Vintner’s Art: How Great Wines Are Made
The skills used in the making of wine are directly relevant to the consumer, for the choices made in the vineyard and in the winery are crucial to the quality of the end product. Here, for the first time, is a book that enlightens the wine lover on the “hows” and “whys” of the winemaker’s choices.
Today, winemakers have at their disposal an unprecedented array of opportunities to influence the way their wine will taste: science and technology have granted them creative power undreamt of only twenty years ago. Wine is no longer entirely the product of nature; it is a collaboration, and one in which the winemaker is becoming more and more the dominant partner.
The winemaker’s choices begin in the vineyard with the selection of the grape variety and the way it will be farmed. In the winery, every step poses questions, from crushing the grapes to bottling the wine. The sum total of the decisions taken by the winemaker is the taste of the wine in our glass, and this book explains how this taste is achieved.
Hugh Johnson and James Halliday explore this fast-moving new world, looking at the influence of tradition, the effects of modern technology, and the latest thinking of winemakers from every continent.
For everyone for whom a glass of wine is worth a moment’s reflection, this is an essential book. Beautiful, absorbing, and entertaining, The Vintner’s Art combines the best in wine writing with dramatic modern design, using graphics and superb photography.
Customer Review: Unique
There are four main sources of flavor in wine.
* The grape variety.
* The place where it is grown.
* The way in which it is grown
* The winemaking techniques used.
This valuable book is mostly about the last of these sources,
although there is a brief nod to vineyard management at the
beginning.
You could argue for any of these sources as the primary source
of wine’s flavor and could easily produce pairs of wines that
support your claim. Grape varieties, like apple varieties,
have different flavors. These differences become accentuated
when grape juice ferments into wine and produces or reveals
its unique set of acids, esters, and other flavor chemicals.
Vineyards have their own flavors, too. Apart from obvious
considerations like sun exposure and soil structure, we
know depressingly little about how this works. People who
own the vineyards that produce the best wines often make
a great deal of the unique contribution of their particular
patch of ground, and we can hardly blame them. “Them” in
this case is mostly the French, who use the word “terroir”
to express this influence. Many of these winemakers consider
their mission to be allowing their wine to `”express the
nature of the terroir” Incidentally, all the possible
jokes about “terroirists” have already been made.
The management of grape vines in order to optimize flavor
has been a realm of extreme conservativism until recently.
Peasant farmers are understandably reluctant to undertake
experiments when tradition is recognizeably safe.
Winemaking techniques expand, contract, or radically alter
the taste of wine. Some of these alterations – like
prolonged contact between the freshly crushed juice and
the grape skins or the choice of yeast – are in deliberate
service to the flavors they produce. Others, like filtration
and pasteurization, are driven by economic considerations
and have secondary-and sometimes unfortunate-flavor consequences.
It’s the discussion of this last area-a matter often hinted
at in other publications-that this book does so well. Taking
each of eight categories of wine, the book discusses the
winemaking choices that go into producing the characteristic
taste of that category. So we have chapters on:
Light-bodied Whites
Wooded and Full-bodied Whites
Sparkling
Sweet
Light-bodied Reds
Medium-bodied Reds
Full-bodied Reds
Fortified Wines
There is a brief section on the rôle of barrel storage,
but it’s far from complete.
The description of winemakers’ choices in this book
is clear, extensive and beautifully presented. Their
occasional snide remarks about New World winemaking should
be taken lightly as a bit of Euro-Austro provincialism.
Delightful reading for anyone who wants to know where
all those great tastes come from.
–Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN
9781601640005
Customer Review: Not merely a coffee-table book
I bought this book as a companion volume to my little home winemaking library and am very glad I did. The authors explain and illustrate very clearly the choices that winemakers make in response to, and to complement, what nature gives them: The Grape. Four stars because of the exclusive focus on “great” wines (far too expensive for you and I), which as Johnson freely admits, are as much a product of mystique, fame, and rarity as of winemaking practice. Also, the authors’ constant fawning over everything French at the expense of the rest of the world lessens the book’s value to someone interested in winemaking in California. Still, beautiful photography combined with clear illustrations and excellent, sharp writing make this a must read for the serious winelover interested in more than snobbery, or the amateur winemaker intent on improving his/her closet-full of cab.
