Godforsaken Grapes

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.

While some may wonder, “Does the world really need another flavored vodka?” no one answers this question quite so memorably as spirits writer and raconteur Jason Wilson does in Boozehound. (By the way, the short answer is no.) A unique blend of travelogue, spirits history, and recipe collection, Boozehound explores the origins of what we drink and the often surprising reasons behind our choices. In lieu of odorless, colorless, tasteless spirits, Wilson champions Old World liquors with hard-to-define flavors—a bitter and complex Italian amari, or the ancient, aromatic herbs of Chartreuse, as well as distinctive New World offerings like lively Peruvian pisco. With an eye for adventure, Wilson seeks out visceral experiences at the source of production—visiting fields of spiky agave in Jalisco, entering the heavily and reverently-guarded Jägermeister herb room in Wolfenbüttel, and journeying to the French Alps to determine if mustachioed men in berets really handpick blossoms to make elderflower liqueur. In addition, Boozehound offers more than fifty drink recipes, from three riffs on the Manhattan to cocktail-geek favorites like the Aviation and the Last Word. These recipes are presented alongside a host of opinionated essays that cherish the rare, uncover the obscure, dethrone the overrated, and unravel the mysteries of taste, trends, and terroir. Through his far-flung, intrepid traveling and tasting, Wilson shows us that perhaps nothing else as entwined with the history of human culture is quite as much fun as booze.

“From unraveling the history of the apple to exploring the intricacies of flavor, [Wilson] reveals the love and labor that goes into a timeless beverage.” —Bianca Bosker, New York Times–bestselling author of Cork Dork Cider is the quintessential American beverage. Drank by early settlers and founding fathers, it was ubiquitous and pervasive, but following Prohibition when orchards were destroyed and neglected, cider all but disappeared. In The Cider Revival, Jason Wilson chronicles what is happening now, an extraordinary rebirth that is less than a decade old. Following the seasons through the autumn harvest, winter fermentation, spring bottling, and summer festival and orchard work, Wilson travels around New York and New England, with forays to the Midwest, the West Coast, and Europe. He meets the new heroes of cider: orchardists who are rediscovering long lost apple varieties, cider makers who have the attention to craftsmanship of natural wine makers, and beverage professionals who see cider as poised to explode in popularity. What emerges is a deeply rewarding story, an exploration of cider’s identity and future, and its cultural and environmental significance. A blend of history and travelogue, The Cider Revival is a toast to a complex drink. “Cider is America’s great forgotten beverage. Jason Wilson’s lively, anecdote-filled, passionate paean to what he says should properly be considered ‘apple win’ will go a long way toward giving this immensely varied and complex libation the recognition and appreciation it deserves.” —Colman Andrews, cofounder of Saveur and author of The British Table

"Thoughtfully conceived and very well written, this is essential somm reading."—The Somm Journal "This is the most important wine book of the year, perhaps in many years."—The Seattle Times "Crisply written, impeccably researched, balanced if fundamentally enthusiastic, scholarly but accessible, and full of unexpected details and characters."—The World of Fine Wine No wine category has seen more dramatic growth in recent years than American Rhône–variety wines. Winemakers are devoting more energy, more acreage, and more bottlings to Rhône varieties than ever before. The flagship Rhône red, Syrah, is routinely touted as one of California’s most promising varieties, capable of tremendous adaptability as a vine, wonderfully variable in style, and highly expressive of place. There has never been a better time for American Rhône wine producers. American Rhône is the untold history of the American Rhône wine movement. The popularity of these wines has been hard fought; this is a story of fringe players, unknown varieties, and longshot efforts finding their way to the mainstream. It’s the story of winemakers gathering sufficient strength in numbers to forge a triumph of the obscure and the brash. But, more than this, it is the story of the maturation of the American palate and a new republic of wine lovers whose restless tastes and curiosity led them to Rhône wines just as those wines were reaching a critical mass in the marketplace. Patrick J. Comiskey’s history of the American Rhône wine movement is both a compelling underdog success story and an essential reference for the wine professional.

Find out more about natural wine – made naturally from organically or biodynamically grown grapes – from leading authority Isabelle Legeron MW.

An extensively updated new edition of the classic guide to the wines of the world—and how they are made Wine from Grape to Glass is the essential guidebook for wine lovers who want to understand how their favorite wines are grown, how they are produced, and how best to savor them. The first half of the book is devoted to the process of winemaking and wine appreciation. The mysteries of the vineyard and terroir, the grape harvest, fermentation, and aging are all explained in full, as are the intricacies of serving, tasting, and storing wine. The second half of the book examines the best wines of the world, country by country, in a level of detail that is satisfying without being overwhelming. More than one thousand color illustrations, including numerous maps, make this a visual as well as a textual guide. This fourth edition of Wine from Grape to Glass is revised and updated throughout. It includes new sections on recent trends in winemaking—including rosés and natural wines—and expanded coverage of many winemaking regions, including Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America, China, and Japan.

This book examines controversies in American wine culture and how those controversies intersect with and illuminate current academic and cultural debates about the environment and about interpretation. With a specific focus on the United States of America, the methods that we use to discuss literature and other art are applied to wine-making and wine culture. The book explores the debates about how to evaluate wine and the problems inherent in numerical scoring as well as evaluative tasting notes, whether winemakers can be artists, the discourse in wine culture involving natural wine and biodynamic farming, as well as how people judge what makes a wine great. These interpretative commitments illuminate an underlying metaphysics and allegiance to a culture of reason or feeling. The discussions engage with a broad range of writers and thinkers, such as Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Louis Menand, Michael Pollan, Greg Garrard, John Guillory, Amitov Ghosh, Pierre Bourdieu, and Barbara Herrnstein-Smith. The book draws upon not only a number of texts produced by wine critics, wine writers, literary critics and theorists but also extensive interviews with wine writers and multiple California winemakers. These interviews contribute to a unique reflection on wine and meaning. This book will be of great interest to readers looking to learn more about wine from cultural, literary, and philosophical perspectives.

The year's top food writing, from writers who celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country. Edited by Silvia Killingsworth and renowned chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton. "A year that stopped our food world in its tracks," writes Gabrielle Hamilton in her introduction, reflecting on 2020. The stories in this edition of Best American Food Writing create a stunning portrait of a year that shook the food industry, reminding us of how important restaurants, grocery stores, shelters, and those who work in them are in our lives. From the Sikhs who fed thousands during the pandemic, to the writer who was quarantined with her Michelin-starred chef boyfriend, to the restaurants that served $200-per-person tasting menus to the wealthy as the death toll soared, this superb collection captures the underexposed ills of the industry and the unending power of food to unite us, especially when we need it most. THE BEST AMERICAN FOOD WRITING 2021 INCLUDES - BILL BUFORD - RUBY TANDOH - PRIYA KRISHNA - LIZA MONROY - NAVNEET ALANG - KELSEY MILLER HELEN ROSNER - LIGAYA MISHAN and others