When first published in 1989, The Story of Wine won every wine award in the UK, and the USA. It is widely regarded as Hugh Johnson’s most ambitious and enthralling book. It is not just one story but a collection of many, scanning the wine world from Noah to Napa, from Pompeii to Pomerol, as illuminating to our understanding of civilization as it is to our appreciation of wine. Chronicling the making, merchandising, and drinking of wine through millennia, this new edition is fully updated to include Johnson’s view of the evolution of wine over the past 30 years.

There are nearly 1,400 known varieties of wine grapes in the world - from altesse to zierfandler - but 80 percent of the wine we drink is made from only 20 grapes. In Godforsaken Grapes, Jason Wilson looks at how that came to be and embarks on a journey to discover what we miss. While hunting down obscure and underappreciated wines, he looks at why these wines fell out of favor (or never gained it in the first place), what it means to be obscure, and how geopolitics, economics, and fashion have changed what we drink.

"Wine is, above all, about pleasure. Those who make it ponderous make it dull.... If you keep an open mind and take each wine on its own terms, there is a world of magic to discover." So wrote the renowned wine expert Kermit Lynch in the introduction to Adventures on the Wine Route, his ultimate tour of France, especially its wine cellars. The "magic" of wine is Lynch's subject as he takes the listener on a singular journey through the Loire, Bordeaux, the Languedoc, Provence, northern and southern Rhone, and Burgundy.

The first definitive reference book to describe, region-by-region, how the great wines of Europe should taste. This will be the go-to guide for aspiring sommeliers, wine aficionados who want to improve their blind tasting skills, and amateur enthusiasts looking for a straightforward and visceral way to understand and describe wine.

In this entertaining, informative, and thoroughly unconventional wine guide, award-winning sommelier, winemaker, and wine educator André Mack presents listeners with the 99 bottles that have most impacted his life. Instead of just pairing wines with foods, Mack pairs practical information with personal stories, offering up recommendations alongside reflections on being one of the only African-Americans to ever work at the top level of the American wine industry. The 99 bottles range from highly accessible commercial wines to the most rarefied Bordeaux....

In 1940, France fell to the Nazis and almost immediately the German army began a campaign of pillaging one of the assets the French hold most dear: their wine. Like others in the French Resistance, winemakers mobilized to oppose their occupiers, but the tale of their extraordinary efforts has remained largely unknown - until now. This is the thrilling and harrowing story of the French wine producers who undertook ingenious, daring measures to save their cherished crops and bottles as the Germans closed in on them.

From cork taint, to volatile acidity, to off-putting aromas and flavors, all wine connoisseurs have encountered unappealing qualities in a disappointing bottle. But are all faults truly bad? Are some even desirable? Jamie Goode brings his authoritative voice to the table once again to demystify the science behind what causes a good bottle to go bad. By exposing the root causes of faults in wine, Flawless challenges us to rethink our assumptions about how wine should taste and how we can understand beauty in a glass.

Wine Simple is full of an unbeatable depth of knowledge, effusive encouragement, and, most important, strong opinions on wine so you can learn to form your own. Imbued with Aldo's insatiable passion and eagerness to teach others, Wine Simple is accessible, deeply educational, and lively and fun, both in voice and visuals. This essential guide begins with the fundamentals of wine in easy-to-absorb hits of information and pragmatic, everyday tips - key varietals and winemaking regions, how to taste, when to save and when to splurge, and how do a wine tasting at home.

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.

Gain the wine know-how you’ve always wanted in this comprehensive course. With thousands of wines on sale in the US today, choosing just the right one for each occasion can be a challenge even for the experienced. To help you master that challenge and deepen your appreciation of wine and its inexpressibly rich lore, Master of Wine Brian Wheaton recorded Understanding the World of Wine. Whether you're a seasoned oenophile or a beginner, you will discover new insights in this set of 36 easy-to-use audio lectures.

Acclaimed Italian wine expert, sommelier, winemaker, and restaurateur, Joe Campanale presents a comprehensive guide that is as transportive as it is deeply educational. Vino dives into the dynamic landscape of Italian wine today, where a new generation of winemakers is eschewing popular international styles, championing long-forgotten indigenous grapes, and adopting sustainable approaches best suited for their local climates.

This second edition of Viticulture is an introduction to the professional world of growing grapes for wine production and is aimed at the serious student in the wine trade, WSET diploma student, or Master of Wine candidate. It is also aimed at anybody considering owning or planting a vineyard who wants a basic primer on the subject. It is written in an easy-to-digest style, arranged in 14 relatively short chapters, and illustrated with 100 photographs and charts. Viticulture is all you need to know about grape growing.

It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. In 1985, at a heated auction by Christie’s of London, a 1787 bottle of Château Lafite Bordeaux - one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson - went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors about the bottle soon arose.

Every great drink starts with a plant. Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley. Gin was born from a conifer shrub when medieval physicians boiled juniper berries with wine to treat stomach pain. The Drunken Botanist uncovers the surprising botanical history and fascinating science and chemistry of over 150 plants, flowers, trees, and fruits (and even a few fungi).

James Conaway's remarkable bestseller delves into the heart of California's lush and verdant Napa Valley, also known as America's Eden. Long the source of succulent grapes and singular wines, this region is also the setting for the remarkable true saga of the personalities behind the winemaking empires. This is the story of Gallos and Mondavis, of fortunes made and lost, of dynasties and destinies.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History houses, amid its illustrious artifacts, two bottles of wine: a 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon and a 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay. These are the wines that won at the now-famous Paris Tasting in 1976, where a panel of top French wine experts compared some of France's most famous wines with a new generation of California wines. Little did they know the wine industry would be completely transformed as a result....

For more than a decade, Jay McInerney’s vinous essays, now featured in The Wall Street Journal, have been praised by restaurateurs (“Filled with small courses and surprising and exotic flavors, educational and delicious at the same time” —Mario Batali), by esteemed critics (“Brilliant, witty, comical, and often shamelessly candid and provocative” —Robert M. Parker Jr.), and by the media (“His wine judgments are sound, his anecdotes witty, and his literary references impeccable” — The New York Times).

We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.

Mezcal. In recent years, the oldest spirit in the Americas has been reinvented as a pricy positional good popular among booze connoisseurs and the mixologists who use it as a cocktail ingredient. Unlike most high-end distillates, most small-batch mezcal is typically produced by and for subsistence farming communities, often under challenging conditions.

Tasty, lethal, hallucinogenic, and medicinal - fruits have led nations into wars, fueled dictatorships, and even lured us into new worlds. Adam Leith Gollner weaves business, science, and travel into a riveting narrative about one of the earth's most desired foods.

Long before the advent of conventional farming methods - which have focused on constant growth, human intervention, and genetic homogeneity - the apple had already grown to become the ubiquitous all-American symbol it is today. Known for their hardiness, ability to adapt to new environments, natural diversity, and plentiful bounty, wildly grown apples were once known as “America’s fruit” throughout the trading world.

In Mycophilia, accomplished food writer and cookbook author Eugenia Bone examines the role of fungi as exotic delicacy, curative, poison, and hallucinogen, and ultimately discovers that a greater understanding of fungi is key to facing many challenges of the 21st century.

In Proof, Adam Rogers reveals alcohol as a miracle of science, going deep into the pleasures of making and drinking booze—and the effects of the latter. The people who make and sell alcohol may talk about history and tradition, but alcohol production is really powered by physics, molecular biology, organic chemistry, and a bit of metallurgy—and our taste for those products is a melding of psychology and neurobiology.

James Conaway's remarkable bestseller delves into the heart of California's lush and verdant Napa Valley, also known as America's Eden. Long the source of succulent grapes and singular wines, this region is also the setting for the remarkable true saga of the personalities behind the winemaking empires. This is the story of Gallos and Mondavis, of fortunes made and lost, of dynasties and destinies.

It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. In 1985, at a heated auction by Christie’s of London, a 1787 bottle of Château Lafite Bordeaux - one of a cache of bottles unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson - went for $156,000 to a member of the Forbes family. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors about the bottle soon arose.

Actor and wine expert Julian Curry has devised a unique audiobook guide to wine. The whole subject is introduced and explained how wine is made, the different grapes, the different blends, vintages, wine-growing areas and types. In an entertaining and informal style, he also teaches how to taste wine, and how to choose and store it.

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.

In this lively and authoritative guide, Greene teaches listeners about whiskey and encourages them to make their own evaluations. Peppered with wry anecdotes drawn from her unusual life - and including recipes for delicious cocktails by some of today's most celebrated mixologists - Whiskey Distilled will be enthusiastically greeted by the whiskey curious as well as by journeymen whiskey drinkers thirsty to learn more about their beloved tipple.

Guns, germs, and steel might have transformed us from hunter-gatherers into modern man, but booze, sex, trash talk, and tripping built our civilization. Cracked editor Robert Evans brings his signature dogged research and lively insight to uncover the many and magnificent ways vice has influenced history, from the prostitute-turned-empress who scored a major victory for women's rights to the beer that helped create - and destroy - South America's first empire.

Flowers, and the fruits that follow, feed, clothe, sustain, and inspire all humanity. Flowers are used to celebrate all-important occasions, to express love, and are also the basis of global industries. Americans buy 10 million flowers a day, and perfumes are a worldwide industry worth $30 billion annually. Stephen Buchmann takes us along on an exploratory journey of the roles flowers play in the production of our foods, spices, medicines, and perfumes while simultaneously bringing joy and health.