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The Great Wines of America: The Top Forty Vintners, Vineyards, and Vintages
 
 
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The Great Wines of America: The Top Forty Vintners, Vineyards, and Vintages [Paperback]

Paul Lukacs (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Book Description

November 17, 2006

The stories behind America's finest wines, and the people and places that have made them so admired today.

American wine—once an object of ridicule—now holds its own against the world's best. But which wines are America's finest? Who makes them? In The Great Wines of America, Paul Lukacs selects forty wines that have helped elevate American wine to unprecedented heights. Each chapter contains the specific wine's history, the vintner's vision for it, a map of its terroir, and a list of successful vintages.

Not too long ago, American wine was an object of ridicule. When compared to the great growths of Europe, it played in the minor leagues—if it even played the same game. All that has changed. At the start of the twenty-first century, the finest American wines hold their own with the best made anywhere. But which wines are these? And who are the people responsible for them? Because American vineyards are largely devoid of tradition, American vintners have had to make choices unknown to their Old World counterparts. These involve which grapes to grow, where best to plant the vines, and, most important, how to create rather than merely emulate truly distinctive wines. The Great Wines of America tells the story of how those choices, made successfully, have elevated American wine to unprecedented heights of quality and renown.

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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Determining the best of anything is generally an exercise in subjectivity, but here Lukacs makes the field broad enough and defends his choices well enough to lend his selection an air of authority. Lukacs aims not just to pick 40 great wines but also to tell the stories of how these wines arose from the creativity, inspiration, and hard work of vintners who have carefully chosen which varieties of grapes thrive best in their vineyards and which techniques yield the finest products from America's unique soils. Most of these vintages come from California, Oregon, and Washington, but a few hail from the East Coast states. Even the Midwest contributes a red wine from Missouri and a champagne from Michigan. Although these wines are not cheap (one rare artisanal red selling for more than $200 per bottle), there are several for less than $20. But the tales Lukacs tells of the men and women who have dedicated their lives to making great wines in America give the book its real substance. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Mr. Lukacs’s list could easily have resulted in a familiar, ho-hum rendition of greatest hits, but he refuses to settle for that. Instead, he offers a group of wines that is fiercely individual, in which distinctiveness is as important as critical approval. (Eric Asimov - New York Times )

Lukacs, who is rapidly becoming our leading expert on domestic wine, explains with engaging prose how these wines, and the people behind them, have been essential to the coming of age of American wine. (Michael Apstein - Boston Globe )

Product Details

  • Paperback: 448 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 17, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393329410
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393329414
  • Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,267,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging look at key American wineries, May 7, 2006
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Reader (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
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This is a carefully focused look at the best of current American wines and wineries. The subtitle makes it clear that the wineries (and the vintners) share equal billing with the wines. The book is not intended to be read from front to back, but rather to be looked at from time to time, to learn more about a particular grape variety or wine-growing region.

The author has visited each winery, explains how it came into being, and quotes extensively the key persons involved with its success. The reasons for selecting the particular wine become evident as the chapter on it and the winery making it unfolds. The chapters are all about ten pages long, including a page of maps and a page giving the label and notes on vintages to buy and when they will be at their best.

The very long editorial review given above misses some key points. Perhaps the author simply read the book straight through (not what is intended, as noted above). However the chapter on Stone Hill Norton hardly could have been studied very carefully. Norton is the only grape variety in the book that is native to the U.S. It is not an eastern, labrusca, variety. Unless you have tried it (I have) you cannot seriously make an comparison of it with a "lush" cabernet sauvignon. The two grapes simply are different. They each can be truly outstanding, but not identical.

The editorial reviewer does make one accurate point: the chapters indeed ALL are informational. But that is the purpose of the book. The repetition claimed by that reviewer is so that the reader can start with any wine of interest. The variety of approaches used by the author are calibrated to the variety of wineries, some with a long history others very recent, some corporate and others small and family run.

There are many lists of "best" wines. They all give only brief justifications for the selections. This book does much more. It will be rewarding reading for novices and experts, alike.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Saints and The Winemakers, August 12, 2006
Paul Lukacs' lusciously readable volume is a tribute to American wine, and its very existence is a tribute to American wine drinkers. As he observes, it's a book that "[o]nly a generation ago...would have been regarded as a joke." [p.13} Of course, a generation ago was the ego-mad, lightly-smoked seventies when anything seemed posssible. In that generation, a few hundred Americans invested their time and their money in making wines and some of those wines ended up among the world's best.
Lukacs' book consists of forty portraits that are more about winemakers and winegrowers than about the wines themselves.
No matter. Their quixotic vision attached to a modest and very earthy end-a bottle of wine- makes for forty very interesting heroes and heroines. These are the people who invested lives and fortunes in wine at a time when that investment seemed romantic to very few Americans. When they began, they had little reason to believe that great wine was possible and not much reason for thinking that their countrymen would ever care about it if it were.
But interesting or even compelling subjects aren't enough to make a good book, and Lukacs's prose is, like a good wine, well balanced and generous. He wears his extensive knowledge of wine graciously and shares it easily. It's no small part of the book's charm that every chapter is loaded with information about the history and culture of wine so that the book ends up as worth studying as well as browsing. Having written a wine book myself, I appreciate the difficulty of the job. Best of all, the individual chapters are an endorsement for the idea that there is serious purpose in simple pleasures.
The Great Wines of America belongs on the same shelf, and a bit ahead of, Butler's Lives of the Saints. While Butler's saints are often difficult people, and their virtue something of a rebuke to the believing reader, Lukacs's pioneers are people we could imagine being ourselves. When they succeed, we do too. And besides, between saints and winemakers, who would you rather spend your time with?
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
proprietary red wine, strong vintages, secondary flavors, other vintners, winemaking team, vintage variation, purchased grapes, wine boom, many vintners, estate fruit, vinifera varieties, spent yeast, varietal character, vineyard blocks, vinifera wines, viticultural area, purchased fruit, bottle age, vinifera vines, petite sirah, estate vineyard, vineyard sites, secondary notes, resulting wines, vineyard land
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Pinot Noir, Napa Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Dry Creek, Monte Bello, United States, Robert Mondavi, Pinot Gris, Russian River, Walla Walla, Willamette Valley, Cold Creek, Long Island, New York, Quilceda Creek, Chenin Blanc, Harlan Estate, Stone Hill, Santa Barbara, Anderson Valley, San Francisco, Laurel Glen, New World, Sleepy Hollow
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