Vineyard: A Year In The Life of California's Wine Country [Hardcover]

Joy Sterling (Author), Andy Katz (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 1998

This volume reveals Joy Sterling and Andy Katz's passion for a horticultural life as well as illuminate the history of wine in California.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's clear from the layout of Vineyard: A Year in the Life of California's Wine Country that the narrative is kept purposefully secondary to Andy Katz's lavish photography. Interspersed between predominant spreads of pastoral lanes, "golden-hour" vistas, and fog-drowned hillsides, Joy Sterling's viticultural story winds its crooked way. Since Sterling serves on the business end of Sonoma county's Iron Horse winery (while also, notably, being married to resident winemaker Forrest Tancer), her take on the vintner's cycle is brief, broad, and anecdotal. Yet the sheer prominence and prevalence of Katz's work properly achieves the romanticism Sterling means to convey. Vineyard serves best on the coffee table rather than in the wine library--we are reminded primarily that a year in the life of California's wine country is, at the very least, gorgeous. --Todd Gehman

From Booklist

Sterling is an owner of a California vineyard and author of two previous books. Here she guides readers through a tour of wine making in the Sonoma and Napa Valleys. She explains the tedious and exacting tasks of pruning and training 700 vines (it's like sculpting, she says) and describes the beauty of the surrounding countryside in the spring. Sterling talks about the philosophy of growth, the fear of fires and crop failure, and the agonizing decision of just when to start harvesting the grapes and aging the wine. It is an absorbing text, but the heart of the book is Andy Katz's 60 stunning color photographs: vineyards under an overcast sky, the surrounding mountains, a field of yellow flowers, and bins piled high with purple grapes. It's the next best thing to being there. George Cohen

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (October 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068483930X
• ISBN-13: 978-0684839301
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,597,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Glass of the House White, Please, May 15, 2000

By 

David Edwards (San Diego ([e-mail])) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vineyard: A Year In The Life of California's Wine Country (Hardcover)

I admit at the outset that I am not a wine-lover. I drink a glass of wine every evening because it is said to be healthful, and I don't sip wine while chewing gum, but, okay, usually I cannot distinguish one wine from another without reading the label. So I could probably write a more informed review of a book about toilet tissue. Still, I don't believe this book is altogether wasted on ignorant readers like me. Ms. Sterling's prose opens an appealing and beautiful window into the California Wine Country, as seen by someone who lives and works on a vineyard there. The reader comes to appreciate, and sympathize with, the labor-intensive nature of wine-making, and the countless and challenging factors of climate, weather, soil, parasites, barrels, farming decisions, and nearly endless intangibles that determine the volume and the quality of the yearly vintage. Even more important and more visible in this book is the love that accompanies the labor: love of the land and its seasons, love of the process, and especially love of the final product, with all its subtleties and nuances.

The text does provide information, but this is by no means a text in oenology. Instead it is a rhapsody on making of fine wines in the singular and fortunate environment of California. The accompanying photographs, which constitute more than half of the book, not only harmonize with the prose but also stand alone as superb examples of photographic art. The photographer (and co-author) is a master of light, skilled at achieving dramatic, evocative, and downright beautiful results even in conditions that are photographically marginal.

Quibbles: there were a few terms that my dictionary did not define; perhaps a short glossary would have been useful. And I wish the figure captions had been placed adjacent to the individual photographs rather than on a list at the back of the book.

In summary, this is essentially an art book, a coffee-table book, that can be enjoyed and savored like the wines it describes. It has certainly made me rethink, if not yet revise, my habit of wine-as-medicine.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Glass of the House White, Please, May 24, 2000

By 

David Edwards (San Diego ([e-mail])) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vineyard: A Year In The Life of California's Wine Country (Hardcover)

I admit at the outset that I am not a wine-lover. I drink a glass of wine every evening because it is said to be healthful, and I don't sip wine while chewing gum, but, okay, usually I cannot distinguish one wine from another without reading the label. So I could probably write a more informed review of a book about toilet tissue. Still, I don't believe this book is altogether wasted on ignorant readers like me. Ms. Sterling's prose opens an appealing and beautiful window into the California Wine Country, as seen by someone who lives and works on a vineyard there. The reader comes to appreciate, and sympathize with, the labor-intensive nature of wine-making, and the countless and challenging factors of climate, weather, soil, parasites, barrels, farming decisions, and nearly endless intangibles that determine the volume and the quality of the yearly vintage. Even more important and more visible in this book is the love that accompanies the labor: love of the land and its seasons, love of the process, and especially love of the final product, with all its subtleties and nuances.

The text does provide information, but this is by no means a text in oenology. Instead it is a rhapsody on making of fine wines in the singular and fortunate environment of California. The accompanying photographs, which constitute more than half of the book, not only harmonize with the prose but also stand alone as superb examples of photographic art. The photographer (and co-author) is a master of light, skilled at achieving dramatic, evocative, and downright beautiful results even in conditions that are photographically marginal.

Quibbles: there were a few terms that my dictionary did not define; perhaps a short glossary would have been useful. And I wish the figure captions had been placed adjacent to the individual photographs rather than on a list at the back of the book.

In summary, this is essentially an art book, a coffee-table book, that can be enjoyed and savored like the wines it describes. It has certainly made me rethink, if not yet revise, my habit of wine-as-medicine.