The Making of a Great Wine: Gaja and Sori San Lorenzo [Paperback]

Edward Steinberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1996

Two fascinating stories in one! The first focuses on a single wine, the 1989 Sori San Lorenzo, following the grapes from vineyard to bottling. Interwoven with this story is the tale of how renowned wine producer Angelo Gaja transformed the obscure Italian wine Barbaresco into one of international celebrity.

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Ecco Pr; 1st Pbk Ed edition (May 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880015055
• ISBN-13: 978-0880015059
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #889,799 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Biography in a bottle, February 17, 2000

By 

Tom Rankin (Rome, Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Making of a Great Wine: Gaja and Sori San Lorenzo (Paperback)

I read Edward Steinberg's The Making of a Great Wine after hearing him speak at a wine seminar here in Rome with Scala Reale Architectural Itineraries. I found his down-to-earth style appealing and the book lived up to my expectations, in fact exceeding them. It is structured like a complex biography of a product, in the end a bottle of 1989 Sori San Lorenzo, but in telling the story touches on all aspects of this wine. One meets the makers and learns about their own history, one learns about the chemistry and biology behind grapes and their fermentation, one learns about land and weather and farming. And of course there is Italy, well-described as the backdrop for this particular wine. The reader is left with a thirst for this, unfortunately rare, vintage.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for wine geeks, August 29, 2011

By 

Nick Stengel (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Making of a Great Wine: Gaja and Sori San Lorenzo (Paperback)

Really an excellent book for all levels of knowledge and interest. Many books on winemaking are mired in theoreticals and what ifs. And that isn't a bad thing if you are trying to learn all you can about every decision point possible. But it can be overwhelming at times. Just wait for my review of "General Viticulture!" In our book for today, however, Edward Steinberg has taken the welcome approach of narrowing his focus to one vineyard and one harvest that would ultimately produce the 1998 Gaja Sori San Lorenzo Barbaresco.

For those who have not tasted Nebbiolo from the Piedmont, go and try it. The color is light, which can deceive a newcomer into thinking the wine is medium or even lightweight. The nose is redolent of rose petals, raspberries, tar, black tea and spices. Tasting will blow you away with a wall of puckering tannin unless you choose a wine that's well aged, the wines are HUGE! They are expensive (good ones start at $50), and cellar for decades. I've never tried the particular wine from Steinberg's book, it goes for between $450 and $600 at auction, but I know and love the type.

Read and you will fall in love with the uniqueness of Piedmont, its grapes, land and producers. Along the way, Steinberg absolutely packs the book with knowledge of enology and viticulture. We learn about Nebbiolo's unfortunate vigor, which bacteria grows where and when, and why Gaja plants straight up and down the hillside instead of across. Esoteric details are really brought to life and his characters are colorful and eager to tell their stories. We visit an oak auction with the guy who provides the staves for Gaja's barrels, his cork producer, many of his vineyard hands, even his chemist.

If you truly want to immerse yourself in a sense of place and time, and you think discussions of yeast strains are interesting, this book is for you.

Nick Stengel[...]