Customer Reviews

Bottled Poetry: Napa Winemaking from Prohibition to the Modern Era

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I bought this book about a year or so ago and for some reason couldn't get motivated to read it. However, once I finally picked it up and started reading, I was quickly hooked and blew through it in a day or two. For anyone seriously interested in American wine and its history, this is a fascinating and highly insightful overview of Napa Valley wine from the end of Prohibition until the 1980's, by which time Napa was the premier name in American wine.

I am pretty familiar with the general history of American wine and have read a fair amount about California wine. Nevertheless, it was fascinating to learn how winemakers and marketers evolved from the truly awful Californian wine at the end of Prohibition into producing good wines people would buy and enjoy drinking. Its focus is heavily on those companies that drove the initial success of Californian wine post Prohibition - Beringer, Beaulier, Charles, Krug, Christian Brothers, and Inglenook - and it concludes with a postscript, written in 1996, that updates the reader on the ultimate fate and status of those companies.

I highly recommend this book for the insights it provides into the forces that shaped an industry and led wineries from the mass selling of bulk wines of plonk character into the production of bottled wines of premium quality. The author does an exceptional job of detailing the re-emergence of the wine business in America, including the cultural and business forces that drove both the eventual emergence of quality wine and the making of Napa's premier image. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in wine, as well as for students of both history and business; it includes great insights into how the successful companies marketed and promoted their wines to achieve their success.

You'll find it an enjoyable and interesting read. I rate it 4.5

Mark Vincent

You might want to read this fine history as a part of a course of studies in viticulture or enology. It will complete your understanding of how we got to where we are today in winemaking, especially in the heart of California. For those wine enthusiasts interested in the rich history of winemaking and enjoy a good story, this volume goes down well and has a fine finish!