Grapes on the Page
A Look at Three Books About Wine and Winemaking
The world of wine can sometimes be intimidating or seem a bit elusive, like a secret world with layers of facades, hiding behind fancy labels, beneath vast vineyards, and within large barrels. It may also carry pomp and protocol foreign to those who haven’t studied the beverage. But looking past the stuff in your glass will show an intricate industry with an unprecedented amount of devotion, in which the owners have regular, physical contact with the raw materials they use to create their products.
Unfortunately, unless you get a laborious job working in the vineyards and wineries, the industry’s authentic core will remain elusive. Luckily for the rest of us, though, a few great books about the wine region in Santa Barbara’s backyard strip the winemaking process of its veneers, unabashedly capturing its romance and rougher realities.
In One Vintage, viticulturist Chris Jones writes about her days as a vineyard farmer with her husband. The book is short (you can read it in an hour), and — with its large font, short paragraphs, and almost as many photos as there is text — feels a bit like reading a children’s book. Jones’s words are smooth as a lullaby from the start of the book when she shares sentiments after one year’s harvest, to a year later.
