The Vineyard at the End of the World: Maverick Winemakers and the Rebirth of Malbec

Author: Ian Mount
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393080196
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Book Description
"The improbable triumph of the humble Malbec—the Seabiscuit of grapes." —Benjamin Wallace, author of The Billionaire's Vinegar For generations, Argentine wine was famously bad—oxidized, unpalatable, and often mixed with a low-class French grape called Malbec. But then in 2001, a Cabernet Sauvignon / Malbec blend beat all contenders in a blind taste test featuring Napa and Bordeaux’s finest. Today, Argentina and its signature wine are on the tip of every smart traveler’s tongue. How did this happen? The Vineyard at the End of the World tells the fascinating, four-hundred-year history of how a wine mecca arose in the high Andean desert. Profiling the outlandish figures who fueled the Malbec revolution—including celebrity enologist Michel Rolland, acclaimed American winemaker Paul Hobbs, and the Mondavi-esque Catena family—Ian Mount describes in colorful detail the nefarious scams, brilliant business innovations, and backroom politics that put Malbec on the map.

Shadows in the Vineyard

Author: Maximillian Potter
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 1455516082
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
Journalist Maximillian Potter uncovers a fascinating plot to destroy the vines of La Romance-Conti, Burgundy's finest and most expensive wine. In January 2010, Aubert de Villaine, the famed proprietor of the Domaine de la Romance-Conti, the tiny, storied vineyard that produces the most expensive, exquisite wines in the world, received an anonymous note threatening the destruction of his priceless vines by poison—a crime that in the world of high-end wine is akin to murder—unless he paid a one million euro ransom. Villaine believed it to be a sick joke, but that proved a fatal miscalculation and the crime shocked this fabled region of France. The sinister story that Vanity Fair journalist Maximillian Potter uncovered would lead to a sting operation by some of France's top detectives, the primary suspect's suicide, and a dramatic investigation. This botanical crime threatened to destroy the fiercely traditional culture surrounding the world's greatest wine. Shadows in the Vineyard takes us deep into a captivating world full of fascinating characters, small-town French politics, an unforgettable narrative, and a local culture defined by the twinned veins of excess and vitality and the deep reverent attention to the land that runs through it.

Gold in the Vineyards

Author: Laura Catena
Publisher: Catapulta Editores
ISBN: 9789876376662
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Winner of the 2020 Gourmand Award for Best in the World Wine History Book, Dr. Laura Catena's Gold in the Vineyards is an illustrated book about the family struggles, triumphs and vineyard secrets behind twelve of the most famous wines and vineyards in the world.

Dead in Vineyard Sand

Author: Philip R. Craig
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743270444
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
When the body of a radical environmentalist is discovered in a golf course sandtrap, J. W. Jackson finds himself named a prime suspect and sets about identifying the killer from among a horde of developers, golfers, and other potential culprits.

End Times

Author: Bryan Walsh
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316449601
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
In this history of extinction and existential risk, a Newsweek and Bloomberg popular science and investigative journalist examines our most dangerous mistakes -- and explores how we can protect and future-proof our civilization. End Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable -- and inevitable -- end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race. In End Times, Walsh examines threats that emerge from nature and those of our own making: asteroids, supervolcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, disease pandemics, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial intelligence. Walsh details the true probability of these world-ending catastrophes, the impact on our lives were they to happen, and the best strategies for saving ourselves, all pulled from his rigorous and deeply thoughtful reporting and research. Walsh goes into the room with the men and women whose job it is to imagine the unimaginable. He includes interviews with those on the front lines of prevention, actively working to head off existential threats in biotechnology labs and government hubs. Guided by Walsh's evocative, page-turning prose, we follow scientific stars like the asteroid hunters at NASA and the disease detectives on the trail of the next killer virus. Walsh explores the danger of apocalypse in all forms. In the end, it will be the depth of our knowledge, the height of our imagination, and our sheer will to survive that will decide the future.

Extreme Wine

Author: Mike Veseth
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442219246
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
In Extreme Wine, wine economist and best-selling author Mike Veseth circles the globe searching for the best, worst, cheapest, most expensive, and most over-priced wines. Mike seeks out the most outrageous wine people and places and probes the biggest wine booms and busts. Along the way he applauds celebrity wines, tries to find wine at the movies, and discovers wines that are so scarce that they are almost invisible. Why go to such extremes? Because, Mike argues, the world of wine is growing and changing, and if you want to find out what’s really happening you can’t be afraid to step over the edge. Written with verve and appreciation for all things wine, Extreme Wine will surprise and delight readers.

Phylloxera

Author: Christopher Campbell
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Book Description
A historical investigation into the mysterious bug that wiped out the vineyards of, first, France and then Europe in the 1860s -- and how one young botanist, who had served an apprenticeship at Kew Gardens, eventually 'saved wine for the world'. Bordeaux, inexplicably began to wither and die. Panic seized France, and Jules-Emile Planchon, a botanist from Montpellier, was sent to investigate. Magnifying glass in hand, he discovered the roots of a dying vine covered in microscopic yellow insects. The tiny aphid would be named Phylloxera vastatrix -- 'the dry leaf devastator'. Where it had come from was utterly mysterious, but it advanced with the speed of an invading army. As the noblest vineyards of France came under biological siege, the world's greatest wine industry tottered on the brink of ruin. The grand owners fought the aphid with expensive insecticide, while peasant vignerons simply abandoned their ruined plots in despair. Within a few years the plague had spread across Europe, from Portugal to the Crimea. the parasite had accidentally been imported from America. He believed that only the introduction of American vines, which appeared to have developed a resistance to the aphid, could save France's vineyards. His opponents maintained that this would merely assist the spread of the disease. Meanwhile, encouraged by the French government's offer of a prize of 300,000 gold francs for a remedy, increasingly bizarre suggestions flooded in, and many wine-growing regions came close to revolution as whole local economies were obliterated. Eventually Planchon and his supporters won the day, and phylloxera-resistant American vines were grafted onto European root-stock. Despite some setbacks -- the first fruits of transplanted American vines were universally pronounced undrinkable -- by 1914 all vines cultivated in France were hybrid Americans. of one of the earliest and most successful applications of science to an ecological disaster.

Napa Valley, Then and Now

Author: Kelli A. White
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692477809
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
An in-depth look at the history, wineries, and wines of Napa Valley with a special emphasis on tasting notes of older vintages.

The new vignerons

Author: Luis Gutiérrez
Publisher: Planeta Gastro
ISBN: 8408183311
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Book Description
"I traveled over the course of almost two years with photographer Estanis Núñez, an old friend of mine, just like we used to in our rock'n'roll days, taking photos, eating and drinking together. This book contains 14 profiles of vignerons, each of them different, spanning most of the wine-producing regions of Spain. There are others, but this is my personal selection. Their profiles talk about the history, landscape, vineyards, cuisine, passion and tradition of their region. You won't find tannins, anthocyanins, vintages, points or tasting notes here. I am hardly going to talk about wine at all. But you will find the often-forgotten human side and the context of what is in the bottle, including local cuisine (where wine plays an important role) as well as each winegrower's personal take on it. . Their main aim in life is to portray the uniqueness of their vineyards, villages and landscapes through a bottle of wine. Wine that can transport you back to the time and place it was produced the moment you drink it. These are the new vignerons. A new generation of Spanish winegrowers."

Foxes in the Vineyard

Author: Michael J. Cooper
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1462063217
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
In April of 1948, Boston University history professor Evan Sinclair receives a telegram notifying him that his father, Professor Clive Robert Sinclair, has been reported missing from his post at the Palestine Archaeological Museum. Fearing for his fathers well-being, Evan and Clives longtime friend, Mervin Smythe, travel to Palestine on the eve of the first Arab-Israeli War. Evan finds his father and far morea lost love, a son he never knew he had, and covert elements of the Third Reich positioned in Palestine before the end of World War II. Having infiltrated both Arab and Jewish populations, the Nazis seek to use counter-intelligence and terror to stoke the fires of hatred and fear between Arabs and Jews. The goal is to drive the British from Palestine and to seize Jerusalem as the capital of a reborn Third Reich with the legendary Knights Templar treasure as plunder and the Temple Mount as their fortress. To defeat them, Evan finds that he must risk everything. Filled with real people from the pages of history as well as fictional characters, Foxes in the Vineyard follows Evan as he battles not only for his ideals, but his life.