It is no surprise that it is required reading for the Master of Wine course, Master Sommelier and Cape Master Examinations. It is published by Dorling Kindersley, and was released on 1 November with a UK price of £35. Doubtless Amazon will come to your aid if you are interested. Because this is as much an atlas as it is encylopedia, the contents are arranged by region, which differentiates it from that other master reference book: Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine. Once again, both books are must-haves in any half-serious wine library, and complement each other very well.
Finally, there is the world’s greatest wine magazine: The World of Fine Wine, published quarterly by Quarto Magazines Limited of the UK. Its list of contributors is a Who’s Who, and the subjects covered range from the esoteric to the practical. They range from the ancient past through to the present, and into the future. Content to one side, this is one of the best looking magazines of any genre in the world. It is chiefly distributed in Australia through subscription, the cost $US169 for one year (four issues) or $US300 for two years (eight issues). Visa, Mastercard and Amex are accepted, and you can contact the magazine by email to kazumi.suzuki@finewinemag.com or online at www.finewinemag.com