American Wine

In the same series as Assouline’s original The Impossible Collection of Wine: The 100 Most Exceptional Vintages of the Twentieth Century this addition to the Ultimate Collection envisions a cellar brimming with the most remarkable American wines. The Impossible Collection of Wine: The 100 Most Exceptional and Collectible American Wines highlights wines from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries produced by the finest vineyards. Celebrating vintages from the legendary 1964 Beaulieu Vineyard Georges de Latour to the more recent yet striking 2010 Ultramarine Blanc de Blancs, this collection reflects all the diversity and beauty that American wine has to offer. Author Enrico Bernardo, Best Sommelier of the World 2004, explores the world of endless surprises that wine has to offer, as well as the joy and memories that it can bring to all those who appreciate it. Including wines from Napa to Walla Walla Valley, the selection takes into account rarity, terroir, taste, and historical mystique. Bernardo celebrates the most exquisite vintages, inviting the reader on a journey through the unique history of American wine, from its beginnings with the Founding Fathers to the momentous Judgment of Paris and the distinct Napa Valley culture of today. Bringing readers on a journey from 1955 to 2016, Bernardo curates a list any connoisseur could only dream of.

Over the past three decades, a wine revolution has been taking place across the United States. There are now more than 7,000 American wine producers--up from 440 in 1970. This is the first comprehensive reference on the wines, wineries, and winemakers of America.

The U.S. wine industry is growing rapidly and wine consumption is an increasingly important part of American culture. American Wine Economics is intended for students of economics, wine professionals, and general readers who seek to gain a unified and systematic understanding of the economic organization of the wine trade. The wine industry possesses unique characteristics that make it interesting to study from an economic perspective. This volume delivers up-to-date information about complex attributes of wine; grape growing, wine production, and wine distribution activities; wine firms and consumers; grape and wine markets; and wine globalization. Thornton employs economic principles to explain how grape growers, wine producers, distributors, retailers, and consumers interact and influence the wine market. The volume includes a summary of findings and presents insights from the growing body of studies related to wine economics. Economic concepts, supplemented by numerous examples and anecdotes, are used to gain insight into wine firm behavior and the importance of contractual arrangements in the industry. Thornton also provides a detailed analysis of wine consumer behavior and what studies reveal about the factors that dictate wine-buying decisions.

Praise for Thomas Pinney's "A History of Wine in America" "Exhaustively researched. . ..invaluable to serious scholars of the grape. Fascinating reading." --"San Francisco Chronicle" "Revealing a sharp eye for detail and a dry, low-key wit, Pinney writes in an engaging style and with remarkable clarity." --"Wine Spectator" "Definitive. . ..an important work of historical literature." --"Wine & Spirits" "An indispensable view of. . .a remarkable time." --"Decanter"

The story of how the United States came to dominate fine wine In 1976, the bicentennial year of American Independence, the nation's wine was an international afterthought—stylistically and commercially. Within a generation, however, the United States would stand unquestionably at the world vanguard of wine, reversing centuries of Euro-centrism and dominating the fruit of the vine so thoroughly that Europeans were forced to adopt American words to describe their own creations. In the process, it spawned a wine culture and became intertwined with a kind of aspirational living: American fine wine became a foundational element of gourmet food, reality TV, a myriad of print publications and blogs, expensive vacation packages, gift catalogues, and even the plot of an Oscar-winning movie. Using primary sources, including interviews with the major figures in the rise of American fine wine, the book traces the controversial personalities and seismic events that led to American commercial and stylistic dominance of the world's most celebrated alcoholic beverage—a dominance that shows no signs of waning.

The U.S. wine industry is growing rapidly and wine consumption is an increasingly important part of American culture. American Wine Economics is intended for students of economics, wine professionals, and general readers who seek to gain a unified and systematic understanding of the economic organization of the wine trade. The wine industry possesses unique characteristics that make it interesting to study from an economic perspective. This volume delivers up-to-date information about complex attributes of wine; grape growing, wine production, and wine distribution activities; wine firms and consumers; grape and wine markets; and wine globalization. Thornton employs economic principles to explain how grape growers, wine producers, distributors, retailers, and consumers interact and influence the wine market. The volume includes a summary of findings and presents insights from the growing body of studies related to wine economics. Economic concepts, supplemented by numerous examples and anecdotes, are used to gain insight into wine firm behavior and the importance of contractual arrangements in the industry. Thornton also provides a detailed analysis of wine consumer behavior and what studies reveal about the factors that dictate wine-buying decisions.

Americans learned how to make wine successfully about two hundred years ago, after failing for more than two hundred years. Thomas Pinney takes an engaging approach to the history of American wine by telling its story through the lives of 13 people who played significant roles in building an industry that now extends to every state. While some names—such as Mondavi and Gallo—will be familiar, others are less well known. These include the wealthy Nicholas Longworth, who produced the first popular American wine; the German immigrant George Husmann, who championed the native Norton grape in Missouri and supplied rootstock to save French vineyards from phylloxera; Frank Schoonmaker, who championed the varietal concept over wines with misleading names; and Maynard Amerine, who helped make UC Davis a world-class winemaking school.

This volume collects the most important writings on viticulture by Nicholas Herbemont (1771-1839), who is widely considered the finest practicing winemaker of the early United States. Included are his two major treatises on viticulture, thirty-one other published pieces on vine growing and wine making, and essays that outline his agrarian philosophy. Over the course of his career, Herbemont cultivated more than three hundred varieties of grapes in a garden the size of a city block in Columbia, South Carolina, and in a vineyard at his plantation, Palmyra, just outside the city. Born in France, Herbemont carefully tested the most widely held methods of growing, pruning, processing, and fermentation in use in Europe to see which proved effective in the southern environment. His treatise "Wine Making," first published in the American Farmer in 1833, became for a generation the most widely read and reliable American guide to the art of producing potable vintage. David S. Shields, in his introductory essay, positions Herbemont not only as important to the history of viticulture in America but also as a notable proponent of agricultural reform in the South. Herbemont advocated such practices as crop rotation and soil replenishment and was an outspoken critic of slave-based cotton culture.