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NonfictionMemoirFood & Drink

The Book of Eating

Review by Amy Scribner

In The Book of Eating, longtime New York magazine restaurant critic Adam Platt offers a delicious peek behind the scenes of a storied career.

A diplomat’s son who grew up eating the best dumplings, ramen and dim sum Asia had to offer, Platt clearly loves food. But unlike his famous peers, such as Ruth Reichl, A.J. Liebling and Craig Claiborne, Platt doesn’t take too seriously his role as one of the “serious restaurant critics . . . still operating under the ancient, slightly tattered Kabuki rituals of the trade, with our ironic faux reservation names, our dwindling expense accounts, and our discreet though mostly useless disguises.”

He knows he has the rare luck of being a professional eater, and his love for and slight amazement at his job come across in this riot of a book.

While much of The Book of Eating focuses on Platt’s decades at the magazine, the most mouth-watering chapters focus on his childhood living in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He and his brothers were raised on traditional Asian meals, which he recalls all these years later with delightful clarity: “Communal beef and lamb barbecue buffet tossed with scallions and different sauces by the cooks on a giant, curving, charcoal-heated brazier and then served, with messy ceremony, between fresh-baked sesame seed buns.”

Platt dishes a genteel helping of gossip about the New York restaurant scene, where chefs and restaurant owners are not afraid to speak their minds. The “mercurial king of the New York brasserie, Keith McNally,” did not take kindly to a mediocre review of his new pizzeria, writing in an open letter that Platt was bald, overweight and out-of-touch. (Though it should be noted this was mild compared to what Mario Batali said about Platt, which cannot be repeated here but is the colorful name of a very funny chapter in the book.)

Platt’s greatest insights come when he ponders the evolving role of the restaurant critic. He writes that, “after the social media meteor obliterated the old ways of doing almost everything, those of us who’d managed, by some divine miracle, to survive the waves of magazine shutterings and print media layoffs, not to mention the clickbait food crazes that seemed to sweep over the landscape like biblical plagues every week, were adapting to our new environment the best we could.”

Restaurant critics may have to compete these days with top 10 listicles and filtered Instagram photos of your cousin’s brunch, but Platt delivers a generous, hilarious case for the restaurant critic’s enduring significance.

In The Book of Eating, longtime New York magazine restaurant critic Adam Platt offers a delicious peek behind the scenes of a storied career.

A diplomat’s son who grew up eating the best dumplings, ramen and dim sum Asia had to offer, Platt clearly loves…

NonfictionFood & Drink

The Truffle Underground

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

Murder. Fraud. Poison. These are words typically associated with a suspenseful mystery novel, not an edible fungus. But in his riveting debut, The Truffle Underground, Pacific Standard deputy editor Ryan Jacobs weaves the fascinating scientific and historical backstory of the elusive culinary delicacy known as truffles with the stealthy feel of a diamond heist or spy operation. 

Truffles are one of the most revered wonders of the gastronomic world. Although they’re found all over the globe, it’s the black winter variety, also known as black diamond or black pearl, that is especially rare, lusted after by thieves as much as valuable jewelry. The French countryside is one of their richest places of origin, nestled within the roots of oak and hazelnut trees in the Périgord region. Jacobs’ years covering international crime as an investigative reporter translate perfectly, as he drills down into the inner workings of the truffle underground. 

Jacobs follows the truffle from spore to plate, a journey “fraught with so much biological uncertainty, human competition, and logistical headaches that a single shaving could be understood as a testament to the wonder of human civilization.” His in-depth research not only focuses on the present day but also covers how truffle farming came to be so secretive, exclusive and competitive. It’s an uncertain process that requires specific conditions and timing, made all the more difficult by today’s changing climate. And when truffles do form, their appearance is random, unearthed by specially trained dogs with the keenest of scent glands. 

Truffle thieves are aware of all these factors and run their operations accordingly. Jacobs discusses the intricate details of this corruption, from the young recruits, middlemen and fraudsters to the detectives, law enforcement officials and restaurant owners who badly need this gastronomic gold to stay competitive. The Truffle Underground is an eye-opening tale that brings to light the fact that food items can be just as valuable as any other goods, especially when harvests are uncertain. As fittingly noted by Jacobs, “It’s a medieval undertaking in a smartphone world.”

Truffles are one of the most revered wonders of the gastronomic world. Although they’re found all over the globe, it’s the black winter variety, also known as black diamond or black pearl, that is especially rare, lusted after by thieves as much as valuable jewelry. The French countryside is one of their richest places of origin, nestled within the roots of oak and hazelnut trees in the Périgord region. Jacobs’ years covering international crime as an investigative reporter translate perfectly, as he drills down into the inner workings of the truffle underground. 

NonfictionFood & Drink

Eat Like a Fish

Review by Priscilla Kipp

Author Bren Smith declares, “I have the heart of a fisherman and the soul of a farmer,” and in his memoir, Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer, he proves this to be true over and over again. Starting off on the Canadian island of Newfoundland, he passed through Massachusetts (and through its jails), climbed onto lobster boats, plied his way north again to Alaskan fisheries and finally landed on the Thimble Islands off the New England coast. The salty adolescent who loved the company of fishermen and could swig and swear with the best of them evolved into an expert ocean farmer, pioneering the “climate cuisine” industry and promising an innovative way of feeding our beleaguered planet. Take a new look at what’s for dinner: seaweed.

As Smith scales up from his 20-acre vertical ocean farm, he births an industry that must struggle to avoid the “sharks”—and mistakes—of globalized big business, and he hooks celebrity chefs like Mark Bittman and Rene Redzepi. Kelp noodles soon take center stage on the plates of upscale New York and Las Vegas restaurants, and Google starts serving them in innovative offerings in their employee cafeterias. For those who wonder about ingredients, Smith includes recipes like Shrimp Fra Diavolo with Kelp and Barbecue Kelp and Carrots, along with where to find the goods.

Smith is an articulate, very human ambassador for sustainable, ethical and environmentally beneficial mariculture, weaving his plea for changing the way we eat with solid proof of why it’s so necessary. He includes a global history here as well, spanning coastal cultures from China and Japan to Scotland and Atlantic Canada, all rich with best practices and viable traditions.

Calling for “all hands on deck” to achieve survival as climate change continues to alter our natural resources, Smith urges that we learn to eat what the ocean can grow instead of growing only what we are used to eating. He offers ways to help like cooking and fertilizing with seaweed and shellfish and supporting local “sea trusts.” And GreenWave, the company he helped found, provides an open-source farming manual for building your own kelp hatchery. If this new age of “climate cuisine” needs an introduction, Eat Like a Fish is surely it.

If this new age of “climate cuisine” needs an introduction, Eat Like a Fish is surely it.
NonfictionFood & Drink

Milk!

Review by Alden Mudge

Have you ever tried donkey’s milk? Probably not. But according to Mark Kurlansky’s fact-rich Milk!, donkey’s milk is probably closest in consistency and composition to human breast milk. How cows came to predominate our consumption of milk is just one of the many thumbnail histories Kurlansky packs into his fascinating new book.

India is now the world’s largest milk producer, not just because of the sacred cow but also because Indians process and consume milk from water buffalo. And would you believe that China, long thought to be a country of lactose-intolerant people, is the number three producer of milk?

Only about 40 percent of humans can digest milk as adults. For the rest, Kurlansky explains, after weaning, a gene shuts down the ability to process milk. “In truth, the aberrant condition is being able to drink milk,” he writes. But then there is cheese, which for most humans escapes genetic determinism. There is also butter, yogurt and “everyone’s favorite milk,” ice cream, all described vividly here.

Kurlansky divides his book into three parts. The first is a history of the domestication of milk and its byproducts. That narrative flows down many byways. Did you know that French butter makes better pastry than American butter because it contains more fat and less water? Part two is about health safety issues regarding milk—think pasteurization and refrigeration—as production moved from milkmaids to milk machines. And part three is a contemporary world tour of milk production and its unusual products—butter artists in Tibet, for example, or isolated cheese makers in Greece.

Every chapter of Milk! entrances with I-did-not-know-that facts and observations. The book also includes 126 milk-based recipes that Kurlansky thinks are tastiest. His own childhood favorite? Creamed potato leek soup, or vichyssoise.

Early in the book, Kurlansky says that milk is “the most argued-over food in human history.” A skeptical reader will wonder, but in the end, they will likely be convinced of this statement’s truth.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Have you ever tried donkey’s milk? Probably not. But according to Mark Kurlansky’s fact-rich Milk!, donkey’s milk is probably closest in consistency and composition to human breast milk. How cows came to predominate our consumption of milk is just one of the many thumbnail histories Kurlansky packs into his fascinating new book.

NonfictionHistoryFood & Drink

The man responsible for avocado toast

Review by Sarah McCraw Crow

A century ago, the American diet was bland and boring, limited to basics like wheat and potatoes. But around the turn of the 20th century, a young botanist named David Fairchild began to change all that. “Fairchild’s life is the story of America’s blooming relationship with the world,” writes Daniel Stone, a contributor to National Geographic and author of The Food Explorer, a new biography of Fairchild.

Acting almost as a food spy, Fairchild traveled to every (farmable) continent in search of new crops to introduce to American farmers and eaters. In his early 20s, Fairchild, a Kansan who’d gone to Washington, D.C., to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, lucked into a friendship with the eccentric millionaire Barbour Lathrop. Funded by Lathrop’s fortune, the two traveled to far corners of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America and Europe, braving rough conditions and life-threatening illnesses in their search for edible plants. We can thank Fairchild’s curiosity and persistence for our easy access to avocados, nectarines, kale, mangos, cashews, citruses, dates and other produce, as well as improved industrial crops like soybeans and cotton. Fairchild’s efforts also extended into agricultural diplomacy—he was responsible for Washington, D.C.’s flowering cherry trees, which beautified the city and helped smooth strained Japanese-American relations.

The book retraces Fairchild’s journeys and includes enough cultural and political history to situate the reader in early 20th-century America, though Stone does not looking too closely at the ethics of Fairchild’s work, which sometimes involved stealing plants and seeds. Fairchild’s life and work intersected with some of the era’s biggest leaders and inventors: Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson; the Wright brothers; and Alexander Graham Bell (the story of Fairchild’s courtship and marriage to Bell’s daughter Marian, an energetic sculptor, is charming). Despite occasionally awkward phrasing, The Food Explorer does a wonderful job bringing Fairchild’s story to life and giving this American original some overdue recognition.

A century ago, the American diet was bland and boring, limited to basics like wheat and potatoes. But around the turn of the 20th century, a young botanist named David Fairchild began to change all that. “Fairchild’s life is the story of America’s blooming relationship with the world,” writes Daniel Stone, a contributor to National Geographic and author of The Food Explorer, a new biography of Fairchild.

NonfictionHistoryFood & Drink

A literary and culinary feast

Review by Alice Cary

Everyone’s got a food story, writes culinary historian Laura Shapiro, but most will never be told. Shaprio believes that one’s relationship with food typically defines who we are, and What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories profiles six vastly different women and their appetites: author, poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of William; British chef Rosa Lewis, known as the “Queen of Cooks,” whose champions included King Edward VII; first lady Eleanor Roosevelt; Hitler’s mistress and eventual wife, Eva Braun; British novelist Barbara Pym; and writer and publisher Helen Gurley Brown. Each of these women is fascinating, and Shapiro’s carefully researched, astute writing sheds light on their unique places in history, as well as the culinary trends of their time.

Take, for example, Roosevelt, who proclaimed herself “incapable of enjoying food.” Shapiro asserts that instead, Roosevelt had “an intense relationship with food” all of her life, bringing the home economics movement to the White House while insisting on hiring “the most reviled cook in presidential history,” who served dishes like Shrimp Wiggle—shrimp and canned peas heated in white sauce, on toast.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Hitler’s consort, Braun, regularly sipped champagne while the rest of Europe suffered complete devastation. She adored treats but considered keeping her figure of utmost importance, eventually choosing to kill herself with cyanide rather than by gunshot so she could be a “beautiful corpse.”

British novelist Pym “was not a food writer, but she saw the world as if she were,” leaving behind diaries and 88 notebooks that proved to be a culinary historian’s dream, often including shopping lists and recipes. And while her literary characters sipped vast quantities of Ovaltine and tea, Pym showed in both her books and in her life that “good food can be found anywhere.”

Each of the six essays in Shapiro’s What She Ate is a culinary and historical delight. Feast on them slowly so as not to miss a crumb.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories profiles six vastly different women and their appetites.

NonfictionMemoirFood & Drink

A pioneer in the local food movement

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

In her charming and flavorful memoir, My Organic Life: How a Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today, Nora Pouillon recounts the ingredients of a life spent shaping our attitudes toward the food we cook, how we prepare it and the way we eat.

Pouillon, whose Restaurant Nora in Washington, D.C., was the first restaurant in the United States to become certified organic, comes by her love of fresh, local food honestly. As a child on her grandparents' farm in the Austrian countryside during World War II, she learned that food was precious and that growing and producing food required constant work and care, with no waste. When she attended a French boarding school, she learned a lasting lesson that she carried with her as she established her restaurant: When people share good food with others in relaxed surroundings, they treat mealtime with respect and pay more attention to the food they're eating and to each other.

When she turned 21, Pouillon married her French lover, Pierre, and they eventually settled in Washington, where she encountered the shocks of her first American grocery store—bins filled with meat in plastic containers, out-of-season produce and packaged foods. Reading Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking stirred memories of the fresh food and ingredients of her childhood, and she was soon off on a search to find the freshest local products to prepare and cook for her dinner parties. After a few successful dinners, she began a series of cooking classes, and her reputation and expertise soon led her to start a restaurant at the Tabard Inn in DuPont Circle. Eventually, after personal ups and downs and financial struggles, she opened Restaurant Nora, had a hand in founding the DuPont Circle Farmers' Market, and became one of the first restaurateurs in America to hire local farmers as sources for meat and produce.

Reading this informative and inspiring memoir is like sitting down to a delicious, healthy meal with a good friend.

In her charming and flavorful memoir, My Organic Life: How a Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today, Nora Pouillon recounts the ingredients of a life spent shaping our attitudes toward the food we cook, how we prepare it and the way we eat.
NonfictionTrue CrimeFood & Drink

Uncorking a French mystery

Review by Heather Seggel

One day in January 2010, Aubert de Villaine received a cardboard tube in the mail. Inside was a map of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, his vineyard, more detailed than any map he himself owned. There was also a note threatening to poison his vines unless a one million euro ransom was paid. Despite the detailed map, De Villaine doubted the threat, which turned out to be real; the vines were in fact poisoned. Shadows in the Vineyard is not a conventional true crime story, but then, poisoning the rarest and most expensive wine in the world is not your average crime.

The prime suspect in the ransom plot defies expectation at every turn, executing an intricate, sophisticated plan with virtually no resources save his own two hands; he sent his ransom demand through the regular mail, and retrieved the money alone and on foot.

Author Maximillian Potter spreads the story of the crime out, taking numerous side trips into wine history both in France and California. Readers learn, for example, that during Prohibition, Paul Masson kept the Almaden winery solvent by growing grapes for “medicinal” wine under a legal loophole, predating medical cannabis by more than a century.

Whether you're an avid wine collector or find the notion of terroir terrifying, Shadows in the Vineyard uses this highly unusual story to immerse readers in the pleasures of the grape. Armchair tourists and those who can't pass by a historical crime landmark without taking photos will find it hard to put down.

One day in January 2010, Aubert de Villaine received a cardboard tube in the mail. Inside was a map of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, his vineyard, more detailed than any map he himself owned. There was also a note threatening to poison his vines unless a one million euro ransom was paid. Despite the detailed map, De Villaine doubted the threat, which turned out to be real; the vines were in fact poisoned. Shadows in the Vineyard is not a conventional true crime story, but then, poisoning the rarest and most expensive wine in the world is not your average crime.
NonfictionTravelFood & Drink

A salute to the fabulous food of New Orleans

Review by Eve Zibart

Finally, a book on New Orleans restaurants that feels like summer in the city: gusty, alluring, oppressive, extravagant and intentionally over the top.

Eat Dat New Orleans is a love letter from ex-pat and food junkie Michael Murphy to one of the most complex and addictive cities in the world. While it covers some 250 restaurants, cafes and pop-ups, it’s anything but typical or predictable in tone.

Murphy, who spent 30 years with a variety of New York-based publishing firms, used to go to New Orleans regularly to visit authors, particularly culinary icons Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse. Hooked on the city’s culture, he threw himself and his wife a rockin’ destination wedding in New Orleans and moved there permanently in 2009. He has become, like most converts, the most zealous of disciples, and this highly personal but extensively researched book is like a food blog on steroids.

The restaurant profiles are, as he says, stories rather than critical reviews, as much anecdote as information. Murphy salutes the great waiters as well as chefs and owners. (This, of course, is how Southerners explain things: "You know who her people were . . .") The décor, the regular crowd, even the volume level get as much attention as the menu.

The title, for anyone who has managed to escape the ubiquity of NFL culture in America, is a reference to “Who Dat,” an old minstrel show phrase—something like the “Who’s on first?” of early jazz—that has become most closely associated, especially post-Katrina, with the beloved New Orleans Saints. It has an irresistible and characteristically New Orleans combination of underdog bravado and working class pride. (Not entirely coincidentally, one of the most striking local accents, called “Yat,” has a family resemblance to the famed Brooklyn/Jersey dialect, a reminder of the city’s immigrant and longshoremen builders. Though originally a mid-Westerner, Murphy calls himself a Pat-Yat.)

While Murphy is not shy about admitting a bias, and almost boasts of his lack of critical training, he has assembled a panel of backup experts, nine cookbook authors and journalists, to pick up any pieces and even to disagree with him. In fact, most of the prejudices in Eat Dat are laudable. Murphy acknowledges the tourist traps for their notable histories, and skewers some for what they aren’t anymore. Reluctantly but logically, he has imposed geographical boundaries on his book, sticking mostly to the areas within reach of tourists. However, his lists of “best-ofs” in the back cover a much broader spectrum.

The book was produced on a short schedule, and there are a few flatter, less engaging moments. The black-and-white photos by Rick Olivier, on the other hand, show great affection for the “real people” of New Orleans.

Murphy intends his book for out-of-towners and newcomers. However, a large number of “tourists” are there on convention business, and there are a few aspects of New Orleans dining that it would be nice to see a second edition address: handicapped access (always tricky in such historic structures), places comfortable for solo diners, especially women, lighting levels as well as volume, etc. The great bartenders and cocktail historians of the city, such as Chris McMillian, could get a little more credit. And I insist he mention the amazing collection of Mardi Gras costumes in the free upstairs museum at Arnaud’s Restaurant—air conditioning heaven in August.

Eve Zibart is a former restaurant critic for The Washington Post and the author of 10 books, including The Unofficial Guide to New Orleans.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a behind-the-book essay by Eat Dat New Orleans author Michael Murphy.

Finally, a book on New Orleans restaurants that feels like summer in the city: gusty, alluring, oppressive, extravagant and intentionally over the top. Eat Dat New Orleans is a love letter from ex-pat and food junkie Michael Murphy to one of the most complex and addictive cities in the world.
NonfictionFood & Drink

France’s original food network

Review by Julie Hale

Provence, 1970, Luke Barr’s irresistible new slice of food-culture history, couldn’t have appeared at a more promising moment. Cooking is something of a craze these days, and food is very much in fashion. Perfectly aligned with the times, Provence, 1970 features a cast of cooks, writers and critics with personalities as volatile and opinions as ironclad as those of the slightly unhinged chefs we see on TV today.

The book’s central character is acclaimed food writer M.F.K. Fisher, Barr’s great-aunt. Drawing on Fisher’s journals and letters, Barr has written a skillfully crafted narrative about the remarkable trip Fisher made to southern France at the age of 62 and the great convergence of culinary minds that occurred there.

In December of 1970, Fisher embarked on a holiday tour of Provence and its environs, where she had long before experienced the “first epiphany of taste” that inspired her writing career. As it happened, a few of her fellow foodies were passing the holiday there, too—a group that included the always-genial Julia Child; Simone Beck, Child’s demanding, French-to-the-max cookbook co-author; and beloved chef James Beard. Also on the scene: Richard Olney, a French-cuisine genius and relative newcomer to the food world, who was contemptuous of his colleagues—Child especially—and whose snarky, behind-the-back remarks show just how combative the culinary world, at its upper echelons, could be.

La Pitchoune, Child’s majestic vacation house, served as HQ for the gourmands. There, they cooked, dined, shared gossip and debated America’s evolving culinary culture. Barr’s fluid, elegant recreations of the intimate meals and earnest discussions deliver a sense of each character’s temperament. (Over dinner one night, Fisher, tired of high-toned food talk, raised the topic of American politics. Olney’s response was a yawn.) Barr seamlessly shifts points of view, and the result is a marvelously detailed mosaic of clashing ideas, personalities and attitudes regarding food. He finds a point of focus for the story in Fisher. An eminently likable character whose modesty and introspective nature set her apart from her colleagues, she is the calm, still center of the book.

Provence, 1970 is a narrative that bons vivants will tuck into with relish, but it wasn’t written for epicures alone. You needn’t be a foodie to enjoy Barr’s beautifully written book.

Provence, 1970, Luke Barr’s irresistible new slice of food-culture history, couldn’t have appeared at a more promising moment. Cooking is something of a craze these days, and food is very much in fashion. Perfectly aligned with the times, Provence, 1970 features a cast of cooks,…

Food & Drink

Drinking it all in

Review by bookpagedev

The essays in Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass almost come up to a full bottle, and would have if author Natalie MacLean had only been supplied with a decent editor. When she stays out of the way of her own reporting, either sticking to the third person or playing a modest role, her pieces are quite interesting. Her profile of cult winemaker Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon, for instance, is more informative and funnier than anything in Harding or McInerney; the essay on Champagne neatly twins a history of that great wine with the satisfying fact that it’s a species with famously matriarchal lines. And her explication of the civil war sparked in the wine industry by critics Robert Parker and Jancis Robinson is rounded and objective. Unfortunately, when MacLean goes purely first-person, she gushes. In a piece about having dinner with McInerney, her quivering celebrity-consciousness nearly obscures some quite useful advice to wine novices about creating a cellar.

MacLean is energetic, dogged and willing to embarrass herself for our benefit, just not stylistically. Surely all she needs is a little aging in a good cellar, one hopes.

The essays in Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass almost come up to a full bottle, and would have if author Natalie MacLean had only been supplied with a decent editor. When she stays out of the…
Food & Drink

A flight of essays

Review by bookpagedev

Jay McInerney’s A Hedonist in the Wine Cellar, the second collection of his wine columns from House and Garden, is like a snapshot album of wine experiences, featuring a mix of big-name winemakers, exotic locales and big bosomy wines. (Full disclosure: I’ve shared a couple of rare wine dinners in France with McInerney, but that is the extent of our acquaintance.) McInerney, who describes himself as an enthusiast rather than a critic, writes more of the experience (and the hobnobbing) of big-name wine drinking than of technology. And he has developed a particular style and rhythm attributable in part to the limits of a magazine column that can stale a bit if you read too many in a row. Like a flight of wines, three is about perfect.

McInerney tends to describe wines as often by pop-culture images as by taste, which sometimes works he riffs off a funny comparison of decoding German wine names and diving into Finnegan’s Wake and sometimes comes off as a pure setup (a super-Barbera becomes, inevitably, a Barbarella ). Cahors is butch is a prime McInerney-ism: it’s catchy, it’s irreverent and it’s arresting for a couple of moments, but it doesn’t really impart any information. Still, A Hedonist in the Wine Cellar is fun, especially in small doses, and aimed squarely at the metrosexual/boomer drinkers.

Jay McInerney's A Hedonist in the Wine Cellar, the second collection of his wine columns from House and Garden, is like a snapshot album of wine experiences, featuring a mix of big-name winemakers, exotic locales and big bosomy wines. (Full disclosure: I've shared a couple…
Food & Drink

A Wine Miscellany

Review by bookpagedev

Graham Harding’s A Wine Miscellany: A Jaunt Through the Whimsical World of Wine is the opposite of a coffee table book: It’s a barstool volume, a collection of items concerning historical dates, quotations, trends and bits of trivia that would be fun to pass down a row of compatible consumers. None of the entries is more than two or three paragraphs, and they proceed in a stream-of-consciousness manner susceptible to no, inviting digression.

Among the offerings are recipes for marijuana wine and ypocras (a sort of mulled wine); discussions of the type of wine referred to by Omar Khayyam and Homer; the oldest wines uncovered archaeologically, the oldest vintages drunk and the oldest purchased at auction; celebrities who buy wineries (though Harding overlooks Fess Davy Crockett Parker, one of the pioneers of the Santa Barbara County industry); the Robert Parker culture and backlash; and the invention of the robotongue. He lists the various saints named as patron of winemakers (I’ve always deferred to St. Laurence, whose riposte to his Roman torturers, Turn me over, boys, I’m done on this side, also makes him the saint of comedians and barbecue); the relative cost of wine-producing acreage in various countries; and the family relationships between E. &andamp; J. Gallo, Thunderbird and Two-Buck Chuck. Wine dilettantes will use these tidbits to impress friends; connoisseurs will enjoy testing their knowledge against Harding’s.

Graham Harding's A Wine Miscellany: A Jaunt Through the Whimsical World of Wine is the opposite of a coffee table book: It's a barstool volume, a collection of items concerning historical dates, quotations, trends and bits of trivia that would be fun to pass down…

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