Books like The Politics of Wine in Britain — 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.  

I loved this book because it reads like a thriller but contains little-known wine history. Dinkelspiel follows the history of one of California’s early wine families, the Hellmans, when the California wine industry was located around Los Angeles.

She also documents a wild scandal of wine fraud and arson in the early twenty-first century by following a precious bottle of nineteenth-century wine from their legendary but forgotten Rancho Cucamonga vineyard. I really admire this book because it balances passion and delight in wine with a frank description of the abuses that have dogged the wine industry for centuries.  

That Night in Paris is the second book in Sandy Barker’s Holiday Romance Series, which is packed with beautifully described holiday destinations and the will-they-won’t-they moments we romance readers love. In That Night in Paris, Cat books an impromptu European coach trip in desperation after she has a few too many wines and sleeps with her flatmate. And what a decision that turns out to be when she bumps into her long-lost teenage crush in Paris.     

Cat’s on my dinner guest list because she’s feisty, fun, and oozes sass, while at the same time having a more vulnerable side that would get the deeper conversations going by dessert. Sometimes strong women who are confident and outspoken (in a good way) can be criticised and labelled negatively, but women like Cat should be applauded for being real. 

I have always wondered whether John Law, the creator of the ill-fated Mississippi System that brought the financial system of France to its knees in 1720, a genius who understood money better than anyone before him, or a deluded fantasist who had learnt just enough to create a monetary weapon of mass destruction?

In his careful and well-researched account, Antoin Murphy leans towards the first interpretation, but he offers enough information to allow the reader to form their own conclusions.

As soon as I met her, I liked the main character, quick-witted, intelligent Alex, who found herself stranded in 1658 even though she is a woman of the 21st century. This is time travel where belief has to be suspended – easily, in this case – where the author combines two timelines into a credible and highly entertaining series of adventures for Alex and Matthew Graham, a 17th-century Scotsman.

Shades of Outlander? The time travel and the political events of the period yes – everything else, no. Miss Belfrage’s characters are very much her (and their!) own creation, her writing is snappy with excellent dialogue. Her historical detail is superb, while the plot itself is intriguing and complex and flows well through its twists and turns. This is the first in the series – a series that improves as it progresses like a fine, maturing wine. One of… show more.

Whilst I’ve enjoyed most of Irvine Welsh’s books, The Acid House (a collection of short stories) is my favourite because it so accurately crystallises a particular culture, place and time.

The stories are set in Edinburgh and its environs during a period when I was living in a village nearby. My familiarity with the settings made The Acid House feel intimate, sometimes unsettlingly so. I love the way each story blends the real and the surreal. There are drugs and booze galore, of course, as well as brutality and revenge, but the author’s savvy wit and incisive dialogue give these tales gravitas, authenticity and philosophical depth.

I laughed when a couple of years ago I witnessed “Scotland’s top cop” (in the spoof police documentary Scot Squad) sum up Irvine Welsh’s written output as “monkey gibberish” – the barely concealed glee with which that phrase was delivered by comedian Jack… show more.

Charles MacLean MBE is without any doubt the number one expert on Scotch whisky in the world. His writings are always a joy to read. Charlie, as he is known by friends and family, has a penchant for history and pouring it in highly entertaining sentences, avoiding facts like figures cluttering up the story line. He has been researching and writing whisky books & articles since 1981, and shares his enthusiasm and knowledge by giving talks and tastings around the world, by leading ‘whisky expeditions’ in Scotland and by presenting training programmes and Masterclasses for whisky companies, clubs and individuals. Without wanting to pay short on his many other books, Scotch Whisky: A liquid history, is a seminal work.

A lady trying to reform a gentleman takes a delightful twist in this story about a perfectly civilized Scotsman who inherits a British title and the family and estates that go along with it, only to find they all expect him to need lessons in etiquette. Nichole Van knows just the right tone to take to make you fall in love with them all.