Languedoc-Roussillon is one of the most exciting areas in the wine world, and this is the first illustrated book to explore the terroir, traditions, winemaking practices, and laws of the region. Written by Paul Strang, a leading authority on the subject, it features maps and photographs of each district’s landscape, plus fact boxes that offer a useful guide to climate, soil, and grape varieties.
Most rational people don’t pay $40 for $20 items. And yet with wine, it happens all the time. Wine can be an expensive hobby. Founder of the popular site ReverseWineSnob,com, Jon Thorsen is an unapologetic frugal wine consumer. He flips wine snobbery on its head by pushing a $20 or less mantra. Reverse Wine Snob is designed to help wine drinkers stop wasting money and get the most satisfaction out of their drinking dollars. It reveals Thorsen’s Ten Tenets of Reverse Wine Snobbery—ten beliefs that eliminate myths about wine—as well as a unique rating system that includes the cost of the bottle so that there is satisfaction in both taste and price. In Jon’s unique system, the more expensive a wine, the better it must taste. Reverse Wine Snob explains: The number one rule all wine drinkers should follow, no matter what the wine snobs say. How to shop for wine at stores like the nation’s #1 wine retailer Costco and Trader Joe’s. The regions and varieties of wine that give the best value. Why the price of a wine has nothing to do with its taste. Why the distribution system in the US is broken which costs you money and limits your wine choices. Tons of Jon’s very favorite wine picks. Jon dapples in every kind of wine from $10 kitchen sink blends to the $20 “Saturday Night Splurge,” so delicious it’s worth twice the price. Reverse Wine Snob brings plain old common sense to the wine industry and encourages wine lovers to explore the world of inexpensive quality wine. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Good Books and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of cookbooks, including books on juicing, grilling, baking, frying, home brewing and winemaking, slow cookers, and cast iron cooking. We’ve been successful with books on gluten-free cooking, vegetarian and vegan cooking, paleo, raw foods, and more. Our list includes French cooking, Swedish cooking, Austrian and German cooking, Cajun cooking, as well as books on jerky, canning and preserving, peanut butter, meatballs, oil and vinegar, bone broth, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
"A hip, new guide to wine for the new generation of wine drinkers, from the sommelier creators of the award-wining site WineFolly.com"--Provided by publisher.
Celebrate the South of France in a winemaker's memoir. Gerard Bertrand, the foremost winemaker of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, tells how, after a career as a professional rugby player, he grew his family's vineyard to an ever-greater level of excellence. Today his award-winning winery offers the full range of the wines of the Languedoc - red, white, rose, varietal, appellation, estate, still, sparkling, and dessert. An avid environmentalist, Bertrand introduced biodynamic farming to his vineyards, and in his search for deeper meaning, he has created quantum wine, an object for meditation, multidimensional and spiritual. His story will fascinate wine lovers and all those interested in making their dreams become reality.
- Uncovers mainland France's most southerly wine region, a rugged hidden gem - Rosemary George's unique approach allows the winemakers to explain the region in their own voice - Makes an ideal companion to Rosemary George's previous wine book, Wines of the Languedoc The epithet 'hidden treasure' may be overused but it can truly be applied to the often-overlooked wine region of Roussillon. Tucked into the southernmost corner of France, Roussillon's reputation was founded on the popularity of its Vins Doux Naturels, which were particularly celebrated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but have declined in popularity since the 1980s. Partly in response to this, over the last 20 years levels of production have shifted in favor of table wines, or vins secs, as they are known locally. Roussillon's winemakers are still fine-tuning their talent for vins secs, but many have already created exciting, original and delicious wines; red, white and pink, as well as orange. In The Wines of Roussillon, Rosemary George MW takes us on a journey through the hilly landscape, revealing the huge variety of soil types and micro climates the region offers and explaining how viticulture is tackled in its rugged, sloping vineyards. Producer profiles make up the major part of the book; while some are continuing a long family tradition, the region has also seen an influx of winemakers from outside Roussillon attracted by the relative affordability of land or the excitement of helping to develop the region's identity. Complete with vintage assessments and thorough appendices, this book is an eye-opening treat for wine lovers keen to make new discoveries.
No one can describe a wine like Karen MacNeil. Comprehensive, entertaining, authoritative, and endlessly interesting, The Wine Bible is a lively course from an expert teacher, grounding the reader deeply in the fundamentals—vine-yards and varietals, climate and terroir, the nine attributes of a wine’s greatness—while layering on tips, informative asides, anecdotes, definitions, photographs, maps, labels, and recommended bottles. Discover how to taste with focus and build a wine-tasting memory. The reason behind Champagne’s bubbles. Italy, the place the ancient Greeks called the land of wine. An oak barrel’s effect on flavor. Sherry, the world’s most misunderstood and underappreciated wine. How to match wine with food—and mood. Plus everything else you need to know to buy, store, serve, and enjoy the world’s most captivating beverage.
How did a region, so long notorious for mere quantity, transform itself into one of the world’s most exciting vineyards?And what does it take to make a great wine – even on a shoestring?In Virgile’s Vineyard, Patrick Moon explores the world of Languedoc wine. Among the cast of characters that Patrick meets during his year of discovery is Virgile, a young local wine-maker who offers to initiate him into the mysteries of each season’s work in the fields and in the cellar. Virgile is passionately committed to perfection, even though his limited means afford him just a handful of hectares and the smallest cellar imaginable.At the other extreme is Manu, Patrick’s dipsomaniac neighbour, a diehard traditionalist producing a private wine-lake of unspeakable rouge. With Manu as his self-appointed guide, Patrick embarks on a quest for the revolution’s leading lights – a succession of lively encounters with growers as diverse as the wines themselves – interwoven with entertaining digressions into the history of the region’s wine-making. Meanwhile the author struggles to deal with his long-neglected French home – an unfamiliar and unpredictable world where the brambles have grown as tall as the olive trees, the water supply has just dried up and there is a ferocious animal under the roof tiles...First published in 2003, Virgile’s Vineyard is now back by popular demand as a new and extended edition. As rich in humour as it is full of fascinating information, this book is a great read for any Francophile or wine-lover.
In this detailed study of the wines of France, one of the world's leading authorities on wine discusses every appellation and explains its character and the best growers. He uses a star system to identify the finest estates. More than 40 specially commissioned maps show the main appellations and wine villages of France.
Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne. The names of these and other French regions bring to mind time-honored winemaking practices. Yet the link between wine and place, in French known as terroir, was not a given. In The Sober Revolution, Joseph Bohling inverts our understanding of French wine history by revealing a modern connection between wine and place, one with profound ties to such diverse and sometimes unlikely issues as alcoholism, drunk driving, regional tourism, Algeria’s independence from French rule, and integration into the European Economic Community. In the 1930s, cheap, mass-produced wines from the Languedoc region of southern France and French Algeria dominated French markets. Artisanal wine producers, worried about the impact of these "inferior" products on the reputation of their wines, created a system of regional appellation labeling to reform the industry in their favor by linking quality to the place of origin. At the same time, the loss of Algeria, once the world’s largest wine exporter, forced the industry to rethink wine production. Over several decades, appellation producers were joined by technocrats, public health activists, tourism boosters, and other dynamic economic actors who blamed cheap industrial wine for hindering efforts to modernize France. Today, scholars, food activists, and wine enthusiasts see the appellation system as a counterweight to globalization and industrial food. But, as The Sober Revolution reveals, French efforts to localize wine and integrate into global markets were not antagonistic but instead mutually dependent. The time-honored winemaking practices that we associate with a pastoral vision of traditional France were in fact a strategy deployed by the wine industry to meet the challenges and opportunities of the post-1945 international economy. France’s luxury wine producers were more market savvy than we realize.
Piedmont is home to the indisputably great wines of Barolo and Barbaresco, made from the Nebbiolo grape variety. It also has a fascinating range of red, white and sparkling wines, nearly all made from local or long-domiciled varieties. The wines of Piemonte evaluates the current state of the Nebbiolo wines and gives a substantial introduction to the region's other vinous treasures, often overlooked by wine lovers. Following chapters on the history, geography, soils and climate of the region, Way turns to the main theme of his book: the relationship between each place and a single grape variety, and how this defines the region's wines. Exploration of this crucial relationship is accompanied by profiles of the producers who grow and interpret the grapes in their location to create their wines, and assessment of the challenges affecting the industry.
