Books like Tangled Vines — picked by fans

What could be more French than champagne? In this fascinating book, historian Kolleen Guy shows that, surprisingly, our idea of champagne as part of French national identity was only created and popularised at the turn of the 20th century.

I enjoyed how she details the debates and discussions amongst grape growers, winemakers, and government officials, and shows how champagne’s rise to glory was never guaranteed.  This book has been hugely influential to me because it shows how (and why) to scrutinize the popular history of food and drink by demonstrating how the mystique of champagne was created. This is an academic book, but Guy’s writing is clear and accessible.     

This book sucked me into the world of wine sommeliers and soon had me practicing my spittoon skills in the shower.  I’m a wine historian who’d worked in restaurants, but I knew little about serving fine wine professionally. Bianca Bosker started with even less knowledge and embarked on a successful year-long crash course in wine.

She shadows sommeliers, learning their memory hacks and sharing their tasting tips, writing with empathy and humor. This book made me feel like I was lurking behind a sommelier on the floor of a Michelin-starred restaurant, except it was a lot funnier and had more swearing.  

This is my favorite general wine guide because it is full of pictures with a purpose. Most wine guides are overwhelmingly dense texts, interspersed with photographs of vineyards or still-life arrangements of bottles, glasses, and grapes: beautiful, but the images are illustrations rather than learning tools.

This book is completely different. Author Madeleine Puckette is a wine educator with a graphic design background. She has created infographics and visualizations to break down information about wine. The result is an authoritative wine guide that is visually appealing and accessible, which I find myself dipping in and out of, and also using as a reference tool.  

Ludington’s book is exciting because it disproves pervasive ideas about wine consumption. One of the big assumptions in the history of commodities is that middle-class people want to imitate elites, and that taste trickles down the social ladder.

Ludington shows that the opposite was true 250 years ago in England and Scotland: aristocrats started changing their wine-buying habits to appear more sympathetic to the middling sort. This trickle-up is an eighteenth-century equivalent of affluent hipsters drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon or fashionistas buying $400 jeans.

I’m the type of reader who finishes each sentence thinking yeah, but how do we know that?, so I find Ludington’s generous footnotes and detailed cellar inventories to be deeply satisfying. This is not an easy read, but it’s a thoroughly enriching one.   

An inspiring story of how prejudice in the wine world was brought into focus which started a revolution in the way wines from around the world are viewed. It uncovers the people and places involved in shattering conventional wisdom and demonstrating that exceptional wines can be produced in many countries. So well told is this story, that it inspired the film Bottle Shock.

I write about beer, cider, spirits, and cocktails. In fact, I'll write about almost anything that will get you drunk, plus a few liquids that won't, but I don't write about wine. That's my off-duty drink, the one side of booze I don't need to know about beyond asking myself whether I want more of the wine in my glass.

So you could say that for me all wine is from another galaxy. It can seem too big, the world of wine. Too deep. Too stuffy. This book makes it fun again, makes it fresh and exciting. I almost want to learn about the stuff, despite my best efforts not to!

After reading this, I feel I'd happily follow Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew into any cellar to swill and swig the hours away.

Mike Veseth is a writer and economist. His book offers insight into the economics and business of wine via analysis, anecdotes, and entertainment.

Branded industrial single varietal (single grape type) wines simplify the wine shelf and help wine-lovers to understand wine as they start their wine journey, but they also dumb down wine and destroy part of what makes wine so special: its unique ability to take us to a place, a time, a person.

Mike asks if this trend toward standardisation will kill wine or if there will be a swing back to small lot wines. I found the case studies he explored enlightening. This book sheds new light on the complicated business of wine.

If I had to choose only one wine book to own and use, this would be it. It contains thousands of entries of varying lengths and complexity, all clearly written: do you want to know where the wines of Cadillac come from and what they taste like in fewer than a hundred words? Here it is. If you want to know how climate change is affecting vines and wines around the world, its three big pages will tell you. What is the wine called PX? Would you like to know all about California and its wines? France? China? What is biodynamic agriculture? Who are the most famous wine writers and what did they write about? Almost anything you might want to know about a wine-related subject is in this book. There is nothing else like it.

Every marathoner needs hydration along the race. So it is with a long reading session. Some sessions call for a hot cup of coffee or tea. Some call for cocoa or a sparkling water or carbonated mix. Then there are times when a nice colorful glass of vino fit the occasion. I have always had an interest in chemistry and did quite well at it in school. This book was valuable to me as a newbie vintner. The author is English and he takes the reader through the process while giving tips and recipes and showing the equipment needed to produce your own unique beverage. The book is packed full of information about competitions and where to get supplies and which wines to make during the calendar year. It is an older book and references companies in England, but I would recommend it to anyone who might long to try… show more.

I majored in history and have always been fascinated by anything related to the Second World War and, more recently, wine. When I saw this book on the shelves, it was easy to pick it up. Like a fine bottle of wine between friends, I consumed this book in one sitting.

The more I learn about the ‘war to end all wars,’ the more disturbed my understanding becomes. This wasn’t solely a war over land, or even power, it was economic in origin and to this day was one of the greatest transfers of wealth in our planet’s history. At least in France, a significant portion of that wealth was grown, produced, and stored by the French Vignerons, the winemakers of the most famous wine regions.

Reading of their heroic exploits in Champagne, Bordeaux, and Burgundy to hide, save, and preserve their wines, heritage, and dignity made for a gripping… show more.