There Is a Bumper Crop of Good Books for Wine Collectors to Harvest

Sometime soon my library of wine books will exceed in size and weight my collection of wine. The latest wave of literary efforts about uvas frumenti is a tsunami of vinous verbiage.

As a certified wine loony with more than 300 cases of wine to my name (not to mention the name of my next of kin), the growth of my bookshelves in recent weeks indicates as much interest in gabbing about wine as in consuming it.

Wine has always provoked lots of people to put quill to parchment and fingers to keyboard, from Horace to Hemingway and the Bible to Buchwald. Wine books abound, with so much already said about this subject that each new publishing season sparks in me a skeptic’s caution along with a wine lover’s curiosity.

In the past, much of the wine literature was a rehash, featuring listings of Cru Beaujolais, the 1855 Classification and a lot of retelling of myths that are apocryphal but which sound good.

Much as I’d like to decry all the new writings about wine as repetitious, a lot of the new stuff is very good, ostensibly because there are more and more intelligent and witty people contributing to the literature.

I recently lavished high praise on Hugh Johnson’s new book “Vintage” (Simon & Schuster, $39.95), the book of the year for wine buffs.

Here are a few other books on wine that are worth considering for yourself or for a dedicated collector. All are recommended.

Red Wine With Fish by David Rosengarten and Joshua Wesson (Simon & Schuster: $19.95, 298 pages) .

News and social commentary magazines are having a field day with the Conventional Wisdom (CW, as Newsweek abbreviates it), and the authors of this groundbreaking book open their text with a charming excursion into the CW, with examples of wines that work with various foods and wines that don’t.

Barbara Ensrud’s 1984 book “Wine With Food” righted some of the wrongs about wine/food pairings. Rosengarten and Wesson, with a sense of joy and wit, leap headlong into the subject with a multilayer approach.

They note that some wines complement the dish they are served with, others offer a contrast, and that choosing a wine to go with a particular main ingredient in a dish is impossible unless all the ingredients in a recipe are known.

So recipes are included, along with a periodic quiz (to see if you’re paying attention) and a concluding 50-page summary of the wines of the world categorized by style and type, by expected flavors and aromas and even vintage recommendations.

This is an energetic and original work written with verve that is worth being in the library of every wine lover who eats now and then.

The Story of Champagne by Nicholas Faith (Facts on File: $21.95, 246 pages) .

Faith first came to my attention with a superb narrative history book on the Bordeaux region called “The Winemasters” (Harper & Row, 1978), in which the socio-political elements of the region were woven almost National Enquirer-like with the wine and the scandals that have been carefully soft-pedaled throughout the centuries.

In this new work, Faith uses a less gossipy style, but with the tone of a romanticist and the precision of a historian he captures the flavor of the Champagne region and discusses the relationships between the people who are its headliners.

There are no in-depth tasting notes (Tom Stevenson’s book “Champagne” is better in this regard). Also, there is only a brief discussion of the production techniques that help make the Serena Sutcliffe book, also called simply “Champagne,” so worthwhile.

In Faith’s compact, readable effort, the true wine lover will find a lot to savor.

Making Sense of Wine by Matt Kramer (William Morrow: $16.95, 207 pages).

The wine writer for the Oregonian in Portland explores some new ground in this book, which is essentially a series of essays on various subjects strung together under the concept that they are wine-related. And much of what Kramer says is interesting and worth chewing on, even if some of it is not particularly new and a few of his “facts” are still on-going debates.

I did, though, agree with a number of his conclusions, such as the importance of place in the consistency of a wine, and one line impressed me:

“Now, numerous wine critics contend that the ‘who’ of wine making is more important than the ‘where’ of wine growing,” which is followed by a backhand slap at Christian Moueix for putting his picture on the label of the expensive Dominus red wine.

A minor criticism of the Kramer book: Some it clearly was written for the dedicated enophile, other parts for the novice. Thus there are portions of it that will bore the true wine lover, and other parts that appear to be so arcane that the novice will wonder what’s what.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the tone of this work, even if a few of the references are a bit of a stretch (in spots he compares wine to boxers, to music and even to Greek myth). It is recommended for those who have gone past the primer stage and own a budding cellar.

California’s Great Cabernets by James Laube (Wine Spectator Press: $29.95, 460 pages).

This is the most controversial wine book of the printing season, and expectedly so. When someone takes a strong stand, ranking the quality of various wines and wineries, it’s like hanging out a target and handing you the bow and arrows.

And there is plenty to question about this book, but there is a lot to praise too.

For one thing, Laube, who lives in the Napa Valley, has done a monumental amount of research and has compiled here, in addition to a plethora of tasting notes, a serious appraisal of Cabernet Sauvignon in California that contains a lot of new material.

Laube’s tasting notes appear to be pretty good, all things considered, though I feel in some cases a lot of scores are too high and a number of them are way too low. There is also a good in-depth look at vintages from 1933 through 1988, at microclimates (though there are some shortcomings here) and a series of valuable appendixes.

But the concept of the book--creating a ranking for Cabernet--is next to impossible. Moreover, the book ignores differences between wines that are either vineyard designated or always “estate bottled” (whatever that term means these days) and those wines that come from 20 or 60 different growers who change from year to year.

And it’s not comprehensive, which is bothersome to those who would like to track such old-line wineries’ Cabernets as Dehlinger, De Loach, Dry Creek, Parducci, Hacienda, Domaine Laurier, Foppiano, Rodney Strong, Grand Cru, Fetzer, David Bruce, Concannon and Pedroncelli.

Laube, asked about these omissions, said that “one of the yardsticks for any evaluation of Cabernet is how the wines age,” and he didn’t feel these properties’ wines had aged well.

Also, omissions of newer wineries such as Folie a Deux, Cain, Clos Pegase, Cosentino, Domaine Michel, and Kistler was based, he said, on not enough experience with them. However, the goal was to update the book every three years and all such wineries will be considered for inclusion in the future.

One final problem I have with the book is that Laube gives a suggested collectibility price, which I feel in many cases is simply too high and doesn’t reflect the actual resale value.

(Moreover, I’m personally irritated when anyone suggests that wine ought to be bought as a commodity to be sold for profit. I feel wine should be bought, aged and enjoyed. Call me Pollyanna. On the other hand, Laube doesn’t recommend this practice; he merely accepts that it happens.)

All in all, however, I like the Laube book and feel it should be in every wine collector’s library, preferably next to the Cabernet section in the wine cellar along with a corkscrew and a glass. It is a marvelous reference work for those truly dedicated to Cabernet and its myriad of stories.

Wines and Vines of California by Gary L. Peters (Star Publishing Co.: $15.95, 184 pages).

This new addition to the vinous literature from a newcomer to wine writing is an excellent example of a dedicated wine lover and geographer taking a personal look into wine.

This book is a winner on two levels. As a basic primer it offers a simplified look at modern wine production techniques without getting too technical, emphasizing the relationship between quality wine and the region in which the grapes grow. It also dissects the various regions of California, specifying which varieties grow best in which regions.

For those just getting into wine, this book is excellent, though the lack of an index makes it less useful as a reference.

Plain Talk About Fine Wine by Justin Meyer (Capra Press: $9.95, 160 pages) .

Any wine writer would have mixed emotions about a wine maker entering the writing field, just as wine makers should be irritated if I left my computer to commercially produce wine.

Yet I have known Justin Meyer for 15 years, since he left the Christian Brothers to operate Franciscan Vineyards and subsequently struck gold on his own with Silver Oak Cellars, and I know him to be one of the brightest and most thoughtful men in the business.

And though I liked this book quite a bit because of some marvelous insights into wine, by and large it is poorly organized and misses the mark as a unified work. Moreover, its “talk” isn’t that plain, because in some areas, Meyer goes into such technical detail I wondered who would care.

This book is intended as an introduction to wine, “to make you as comfortable (with wine) as you are with food.” Alas, a better book to accomplish this is Leon Adams’ superb, “The Commonsense Book of Wine” (McGraw Hill, 1986, $15.95; paperback $9.95).

In fact, I recommend the Plain Talk book for those who have already read Adams’ work and seek more depth because, as previously mentioned, there is a lot of good stuff here.

Beringer, a Napa Valley Legend by Lorin Sorensen, with Fred Beringer (Silverado Publishing Co.: $39.95, 198 pages).

This handsome picture-laden coffee-table book dedicated to one of the oldest wineries in the Napa Valley is not just a public relations man’s dream. It is also a loving look at the growth of the Napa Valley throughout the last century, and because Fred Beringer participated in the project, historic photos from the family album, never before published, are part of this rich tapestry.

Photos are a huge element of this gorgeous book: The first 42 pages are pictures; the text begins on page 43. A marvelous compendium to consider for any wine lover.

A number of other books published within the last year are worth consideration for wine lovers, though the following are rather specialized and may be lost on novices. These are books for the in-depth wine reader.

The Wines of the Graves by Pamela Vandyke Price (Sotheby’s/Wine Appreciation Guild: $45, 388 pages) .

Graves is that district in Bordeaux that produces harder, less accessible red wines than those of some of the other regions of Bordeaux, such as Pauillac and St. Julien. It also makes classicly lean white wines blended from Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc.

It is a district whose wines are not particularly popular on the West Coast, although they are becoming better known and truly dedicated wine lovers collect the classic red wine of Chateau Haut Brion as well as the great, age worthy white wines of Chateau Laville Haut Brion and Haut Brion Blanc.

Because of the limited interest in those wines here, I cannot recommend this book (at its price) as a gift for the general reader. Still, by itself it is a remarkable work and worth a look for the amazing depth of research Price has done.

The text weaves in personal relationships of the people of the region with history and a great deal of knowledge about production. If every region of the wine world were so covered, the wine lover would be rewarded.

Sherry and the Sherry Bodegas by Jan Read (Sotheby/Wine Appreciation Guild: $45, 192 pages).

I adore Sherry, that product of Jerez in Spain that has been imitated but rarely duplicated. I serve it often with soup, as an aperitif, after dinner with and as dessert, and as a soothing before-bed soporific.

And thus I welcome more and more exposition on the subject of the region and the people and the wine and its history. This book has more of all that, written by one of the world’s experts in Sherry.

Alas, the price of this book (though it is graphically and production-wise a handsome effort) appears pretty high for a subject so few people know much about. At $25, it would have been a fine addition to any wine lover’s library.

Chilean Wines by Jan Read (Sotheby/Wine Appreciation Guild: $39.95, 176 pages).

The wines of Chile are beginning to make a huge impact in the United States, and will become even more important in the coming years. A reason for this is the price-quality relationship: you can get $5 Cabernets from Chile right now that are as good as any wines two and three times the price--a reason California wine producers should be wary of price increases.

This book, though expensive, is a good introduction for those interested in the wines of a region that is as yet untapped. Potentially, Chile represents one of the strongest threats to California wine yet seen, and this attractive book explains why.

(As a side note here, at least half a dozen California wineries, recognizing the potential for Chilean wines in the U.S. market, are in negotiations to either make wine in Chile or import Chilean wine made to their specifications.)

The Taste of Wine: The Art and Science of Wine Appreciation by Emile Peynaud (Wine Appreciation Guild: $29.95, 258 pages).

This most scientific approach to wine tasting should be a must for everyone in or entering the wine making or selling field. But for the average wine collector? Probably not.

The reason is that Peynaud, founder of the University of Bordeaux Centre of Oenology, is one of France’s greatest wine makers and he approaches this subject with such hard-nosed precision that the average reader may well be shocked at the almost medical school demands he expects from professional wine tasters.

Maynard Amerine and Edward Roessler of the University of California at Davis did much this same thing in their book, “Wines: Their Sensory Evaluation,” in the 1950s. (A 1983 revision was published by W.H. Freeman.)

Peynaud’s work adds depth to the subject. But it’s not a casual reading book; only for the serious student of wine evaluation.

Wine of the Week: 1986 Sterling Three Palms Vineyard Red ($18.50): Exceptional fruit and richness in this ageworthy wine make it a good candidate to stash in the cellar for another five or 10 years, but this is the first of the Three Palms wines that also shows enough softness and fruit to drink early. A great wine and not badly priced, considering the prices of its competitors.