Customer Reviews

Vintner's Art: How Great Wines Are Made

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While this book will appeal to a broad audience of wine lovers, it will also have a special appeal to a narrower audience of wine makers. I count myself in both categories, so I'll offer two examples of this fine book's appeal: As a wine enthusiast, I discovered that New Zealand and South Africa are making wonderful Sauvignon Blanc. As a winemaker, I learned more about how Bordeaux winemakers derive the classic balance between approachable flavor and aging potential; and how the Australians use barrel fermentation of red wines to tame the assertive characteristics of their Shiraz. This is a MUST read for oenophiles!

James Halliday and Hugh Johnson do a fabulous job of explaining different wine styles and the reasons for the differences.

Terrific photos and diagrams. A good read and an outstanding reference for winemakers and wine lovers. One oddity... they managed to write the book without using the word "zinfandel".

There are four main sources of flavor in wine.
* The grape variety.
* The place where it is grown.
* The way in which it is grown
* The winemaking techniques used.

This valuable book is mostly about the last of these sources,
although there is a brief nod to vineyard management at the
beginning.

You could argue for any of these sources as the primary source
of wine's flavor and could easily produce pairs of wines that
support your claim. Grape varieties, like apple varieties,
have different flavors. These differences become accentuated
when grape juice ferments into wine and produces or reveals
its unique set of acids, esters, and other flavor chemicals.

Vineyards have their own flavors, too. Apart from obvious
considerations like sun exposure and soil structure, we
know depressingly little about how this works. People who
own the vineyards that produce the best wines often make
a great deal of the unique contribution of their particular
patch of ground, and we can hardly blame them. "Them" in
this case is mostly the French, who use the word "terroir"
to express this influence. Many of these winemakers consider
their mission to be allowing their wine to `"express the
nature of the terroir" Incidentally, all the possible
jokes about "terroirists" have already been made.

The management of grape vines in order to optimize flavor
has been a realm of extreme conservativism until recently.
Peasant farmers are understandably reluctant to undertake
experiments when tradition is recognizeably safe.

Winemaking techniques expand, contract, or radically alter
the taste of wine. Some of these alterations - like
prolonged contact between the freshly crushed juice and
the grape skins or the choice of yeast - are in deliberate
service to the flavors they produce. Others, like filtration
and pasteurization, are driven by economic considerations
and have secondary-and sometimes unfortunate-flavor consequences.

It's the discussion of this last area-a matter often hinted
at in other publications-that this book does so well. Taking
each of eight categories of wine, the book discusses the
winemaking choices that go into producing the characteristic
taste of that category. So we have chapters on:

Light-bodied Whites
Wooded and Full-bodied Whites
Sparkling
Sweet
Light-bodied Reds
Medium-bodied Reds
Full-bodied Reds
Fortified Wines

There is a brief section on the rôle of barrel storage,
but it's far from complete.

The description of winemakers' choices in this book
is clear, extensive and beautifully presented. Their
occasional snide remarks about New World winemaking should
be taken lightly as a bit of Euro-Austro provincialism.

Delightful reading for anyone who wants to know where
all those great tastes come from.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN
9781601640005

Winemaking books come in three flavors. For beginners, some books present scores of 'home' recipies including fruits, veggies, meads, beers, &c. At the other extreme are advanced textbooks for enology courses. And in the middle are a few intermediate books that focus on simple wines, but without hinting all the vintner's options.

Johnson and Halliday assume a basic knowledge of making and tasting wine and proceed to discuss all the options open to the winemaker. Simple charts depicting sequences of events are unique to this book and quite interesting.

I still can't put it down. For a winemaker its a wealth of ideas and possibilities.

This is a coffee-table book, but a very good one indeed, in largish format with glossy paper, excellent color photography, and Johnson's workmanlike prose as he interviews some of the greatest wine makers around the world

Found this book thoroughly delightful. A must for anyone interested in wines. Easy to read. Gives complete explanations about each wine type. Beautiful pictures, too. Keep it on my coffee table and refer to it regularly.

I bought this book as a companion volume to my little home winemaking library and am very glad I did. The authors explain and illustrate very clearly the choices that winemakers make in response to, and to complement, what nature gives them: The Grape. Four stars because of the exclusive focus on "great" wines (far too expensive for you and I), which as Johnson freely admits, are as much a product of mystique, fame, and rarity as of winemaking practice. Also, the authors' constant fawning over everything French at the expense of the rest of the world lessens the book's value to someone interested in winemaking in California. Still, beautiful photography combined with clear illustrations and excellent, sharp writing make this a must read for the serious winelover interested in more than snobbery, or the amateur winemaker intent on improving his/her closet-full of cab.