Vintage Books of the Year

It’s not enough that winemakers tempt you with their most dazzling new wines during the holidays. This is also the time of year when publishers release new wine books.

But how many of these books are worth buying? At times, I despair that there is really no new wine book to be written--only old themes to be brought up to date, rehashed and repackaged. So it was with great trepidation that I threw myself into reading almost a dozen new offerings in the last few weeks.

I rely on wine books to be reminded of facts I’ve forgotten and to supply background details for new explorations. I have a library of some 300, some rare but mostly just useful. Of that bounty, about a dozen sit immediately behind me as my basic resources.

Rarely does a new wine book so capture my imagination that it gets added to the first ranks of my reference books. This year, though, I have found three.

The best is a history of wine in America. Paul Lukac’s “American Vintage” (Houghton Mifflin, 2000; $28) is a compelling read for all wine lovers. It tells us of American presidents, rich Loyalists in Ohio and Hungarians in California, and of their struggles to make wine in the New World. That none of them succeeded is less important than the story of their travail.

Unlike most wine books, this one is written as a series of long essays on a variety of topics. Lukac dares to become not just a historian but a storyteller. It is a much more challenging task than simply stringing together a bunch of entries in encyclopedic form (no mean feat in itself, of course), and he has pulled it off.

Another book that caught my attention this year is Bruce Cass’ “Oxford Companion to the Wines of North America” (Oxford University Press, 2000; $45). In this expansive volume, Cass and his contributors write entries on everything: wineries, vineyards, grapes, wine terms.

For example, just on page 152, I find Leelanau Peninsula (Michigan), Lenoir (a grape grown in Texas), Lenz (an important winery on Long Island), Leonetti (arguably the quality leader in Washington state Merlot) and Leon Millot (a French hybrid grape grown in Minnesota and Ontario, Canada), among other entries.

Cass’ essay on California’s Livermore Valley is representative. Other books focus on wine in its current state with only a passing nod to history, but Cass provides the historical background for Livermore’s development as a place, as well as its emergence as a wine-growing region.

In truth, if what you’re looking for is current information about wines and wineries, there are better books than Cass’; Charles Sullivan’s excellent “A Companion to California Wine” (University of California Press, 2000; $39.95) provides more detailed history of our state. But the Oxford book covers the whole North American wine scene like no other.

A third volume worth looking at is Andrea Immer’s “Great Wines Made Simple” (Broadway Books, 2000; $25). At first, I was inclined to put this book at the bottom of the heap. It looks like just another primer, with its pictures of labels and its charts and its little bit of guidance. But when I came back to it, I found that it does a better job than any other introductory wine book in guiding the beginning taster into the intricacies of varietal character, wines by style, a few key locations, a wine lover’s necessary equipment and how to choose it, and wine and food pairings.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention a couple of books which are not new but have remained in print because they are preeminent reference works. The most important is Jancis Robinson’s “The Oxford Companion to Wine” (Getty Center for Education in the Arts, 1999; $65).

I also own several editions of Hugh Johnson’s “The World Atlas of Wine” (Simon & Schuster, 1971; $50). Though the most recent edition was published in 1994--practically an eternity in wine time--every time I go to it I find something that adds to my understanding of wine geography.

Finally, for wine and food pairing ideas, I find I rely most on Sid Goldstein’s “The Wine Lover’s Cookbook” (Chronicle Books, 1999; $22.95).

It may be that the best gift for a wine lover is a special bottle of wine, but I have always liked giving books. They hang around longer.

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Olken publishes the Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine, a monthly newsletter devoted to the critical review of California and West Coast wines. Readers of The Times may obtain a sample copy by sending their name and address to: CGCW, P.O. Box V, Alameda, CA 94501, by calling or faxing, (510) 865-3150 or by e-mailing CGCW@aol.com.