Sip and Read: Exploring Wine Through Books
Whether it's a winemaking encyclopedia, a history of renowned vineyards, or a guide to pairing dishes with the ideal red wine, reading about wine offers the same joys as enjoying your favorite vintage. Each one is full of the unique history, science, and culture that goes into making every single bottle. From expert guides to engaging narratives, these books open doors to tasting, learning, and savoring the world of wine in countless ways.
Take a look into the complex and rich world of wine. Join the sommeliers in the dining rooms and the wine makers in their tasting rooms as you learn about the complexity of making wine, the craft of pairing, and the history of the industry.
Of course, for those looking for a perfect blend, there is a collection of fiction centered around wine. Pair a book from each list to create a robust and well rounded reading selection for all tastes.
Non-Fiction: Essential Wine Guides and Histories
The Oxford Companion to Wine
by Jancis Robinson - Julia Harding
Published in 1994 to worldwide acclaim, the first edition of Jancis Robinson's seminal volume immediately attained legendary status, winning every major wine book award including the Glenfiddich and Julia Child/IACP awards, as well as writer and woman of the year accolades for its editor on both sides of the Atlantic. Combining meticulously-researched fact with refreshing opinion and wit, The Oxford Companion to Wine presents almost 4,000 entries on every wine-related topic imaginable, from regions and grape varieties to the owners, connoisseurs, growers, and tasters in wine through the ages; from viticulture and oenology to the history of wine, from its origins to the present day. More than 180 esteemed contributors (including 58 new to this edition) range from internationally renowned academics to some of the most famous wine writers and wine specialists in the world.
Winner of the 2016 James Beard Award for Beverage, this exhaustively updated fourth edition incorporates the very latest international research to present 300 new entries on topics ranging from additives and wine apps to WSET and Zelen. Over 60 percent of all entries have been revised; and useful lists and statistics are appended, including a unique list of the world's controlled appellations and their permitted grape varieties, as well as vineyard area, wine production and consumption by country.
Illustrated with almost 30 updated maps of every important wine region in the world, many useful charts and diagrams, and 16 stunning colour photographs, this Companion is unlike any other wine book, offering an understanding of wine in all of its wider contexts--notably historical, cultural, and scientific--and serving as a truly companionable point of reference into which any wine-lover can dip and browse.
Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine
by Madeline Puckette - Justin Hammack
The best introductory book on wine to come along in years" (The Washington Post) from the creators of the award-winning Wine Folly website
Red or white? Cabernet or merlot? Light or bold? What to pair with food? Drinking great wine isn't hard, but finding great wine does require a deeper understanding of the fundamentals.
Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine will help you make sense of it all in a unique infographic wine book. Designed by the creators of the Wine Folly website, which has won Wine Blogger of the Year from the International Wine & Spirits Competition, this book combines sleek, modern information design with data visualization and gives readers pragmatic answers to all their wine questions, including:
- Detailed taste profiles of popular and under-the-radar wines.
- A guide to pairing food and wine.
- A wine-region section with detailed maps.
- Practical tips and tricks for serving wine.
- Methods for tasting wine and identifying flavors.
Packed with information and encouragement, Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine will empower your decision-making with practical knowledge and give you confidence at the table.
The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It
by Tilar J Mazzeo
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Haley Bennett, Tom Sturridge, and Sam Riley!
"Narrative history that fizzes with life and feeling." -- Benjamin Wallace, New York Times bestselling author of The Billionaire's Vinegar
The New York Times bestselling biography of the visionary young woman who built a champagne empire, became a legend, and showed the world how to live with style
Veuve Clicquot champagne epitomizes glamour, style, and luxury. In The Widow Clicquot, Tilar J. Mazzeo brings to life--for the first time--the fascinating woman behind the iconic yellow label: Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, who, after her husband's death, defied convention by assuming the reins of the fledgling wine business they had nurtured together. Steering the company through dizzying political and financial reversals, she became one of the world's first great businesswomen and one of the richest women of her time.
As much a fascinating journey through the process of making this temperamental wine as a biography of a uniquely tempered woman, The Widow Clicquot is the captivating true story of a legend and a visionary.
The Wine Dine Dictionary: Good Food and Good Wine: An A-Z of Suggestions for Happy Eating and Drinking
by Victoria Moore
WINNER OF THE FORTNUM & MASON FOOD AND DRINK AWARDS 2018 'Smart, fun, useful - highly recommended' Hugh Johnson, co-author of The World Atlas of Wine 'With apologies to Jamie and Nigella - The Wine Dine Dictionary is going to be my new kitchen bible. It should probably be yours, too' Metro Want to pick the perfect wine for dinner? Wondering what to eat with a special bottle? Let The Wine Dine Dictionary be your guide. Arranged A-Z by food at one end and A-Z by wine at the other, this unique handbook will help you make more informed, more creative, and more delicious choices about what to eat and drink. As one of the country's most popular and influential wine journalists, as well as an expert in the psychology of smell and taste, Victoria Moore doesn't just explain what goes with what, but why and how the combination works, too. Written with her trademark authority, warmth and wit, this is a book to consult and to savour.
The Wine List: Stories and Tasting Notes Behind the World's Most Remarkable Bottles
by Grant Reynolds
A one-of-a-kind exploration of the relationship between culture, politics, history, and wine.
Vintage refers to the year grapes are harvested, and that vintage holds meaning. You can look up the weather in any almanac, but some stories are known only to insiders--until now. In this wine book Grant Reynolds, award-winning sommelier, deciphers these signatures to reveal the impact of marketing and mentorship, technology and trends, and influencers old and new. Beginning in the late eighteenth century with a tale about Thomas Jefferson's secret White House stash and spanning over a quarter of a millennium to social media's effect on chenin blanc's popularity, The Wine List explores both the chemistry and sociology that have made vintages taste a certain way, fetch a certain price, or go extinct altogether. Featuring sidebars on topics like the taste of climate change, mini timelines capturing significant historical moments, and collage-style illustration, these entries solidify the idea that every bottle is a product of a particular moment in time.
A must-read for fans of wine books like Wine Folly or The World Atlas of Wine, The Wine List is a fresh new wine bible perfect for anyone looking for bar cart books or gifts for wine lovers.
The Wine Bible
by Karen MacNeil
It's America's bestselling wine book, now fully revised, updated, and in color!
Beloved and trusted by everyone, from newcomers starting their wine journey to oenophiles, sommeliers, restaurateurs, and industry insiders, The Wine Bible is comprehensive, entertaining, authoritative, beautifully written, and endlessly interesting. Page after page grounds the reader deeply in the fundamentals--vineyards and varietals, climate and terroir--while layering on passionate asides, tips, anecdotes, definitions, illustrations, maps, labels, and over 400 photographs in full-color. Plus this completely updated 3rd edition offers: New chapters on Great Britain, Croatia, Israel. A new section called In the Beginning... Wine in the Ancient World. New fully revised Great Wines section with recommended bottles to try for each country and region. Expanded chapters on France, Italy, Australia, South America, and the U.S. A deeper grape glossary including 400-plus varieties, and an expanded Mastering Wine Section incorporating latest science on taste and smell.
Big Macs & Burgundy: Wine Pairings for the Real World
by Vanessa Price - Adam Laukhuf
A national bestseller, Big Macs & Burgundy offers essential wine pairings for everything from popcorn to veggie burgers to General Tso's Chicken, based on the wildly popular Grub Street column.
As seen on the TODAY Show and CBS This Morning * Named One of the Best Books of the Year by Food & Wine, Saveur, and Town & Country
"If you've ever wondered what wine to pair with some of your favorite foods, like, say, Cheez-Its (I certainly have), check out Big Macs & Burgundy." --Food & Wine
Sancerre and Cheetos go together like milk and cookies. The science behind this unholy alliance is as elemental as acid, fat, salt, and minerals.
Wine pro Vanessa Price explains how to create your own pairings while proving you don't necessarily need fancy foods to unlock the joys of wine.
Chapters include:
- Subsistence Pairings: For the Shoestring Somm, Scrappy Doesn't Have to Mean Crappy
- Southern Comforts: Bluegrass Basics for Coastal Elites
- Extra Value Meals: McDonald's: On Properly Lovin' It
- Fast-Food Fixes: Hair of the Hot Dog
- Wine with Breakfast: The Best Part of Waking Up Is Fermentation in Your Cup
- And more!
Building upon the outsized success of her weekly column in Grub Street, Price offers delightfully bold wine and food pairings alongside hilarious tales from her own unlikely journey as a Kentucky girl making it in the Big Apple and in the wine business.
Using language everyone can understand, she reveals why each dynamic duo is a match made in heaven, serving up memorable takeaways that will help you navigate any wine list or local bottle shop. Charmingly illustrated and bubbling with personality, Big Macs & Burgundy will open your mind to the entirely fun and entirely accessible wine pairings out there waiting to be discovered--and make you do a few spit takes along the way.
Includes Color Illustrations and Photographs
Fiction: Wine-Inspired Stories and Novels
Secretly Yours
by Tessa Bailey
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From Tessa Bailey--#1 New York Times bestselling author, TikTok favorite, and "the Michelangelo of dirty talk" (Entertainment Weekly)--comes a spicy small town rom-com about a grumpy professor and the bubbly neighbor he clashes with at every turn...
Hallie Welch fell hard for Julian Vos at fourteen, after they almost kissed in the dark vineyards of his family's winery. Now the prodigal hottie has returned to Napa Valley, and when Hallie is hired to revamp the gardens on the Vos estate, she wonders if she'll finally get that smooch. But the starchy professor isn't the teenager she remembers and their polar opposite personalities clash spectacularly.
One wine-fueled girls' night later, Hallie can't shake the sense that she did something reckless--and then she remembers the drunken secret admirer letter she left for Julian. Oh shit.
On sabbatical from his ivy league job, Julian plans to write a novel. But having Hallie gardening right outside his window is the ultimate distraction. She's eccentric, chronically late, often literally covered in dirt--and so unbelievably beautiful, he can't focus on anything else. Until he finds an anonymous letter sent by a woman from his past.
Even as Julian wonders about this admirer, he's sucked further into Hallie's orbit. Like the flowers she plants all over town, Hallie is a burst of color in Julian's grayscale life. For a man who irons his socks and runs on tight schedules, her sunny chaotic energy makes zero sense. But there's something so familiar about her... and her very presence is turning his world upside down.
"Tessa Bailey is the queen of rom-coms. Long may she reign!" -- Julie Murphy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Merry Little Meet Cute
Madame Pommery: Creator of Brut Champagne
by Rebecca Rosenberg
Champagne, France, 1860. Madame Pommery, an etiquette teacher and orphanage founder, loses her husband and is forced to support her family. With no experience, the forty-year-old widow decides to make champagne. Her unique vision is to change it from a sweet dessert beverage to a dry, crisp wine to be enjoyed anytime. When champagne makers refuse to teach her their craft, she forges ahead on her own and secretly begins the excavation of champagne caves under the Reims city dump.
Soon after, her son and her entire crew are conscripted to fight the Franco-Prussian war, leaving Madame Pommery alone to struggle with her champagne dreams. After Napoleon and a hundred thousand French troops are captured, the Prussians invaded France, and Prussian General Frederick Franz occupies Madame Pommery's house as his army headquarters. Undaunted, Pommery uses her secret wine caves to hide the Francs-Tireurs, resistance fighters for France, while she plans to build a spectacular castle winery above the caves.
But when her former lover, a Scottish Baron, unexpectedly proposes marriage, Madame Pommery must choose between nobility and her passionate quest for fine champagne and the most beautiful winery in the world.
Based on a true story, Madame Pommery is a heroic novel about a mother and widow who fights the Prussians, the social class system, champagne patriarchs, and champagne tastes to create a champagne legacy.
Lush
by Rochelle Dowden-Lord
A Belletrist Book Club Pick
A TIME, Town & Country, NPR, Marie Claire, and Ms. Magazine Best of the Summer.
"A sumptuous treat of a novel." -Bolu Babalola, author of HONEY AND SPICE
Sweetbitter meets The Bear in this "intoxicating look at the world of wine."(TIME)
Four wine experts, each at a crucial point in their lives, arrive at a French vineyard estate for an unforgettable experience-but not the kind they expected. Avery gave up her hard-won but exploitative sommelier job to come, while wine prodigy Cosmo is trying to disguise that his life is in freefall. The chemistry between the pair is unmistakable, but so are the signs of danger. Millionaire Sonny owns a tacky wine brand and can't help aggravating Cosmo, while caustic magazine writer Maëlys hovers with her pen poised.
It seems at first that these four have little in common except for their love of wine and their belief in its transformative power. But, as the quartet awaits the penultimate night of the trip, when they will taste the only bottle of one of the rarest wines in the world, it becomes clear that each of them grapples with a private crisis. Each projects their ultimate hopes and fears onto the contents of this bottle, a bottle rendered divine by age and scarcity.
Unfolding over several days of indulgence in delicious food and drink, raucous debauchery, and transformative truths that will leave each character changed forever, Lush is a sensuous tour of the wine industry's extreme pleasures and pains, a captivating summer read that, like a fine vintage, will linger long after you've finished turning the pages.
Murder Uncorked
by Maddie Day
Raise a glass to Cece Barton, a widowed single mom and recent L.A. transplant to California wine country, who suddenly finds herself at the center of a murder investigation in this sparkling new mystery series from nationally bestselling author Maddie Day.
As the manager of Vino y Vida Wine Bar in Colinas, Cecelia "Cece" Barton's first Alexander Valley harvest is a whirlwind of activity. Her twin sister, Allie Halstead, who owns a nearby Victorian bed & breakfast, is accustomed to the hustle and bustle of peak tourist season. But Cece barely has a moment to enjoy her new home in between worrying about her estranged college-age daughter, juggling her responsibilities at the bar, and navigating the sticky politics of the local wine association. Just when it seems things can't grow any more intense, Colinas is rocked by a murder within the wine community . . . and Cece is identified as a possible suspect!
With her reputation and her livelihood on the line, Cece has no choice but to open up her own murder investigation. With a murderer on the loose and Cece's sleuthing exposing the valley's bitterest old rivalries, Colinas feels ready to pop! But with Allie's help, Cece is determined to catch the killer and clear her name before everything she's worked so hard for goes down the drain . . .
Dead Letters
by Caite Dolan-Leach
A missing woman leads her twin sister on a twisted scavenger hunt in this clever debut novel with eccentric, dysfunctional characters who will keep you guessing until the end--for readers of Luckiest Girl Alive and The Wife Between Us.
Ava has her reasons for running away to Paris. But when she receives the shocking news that her twin sister, Zelda, is dead, she is forced to return home to her family's failing vineyard in upstate New York. Knowing Zelda's penchant for tricks and deception, Ava is not surprised when she receives her twin's cryptic message from beyond the grave. Following her sister's trail of clues, Ava immerses herself in Zelda's drama and her outlandish circle of friends and lovers, and soon finds herself confronted with dark family legacies and twisted relationships. Is Zelda trying to punish Ava for leaving? Or is she simply trying to write her own ending? Caite Dolan-Leach's debut thriller is a literary scavenger hunt for secrets hidden everywhere from wine country to social media, and buried at the dysfunctional heart of one utterly unforgettable family.
Praise for Dead Letters
"Dolan-Leach writes like Paula Hawkins by way of Curtis Sittenfeld."--Amy Gentry, author of Good as Gone
"A sharp, wrenching tale of the true love only twins know . . . Dolan-Leach nimbly entwines the clever mystery of Agatha Christie, the wit of Dorothy Parker, and the inebriated Gothic of Eugene O'Neill."--Kirkus Reviews
"A smart, dazzling mystery . . . Dolan-Leach revels in toying with both Ava and her audience . . . and the result is captivating."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Draws you in like you are part of the story itself, living and breathing alongside the compelling characters as they uncover the dark secrets of their complicated family."--Wendy Walker, author of All Is Not Forgotten
"Push-pull tension . . . This book is wine-soaked yet lucid, comforting and frightening, asking the big questions about intimacy and loyalty."--Caroline Kepnes, author of You
Eight Hundred Grapes
by Laura Dave
FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME AND THE NIGHT WE LOST HIM
Heralded as "impossible to put down" (Elle), and named a Best Book of the Summer by Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Marie Claire, and Us Weekly, Eight Hundred Grapes is a heartbreaking, funny, and deeply evocative novel about love, marriage, family, wine, and the treacherous terrain in which they all intersect.
There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide... What if your beloved fiancé, he of the crinkly smile and irresistible British accent, had kept a life-changing secret from you? And what if, just a week before your dream wedding, you discovered it?
Georgia Ford, bride-to-be, hops in her car and drives through the night, from Los Angeles to Sonoma, to her safe haven: her family, and the acclaimed family winery. Georgia craves the company of those who know her best, and whom she truly knows. Better yet, it's the eve of the last harvest--the best time of the growing season, and Georgia knows she'll find solace--and distraction--in the familiar rituals. But when Georgia arrives home, nothing is at all familiar. Her parents, her brothers, the family business, are all unrecognizable. It seems her fiancé isn't the only one who's been keeping secrets...
Eight Hundred Grapes is a story about the messy realities of family, the strength (and weaknesses) of romantic love, and the importance of finding a place to call home. "This winning tale will both satisfy on a literary level and encourage oenophiles to pour themselves a glass of a recent vintage to enjoy while reading; it's a tasty treat for wine lovers and teetotalers alike" (Publishers Weekly). You won't be able to put this "addictive" (Us Weekly) novel down.
The French Winemaker's Daughter
by Loretta Ellsworth
Set during World War II, an unforgettable historical novel about love, war, family, and loyalty told in in the voices of two women, generations apart, who find themselves connected by a mysterious and valuable bottle of wine stolen by the Nazis.
1942. Seven-year-old Martine hides in an armoire when the Nazis come to take her father away. Pinned to her dress is a note with her aunt's address in Paris, and in her arms, a bottle of wine she has been instructed to look after if something happened to her papa. When they are finally gone, the terrified young girl drops the bottle and runs to a neighbor, who puts her on a train to Paris.
But when Martine arrives in the city, her aunt is nowhere to be found. Without a place to go, the girl wanders the streets and eventually falls asleep on the doorstep of Hotel Drouot, where Sister Ada finds her and takes her to the abbey, and watches over her.
1990. Charlotte, a commercial airline pilot, attends an auction with her boyfriend Henri at Hotel Drouot, now the oldest auction house in Paris. Successfully bidding on a box of wine saved from the German occupation during the Second World War, Henri gives Charlotte a seemingly inferior bottle he finds inside the box. Cleaning the label, Charlotte makes a shocking discovery that sends her on a quest to find the origins of this unusual--and very valuable--bottle of wine, a quest that will take her back fifty years into the past. . . .
A powerful tale of love, war, and family, The French Winemaker's Daughter is an emotionally resonant tale of two women whose fates are intertwined across time. Loretta Ellsworth's evocative and poignant page-turner will linger in the heart, and make you think about luck, connection, and the meaning of loyalty.
From detailed guides to captivating wine-themed novels, these books offer something for every wine lover. You’ll gain insights into history, culture, and tasting while enjoying engaging stories. Add these titles to your collection and savor both knowledge and narrative.