The Wild Vine – A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine by Todd Kliman 2010
A fascinating read that moved at a pace combining research and personal passion. Links three stories, that of grape growing in America, the life and times of Norton, a true American bred grape variety that promised so much and then almost vanished to be recently revived and how Jenni McCloud emerged to became the largest grower/maker of Norton and its biggest proponent.
While Norton grows well in American conditions that challenge pure vinifera, and has a tolerance of Pierces Disease as well as Phylloxera once established, it has a high failure rate when first planted, and its wines when young are strong tasting – they need to be matured much longer than most are willing to do so for the best of Norton to emerge.
I really enjoyed this book and was sad to reach the end but I have a couple of niggles: the language is sometimes over flowery for my taste with slang expressions ‘ its four singsongy syllables refer to ...... destroying grapes at their source, in the same way that a smart tackler aims to cut a shifty running back at the knees’ (of phylloxera), ‘umbrella topped brat station’, ‘wine related tchotchkes’, ‘kegger’...
And the origins of Norton are still unknown and if I’d been writing the book I’d have had a DNA test done.
The hardback has deckle edged pages which I read is supposed to emulate a hand bound book but to me looks faulty and ugly.
And
Zinfandel: A History of a Grape and Its Wine Charles L Sullivan 2003
A story of another American grape, this one very much more appreciated.
This is a much more of a textbook that contains many facts about plantings in various regions and times that I read without excitement.
Sullivan himself did a lot of research into disproving the myth that Zinfandel was brought to America by Agoston Haraszthy and further more demolishing the myth of him being the ‘father’ of American wine and he gives chapter and verse.
The origins of Zinfandel are by now well known, so there are no surprises there.
I read the Kindle eBook edition which I thought overpriced at £13 ($20). The formatting was poor, every ‘page’ has words with gaps in them – even the authors surname on the title page is displayed as S U LLIVAN, and there is a redundant index at the end pointing to non-existent page numbers showing how little care went into digitising the book.
