Book review: A Movable Thirst - the joys (yes, joys) of Napa.

Full disclosure: I know both of the authors and they’re great guys. I’ll attempt an unbiased review, but obviously you’ll get a more critical evaluation elsewhere.

So what do you get when you take a wine newbie, put him in a car with his best friend who’s ITB, and then have them hit every tasting room in the Napa Valley? You get A Movable Thirst: Tales and Tastes from a Season in the Wine Country, that’s what. The two guys are Rick Kushman, the TV critic for the Sacramento Bee, and Hank Beal, the wine buyer for Nugget Markets. Nugget is a chain of grocery stores in the Sacramento Valley that takes its wine very seriously, and Hank is a genuine ITB wine expert. Rick, on the other hand, is a self-described wine idiot. He goes into this knowing little about wine other than that when he’s over at Hank’s and it gets late in the evening, Hank tends to pull out seriously good stuff. After one particularly lovely bottle one late evening, they hatch a scheme. They will hit every tasting room in the Napa Valley that is open to the general public over the course of one season from bud break to crush, and they’ll write about the experience. Rick, as the journalist of the two, does the writing. Hank serves as the technical consultant and expert palate. The resulting book is a look at the Napa world through the eyes of someone who is just getting seriously into wine. He talks about things like learning to spit (and learning to always wear dark-colored clothing when wine tasting). He talks about tasting room etiquette (don’t try to lecture the winery employees about wine, don’t hold your glass by the base, and for God’s sake, don’t show them you’re cool by reciting lines from “Sideways”!) He profiles a number of the winery owners and winemakers, from the Trefethens to Mario Andretti. There’s stuff here about the history of the valley, about how grapes are grown and wine is made, about Bistro Don Giovanni, and about bocce ball. He gives good basic advice for newbie tasters (“Eat. Seriously, eat.”) The final third of the book is a set of reviews of each of the tasting rooms they went to, with a capsule description of the place and a paragraph each on the atmosphere, service, “tasting tools” (quality of stemware, whether water, food, and spit buckets are available), intangibles and extras (overall feel, tours, etc.), wine availability, cost, directions, picnic prospects, and who they’d recommend it to.

The writing style is chatty, informal, humorous, and self-deprecating. Rick tells one story about asking the hostess at Luna Vineyards whether he should always swirl his wine counterclockwise because they’re in the Northern Hemisphere. She actually calls the winemaker who reports back that this is the stupidest question he’s ever heard in his life. This kind of stuff ensures that the book never comes close to being pompous or pretentious. I can't imagine anyone being intimidated by tasting in Napa after reading this.

It’s a fun book, and it was refreshing for me to read about Napa from someone who is not the least bit jaded about the place. Rick doesn’t complain about tasting fees, spoofulated wines, or $600 bottles of cabernet from wineries that have been open for all of three years. He doesn’t close his eyes to this stuff, mind you. He talks about the crowds on Highway 29 (advising that one never try to turn left onto or off of it), and he makes it clear that there are plenty of wines made there that he can’t afford to buy. But for him, the negatives are far outweighed by the simple pleasure of sitting up on Spring Mountain with a glass of cab or the fun of meeting people in a tasting room and then running into them at supper in a restaurant nearby. Sometimes, it’s nice to remember that there really are reasons for all of those people to choke that valley every summer.

So basically, this isn’t a book for hardcore wine geeks. Your name doesn’t have to be Lou Kessler for you to already know most of what’s written here. It’s really aimed at casual visitors to Napa with an interest in wine but who have yet to turn it into an obsession. But that doesn’t mean that you true geeks should ignore it, either. Next time a friend or co-worker comes up to you and says, “Hey, you know about wine. I’m going to the Napa Valley for a weekend. What are the best places to go?” Tell them to buy and read this book. It will be well worth their while.


Mike

I haven't read the book you've described but I intend to do it eventually. I never really write anything about the valley here, knowing certain people will look upon it as pure propaganda. We've lived here for 15 years now and look upon ourselves as being blessed for being so fortunate. The people we've met, the events we've attended, the pure beauty of the valley in the four seasons. I could fill many pages about the many rewards concerning living here.
Would be nice to drink some wine with you again.

Rick tells one story about asking the hostess at Luna Vineyards whether he should always swirl his wine counterclockwise because they’re in the Northern Hemisphere. She actually calls the winemaker who reports back that this is the stupidest question he’s ever heard in his life.

That is too funny. It reminds me of my days in the Navy when we would ask the newbie on board to go down to engineering and ask for a can of relative bearing grease...

The answer to the question that it doesn't matter -- there is no difference in the way small volumes of liquids act in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

The question is actually quite a good one, based on a common wrongly held belief that liquids, water for example, swirl out of a wash basin in different directions in the two hemispheres based on the Coriolis Effect.

If wine in a glass swirled clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere because of the Coriolis Effect, one might choose to swirl clockwise in order to increase the swirling effect. Or, one might choose to swirl counter clockwise to increase the areation because of the conflicting currents provided by Coriolis and the wine lover.

But, the Coriolis Effect is real, but only for much larger bodies of liquids and gases. There is no such effect in a bathtub, let alone in a glass of wine.

Scientific American has an explanation in the current online edition:

t's true that tornadoes tend to revolve counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. However, according to research meteorologist Richard Rotunno of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., the opposite has also occurred. There has even been the occasional appearance of both counterclockwise and clockwise rotating tornadoes under the same thunderstorm. These deviations undercut the common misperception that the direction of a tornadoes' spin results from the Coriolis force.

To set the record straight, Rotunno explains that the Coriolis force only has a significant influence on the spin direction of Earth's largest atmospheric and oceanographic circulation systems, such as the Gulf Stream, jet stream, trade winds and hurricanes. Earth's rotation around its axis causes this effect, making Northern Hemisphere winds deflect to the right and those in the Southern Hemisphere deflect to the left. It is also why an airplane flying from Anchorage to Miami must consider the Earth's counterclockwise rotation (as seen from the North Pole) to land at its destination, instead of splashing into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Coriolis force isn't, however, omnipotent, compelling all currents great and small to spin counterclockwise when north of the equator and clockwise to its south. Though many people have seen videos of toilets flushing in Australia and the U.S. that swirl in opposite directions, these experiments are based on luck and, perhaps not surprisingly, the toilets' varying designs. Pranksters have even gone so far as to blame the Coriolis effect for hair curling in a certain direction.

Despite the large amount of misinformation, toilets—and even tornadoes—are too small to be affected by the Coriolis, whose force would only begin to directly influence a storm's swirling mass if it were approximately three times larger than the supercell storm systems that typically generate tornadoes.

"Tornadoes are only indirectly influenced by the Coriolis force," says meteorologist Harold Brooks of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla. The majority of tornadoes happen in "tornado alley," in the Great Plains of the U.S., but they can happen anywhere in the world, including southern Brazil, northeastern Argentina and Bangladesh. These violently roiling columns of air originate from parent thunderstorms called supercells. In the U.S., supercells form when dry polar air from Canada meets moist tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico, causing the warm air to rapidly rise.

Regards, Bob

Mike, I LOL about the swirling counterclockwise story. Very good review. Makes me want to get the book.

Mike, I LOL about the swirling counterclockwise story. Very good review. Makes me want to get the book.

Thanks! I appreciate the kind review of my review.



Mike