Could cow horns, vortexes, and the words of a prophet named Rudolf Steiner hold the key to producing the most alluring wines in the world--and to saving the planet? InVoodoo Vintnerswine writer Katherine Cole reveals the mysteries of biodynamic winegrowing and explores its practice on Oregon vineyards. Cole's story of biodynamic winegrowing starts on the back of a motorcycle in Persia and ends on a farm where the work is done by draft horses, chickens, and goats. It is a tradition that can be traced from Paleolithic times to the finestdomainesin Burgundy today. At the epicenter of the American biodynamic revolution are the Oregon vintners who believe that this spiritual style of farming results in the truest translations ofterroirand the purest pinot noirs possible. Cole introduces these "voodoo vintners" of Oregon, revealing why the need to farm biodynamically courses through their blood and examining their motivations and rationalizations." Voodoo Vintnersanswers the call of oenophiles everywhere for more information about this "beyond organic" style of farming. Cole's engaging narrative is a must-read for anyone interested in wine, sustainable agriculture, or the food movement.

Naturalness is a hot topic in the wine world. But what exactly is a natural wine? For this book, best-selling wine writer Jamie Goode has teamed up with winemaker and Master of Wine Sam Harrop to explore the wide range of issues surrounding authenticity in wine. Sam Harrop initially trained as a winemaker in New Zealand.

Oregon Viticulture is a comprehensive, easy-to-use guide to successful strategies and methods for commercial vineyards in Oregon that will be extremely valuable both for current winegrape growers and for prospective growers. It is unique in its approach of combining the expertise and experience of university researchers with that of professional grape growers and winemakers -- most chapters were written by at least two authors with different perspectives. Oregon Viticulture is the successor to the popular Oregon Winegrape Growers Guide, with both broader coverage of more topics and greater depth of coverage than the earlier book. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the characteristics of a vineyard site, matching grape varieties to the site, and selecting and adjusting the most appropriate management practices for each unique site. The structure and physiology of grapevines is concisely summarized, and viticulture principles are introduced throughout the book. Standard production practices are described, and separate chapters discuss sustainable viticulture practices and organic grape growing. In addition, Oregon Viticulture addresses important business management topics not usually found in similar books, including economics, marketing and contracts, compliance with government regulations, and labor management. Commercial winegrape growers, students, researchers, serious home viticulturists, and individuals with a strong interest in Northwest wines and the wine industry will find Oregon Viticulture to be a valuable reference and easy-to-use textbook and guide.

In Rosé All Day, wine writer Katherine Cole takes us on an entertaining survey of the history of the wine, moving from the goblets of King Louis XIV to the vineyards of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Cole explains in detail how rosé is created and then tells us where to find the good stuff. The book invites readers to journey from the sunny vineyards of southern France to the idyllic hillsides of Italy and beyond. Organized by region, each chapter includes an overview of the general characteristics of the area’s wine, profiles of exciting producers, and tasting notes, along with specific recommendations for wines to taste. With atmospheric regional descriptions, savvy advice on wines to buy, creative food pairing suggestions, and pretty-in-pink illustrations, Rosé All Day is a colorful, spirited, essential resource that is sure to quench any wine lover’s thirst.

A new and remarkably easy way to choose and enjoy wine.

Food and Wine Pairing: A Sensory Experience provides a series of discussion and exercises ranging from identifying basic wine characteristics, including visual, aroma, taste (acid, sweetness, oak, tannin, body, etc.), palate mapping (acid, sweet, sour, bitter, and tannin), basic food characteristics and anchors of each (sweet, sour, bitter, saltiness, fattiness, body, etc). It presents how these characteristics contrast and complement each other. By helping culinary professionals develop the skills necessary to identifying the key elements in food or wine that will directly impact its matching based on contrast or similarities, they will then be able to predict excellent food and wine pairings.

A detailed study of seventeenth century farming practices and their relevance for today We are today grappling with the consequences of disastrous changes in our farming and food systems. While the problems we face have reached a crisis point, their roots are deep. Even in the seventeenth century, Frances E. Dolan contends, some writers and thinkers voiced their reservations, both moral and environmental, about a philosophy of improvement that rationalized massive changes in land use, farming methods, and food production. Despite these reservations, the seventeenth century was a watershed in the formation of practices that would lead toward the industrialization of agriculture. But it was also a period of robust and inventive experimentation in what we now think of as alternative agriculture. This book approaches the seventeenth century, in its failed proposals and successful ventures, as a resource for imagining the future of agriculture in fruitful ways. It invites both specialists and non-specialists to see and appreciate the period from the ground up. Building on and connecting histories of food and work, literary criticism of the pastoral and georgic, histories of elite and vernacular science, and histories of reading and writing practices, among other areas of inquiry, Digging the Past offers fine-grained case studies of projects heralded as innovations both in the seventeenth century and in our own time: composting and soil amendment, local food, natural wine, and hedgerows. Dolan analyzes the stories seventeenth-century writers told one another in letters, diaries, and notebooks, in huge botanical catalogs and flimsy pamphlets, in plays, poems, and how-to guides, in adages and epics. She digs deeply to assess precisely how and with what effect key terms, figurations, and stories galvanized early modern imaginations and reappear, often unrecognized, on the websites and in the tour scripts of farms and vineyards today.

A raucous and surprising novel filled with wonderful details about wine, Rex Pickett's Sideways is also a thought-provoking and funny book about men, women, and human relationships. The basis for the 2004 comedy-drama road movie of the same name starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. Sideways is the story of two friends-Miles and Jack-going away together for the last time to steep themselves in everything that makes it good to be young and single: pinot, putting, and prowling bars. In the week before Jack plans to marry, the pair heads out from Los Angeles to the Santa Ynez wine country. For Jack, the tasting tour is Seven Days to D-Day, his final stretch of freedom. For Miles--who has divorced his wife, is facing an uncertain career and has lost his passion for living-the trip is a week long opportunity to evaluate his past, his future and himself.

“A myth-busting, history-reclaiming, science-centric, skeptical—and yet loving and respectful—tour of the history, the present, and even the future of wine production.” —Cat Warren, author of What the Dog Knows “This is quite a book and I hope it is read widely throughout the wine world and that it has a huge impact. The fact that current practices have put a halt to evolution for wine grapes, that was news to me. Tasting the Past shocked the hell out of me.” —Kermit Lynch, wine merchant and author of Adventures on the Wine Route Discover the hidden life of wine. After a chance encounter with an obscure Middle Eastern red, journalist Kevin Begos embarks on a ten-year journey to seek the origins of wine. What he unearths is a whole world of forgotten grapes, each with distinctive tastes and aromas, as well as the archaeologists, geneticists, chemists—even a paleobotanist—who are deciphering wine down to molecules of flavor. We meet a young scientist who sets out to decode the DNA of every single wine grape in the world; a researcher who seeks to discover the wines that Caesar and Cleopatra drank; and an academic who has spent decades analyzing wine remains to pinpoint ancient vineyards. Science illuminates wine in ways no critic can, and it has demolished some of the most sacred dogmas of the industry: for example, well-known French grapes aren’t especially noble. We travel with Begos along the original wine routes—starting in the Caucasus Mountains, where wine grapes were first domesticated eight thousand years ago; then down to Israel and across the Mediterranean to Greece, Italy, and France; and finally to America where vintners are just now beginning to make distinctive wines from a new generation of local grapes. Imagine the wine grape version of heirloom vegetables or craft beer, or better yet, taste it: Begos offers readers drinking suggestions that go far beyond the endless bottles of Chardonnay and Merlot found in most stores and restaurants. In this viticultural detective story wine geeks and history lovers alike will discover new tastes and flavors to savor.

Find out more about natural wine—made naturally from organically or biodynamically grown grapes—from leading authority Isabelle Legeron MW. Find out more about natural wine—made naturally from organically or biodynamically grown grapes—from leading authority Isabelle Legeron MW Wine-making has become ever-more unnatural, from the use of blanket crop-spraying in vineyards, to the over-use of sulfites and additives in the cellar, but luckily there is another way, as Master of Wine Isabelle Legeron explains. Isabelle, who campaigns for natural wine around the world and runs the hugely successful RAW wine fairs in New York, London, and Berlin, reveals why the finest, most authentic wines are those made naturally. While currently not regulated by an official definition, natural wines are made from sustainably farmed, organic (or biodynamic) grapes, with nothing removed or added during winemaking, bar at most a dash of sulfites. It is good old-fashioned grape juice fermented into wine—just as nature intended. If you care about what’s in your glass, want to explore unique flavors, or are keen to support small-scale producers, then you need to know more about natural wine, and where to find it. The second edition of this consumer guide to natural wine has been fully updated, and explains the processes involved, introduces you to some of the growers, and suggests over 140 of the best wines for you to try. “A joyous celebration of all that Legeron believes is good and pure in the world of wine and wine production.” TLS Shortlisted for the André Simon Food & Drink Awards 2015. the Fortnum and Mason Food & Drink Awards 2014, and the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers Awards 2015.