## Metadata * Author: [[Paul Lukacs]] * ASIN: B00856PC0E * ISBN: 0393064522 * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00856PC0E ## Highlights North America, for instance, is home to more wild grapes than anywhere else. — location: [198](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=198) ^ref-34494 --- Transcaucasia is not only where many old legends locate wine’s origin, but also where the earliest archeological evidence of an ancient wine culture has been unearthed to date. — location: [213](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=213) ^ref-6642 --- The terebinth tree, a member of the pistachio family, grows throughout the Middle East, and in some places wild grapevines climb among its branches. Resin from it most likely was used as a preservative. — location: [234](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=234) ^ref-44854 --- Greek Retsina. — location: [242](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=242) ^ref-7767 --- The Greeks, who were fond of using seawater, particularly prized the saltiness of wines from the Aegean Islands, especially Kos. — location: [269](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=269) ^ref-26746 --- Wine, full of additives, was added to water to sanitize it and so provide basic sustenance. It would continue to be consumed as such for many thousands of years. — location: [276](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=276) ^ref-24035 --- The famous tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings held twenty-six such jars, each inscribed in detail. One reads, “Year Four. Wine of very good quality of the House-of-Aton of the Western River. Chief vintner Khay.” — location: [344](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=344) ^ref-40534 --- Because the opening in which the wine was poured was small in comparison to the size of the container, the ratio of air to liquid was also small. Amphorae thus could keep wine in decent shape far longer than any sort of container used previously. — location: [361](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=361) ^ref-54081 --- “began to emerge from barbarism when they learned to cultivate the olive and the vine.” — location: [401](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=401) ^ref-37195 --- most famous of all, Falernum. Falernian wine, made mainly from a grape variety called Amineum, was celebrated especially for the legendary “Opimian” vintage of 121 BCE. — location: [468](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=468) ^ref-65314 --- convivium, — location: [503](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=503) ^ref-21264 --- a convivium functioned as a formal occasion that united individuals and promoted cordiality. — location: [504](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=504) ^ref-58604 --- When consumed at a proper pace and in a proper way, wine was almost universally considered a social good. — location: [531](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=531) ^ref-52092 --- This was the cult of the wine god himself, and significantly enough, it was the one such association that spanned the two cultures. In Greece, it was called the cult of Dionysus; in Rome, the cult of Bacchus. — location: [557](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=557) ^ref-47673 --- Given how rapidly wine’s flavors degenerated with the seasons, it is not surprising that medieval men and women celebrated the grape harvest with feasts and festivals. The peasantry especially rejoiced in autumn. It was the one time of year when they could drink decent-tasting wine. — location: [818](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=818) ^ref-20699 --- piquette, — location: [829](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=829) ^ref-15264 --- Bordelais did sell their wine to other countries, England received roughly 80 percent of their exports. — location: [1171](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1171) ^ref-33071 --- evidenced oxidation too, the sort of taste still recognizable in Italian Vin Santo and French Vin de Paille, — location: [1259](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1259) ^ref-57572 --- At times, especially when they prized a specific spot, they would build stone walls around it and create a clos—a cloistered or enclosed vineyard. — location: [1316](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1316) ^ref-23195 --- But the most celebrated of all Cistercian vineyards, Vougeot, was across the valley and up the hillside from the original monastery at Cîteaux. — location: [1336](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1336) ^ref-37166 --- In 1366, when the poet Petrarch implored Urban V to return to Rome, he had to admit that wines like these could not be found — location: [1356](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1356) ^ref-25597 --- Specialization in Bordeaux began with one man—Arnaud III de Pontac, a leading nobleman and the first president of the regional parliament—who insisted that the red wine from his family’s estate was something distinct and different. — location: [1432](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1432) ^ref-38671 --- Starting in 1660, he demanded a premium price for a wine with a name that no one beyond Bordeaux knew—“Haut-Brion,” his family estate. Three years later, the author Samuel Pepys tried it at the Royal Oak Tavern in London. — location: [1440](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1440) ^ref-11877 --- Writing in his diary, he described the experience: “Drank a sort of French wine, called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I ever met with.” — location: [1441](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1441) ^ref-38884 --- Haut-Brion is marked by “warm brick, aromatic flavors, roundness and spice.” — location: [1462](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1462) ^ref-53565 --- Thus the paradox of terroir-driven wines: their distinctive taste originates in nature, but the human recognition and appreciation of that taste always have come more in man-made, usually urban settings. — location: [1498](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1498) ^ref-58606 --- Bad wine always proved preferable to contaminated water. — location: [1521](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1521) ^ref-11059 --- People today tend to distinguish sharply between alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages, but few drew that distinction before the 1700s. After all, water was the only widely available nonalcoholic drink, and it frequently was unsanitary. — location: [1651](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1651) ^ref-47660 --- Denis Diderot and Chevalier Louis de Jaucourt compiled their Encyclopédie in one in Paris.) — location: [1666](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1666) ^ref-18386 --- a restaurant, a word that in the parlance of France’s ancien régime designated a soothing light soup or bouillon. — location: [1670](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1670) ^ref-20548 --- As L’Avantcoureur, a popular journal, put it when announcing a new one, “Those who suffer from weak and delicate chests . . . will be delighted to find a public place” in which to restore themselves. Because this salle de restaurateur also made available “the many new periodicals that appear every month in the capital,” it offered its patrons “both solace for the body, and distraction for the soul.” — location: [1673](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1673) ^ref-7114 --- French gourmand Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin — location: [1718](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1718) ^ref-30811 --- Pasteur often is considered the father of modern wine. — location: [1762](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1762) ^ref-2086 --- Then, led by the German chemist Andreas Marggraf, scientists also discovered sugar in beetroot, a plant native to Europe. — location: [1861](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1861) ^ref-55201 --- For the most part, bottling at the estate or domaine, or even in the region, where a wine was made did not become common practice until the mid-twentieth century. — location: [1911](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1911) ^ref-44002 --- As a result, English tastes became extremely wide-ranging. And given the country’s wealth, coupled with its expanding middle-class population, it’s not surprising that virtually all of winemaking Europe vied for the English market’s attention. — location: [1967](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=1967) ^ref-49194 --- Before long, and as odd as it may sound, connoisseurs decided that they wanted to buy Madeira that had crossed the equator. — location: [2118](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2118) ^ref-23496 --- Thirty years later, when Thomas Jefferson visited the region, he delighted in Sauternes, particularly the wines from a property called Yquem, which he described as “most excellent.” And perhaps most tantalizing of all is the hint in a 1786 document that the distinctive character of the region’s wines results from a mystery or secret that is of “benefit to those who are determined to keep it.” — location: [2173](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2173) ^ref-36447 --- The 1816 vintage, for example, proved disastrous. Sometimes called “the year without a summer,” it brought frosts in June, July, and August all through the Northern Hemisphere. (Meteorologists now attribute the freakish climate to the eruption of an Indonesian volcano, Mount Tambora, the previous spring.) — location: [2219](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2219) ^ref-13644 --- One of the first, and still one of the most famous of these vintage years was 1811, sometimes called “the year of the comet.” A long hot summer and a dry warm autumn that year meant an abundant harvest of fully ripe grapes in most European vineyards. — location: [2222](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2222) ^ref-56186 --- one commentator writing later dubbed 1811 the first true vintage year. — location: [2227](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2227) ^ref-30599 --- in 1926, when the proprietors of Château Lafite-Rothschild in Bordeaux opened some of the last bottles of their 1811 vintage for a group of selected guests. Maurice Healy, one of the lucky attendees, declared that “at its age of 115 years it still drank graciously, with not more than a suspicion of fading. I think it must have been the greatest Claret ever made.” — location: [2227](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2227) ^ref-19701 --- Equally important was their desire to purchase and possess something they believed had aesthetic worth. Unlike other beverages, wines—or more precisely, fine wines—became widely thought of as such. To appreciate them, people needed to develop discernment. — location: [2298](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2298) ^ref-45791 --- Greek aestheta, meaning “things perceived,” — location: [2333](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2333) ^ref-35688 --- a modern consumer needed to know “what qualities each wine ought to have.” Without such knowledge, “he can only pronounce [a wine] agreeable or disagreeable, — location: [2469](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2469) ^ref-10445 --- Spain was every bit as high, if not sometimes higher, than those in France. “France ranks before Spain in its wines,” he wrote, only because “science has led the way to excellence there.” — location: [2689](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2689) ^ref-21254 --- winemakers in Rioja started to keep their top wines in wood for even longer than châteaux vintners in Bordeaux—so long, in fact, that flavors imparted by the barrels rather than the grapes became a recognizable part of Rioja’s signature. — location: [2714](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2714) ^ref-64544 --- Vega Sicilia had become Spain’s single most famous wine. — location: [2724](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2724) ^ref-40809 --- He was especially taken by the taste and feel of Champagne—bright, lively, and frothy, without any of the oxidized character so typical of Spanish white wines. — location: [2728](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2728) ^ref-18732 --- age-worthy white wines constituted Germany’s greatest contribution to Europe’s mid-nineteenth-century golden age of invented traditions. — location: [2766](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2766) ^ref-41171 --- German winemakers during the Renaissance were among the first to use sulfur, — location: [2767](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2767) ^ref-24749 --- Then London imposed tariffs, effectively isolating the Cape vintners. (Cyrus Redding noted that “no method recommended by European science or experience” was practiced there.) Wine would continue to be produced, but for nearly 150 years no one beyond the Cape much cared. — location: [2794](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2794) ^ref-16304 --- wines from estates like El Trapiche and Vina Ochagavía led the way. — location: [2831](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2831) ^ref-59026 --- viticulture, and production did not begin to flourish until the 1830s, when a Scotsman named James Busby planted a vineyard some hundred miles to the north, in the Hunter Valley. Busby is sometimes called “the father” of Australian wine. — location: [2838](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2838) ^ref-45064 --- Gamay still pretended to be fine Burgundy, — location: [2871](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2871) ^ref-16297 --- North America was the source of every one of these infestations. And what Europeans had done was import American nursery stock. — location: [2987](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2987) ^ref-26458 --- exotic gardening (and American plant material was definitely considered exotic) exploded in Europe during the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s. — location: [2996](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=2996) ^ref-10498 --- fine wine so fashionable depended on the perception of authenticity. — location: [3074](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3074) ^ref-10650 --- Far from enjoying special aesthetic status, it was widely considered a drink for degenerate drunks, poor men (and they were almost always male) called “winos.” — location: [3108](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3108) ^ref-10454 --- “God loves to see us happy, and therefore He gave us wine.” — location: [3132](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3132) ^ref-51105 --- largest wine producer in the Union. In later decades, “New York Champagne” from companies like Great Western and Gold Seal in the Finger Lakes region became America’s most popular bubbly. — location: [3157](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3157) ^ref-29662 --- Instead, these upper-class men and women drink spirits or spirit-based cocktails—including Alexanders (made with brandy, cream, and crème de cacao), gulped — location: [3438](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3438) ^ref-21643 --- knowing how to prepare them marked one as a good host at home. — location: [3446](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3446) ^ref-3935 --- Put simply, cocktails were glamorous drinks for glamorous people. — location: [3448](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3448) ^ref-51170 --- fully a third of the French railroad’s tank cars were appropriated to carry wine to the front, — location: [3461](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3461) ^ref-39001 --- in a country where fruit often struggles to ripen, early German classification systems equated quality with grape ripeness, typically measured in terms of sugar concentration in unfermented grape juice, — location: [3751](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3751) ^ref-64947 --- striking improvements have come in the reds from Bairrada and Dão, — location: [3805](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3805) ^ref-64637 --- discipline imposed by man upon nature.” — location: [3953](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=3953) ^ref-1626 --- The two winning wines in Paris, Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon and Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, both hailed from Napa Valley. Neither label had existed ten years earlier. — location: [4492](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=4492) ^ref-45518 --- Carmenère is destined to become their country’s signature grape variety. — location: [4698](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=4698) ^ref-10529 --- Chenin Blanc (called Steen in South Africa), — location: [4718](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=4718) ^ref-36021 --- Constantia (where the historic ones were replanted), — location: [4730](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=4730) ^ref-38252 --- Pinotage, a cross between Cinsault and Pinot — location: [4733](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=4733) ^ref-55944 --- The best wines from 1982 tasted flamboyant, meaning showy and sumptuous because filled with rich, flashy fruit flavors. — location: [4755](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=4755) ^ref-53705 --- A largely unknown American writer, Robert Parker Jr., called them “liquid gold” and urged readers of his small subscription newsletter to buy all they could afford. “There may not be a vintage this great for fifty years,” he pronounced. — location: [4757](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=4757) ^ref-39230 --- His predilection for powerfully concentrated, fruit forward wines was well-known, — location: [4995](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=4995) ^ref-33813 --- The attempt to receive high grades from Parker and other influential critics can go even further. Leo McCloskey, a chemist and former winemaker, runs a wine-quality analysis company in Sonoma called Enologix that advises customers on specific steps to take that he guarantees will lead to 90+ point wines. He does so by using complex algorithms that equate specific chemical analyses with specific marks. And vintners who have followed the steps he prescribes have seen their wines consistently score very high. Though few like to admit publicly that they use Enologix’s services, McCloskey’s clients have included some of the biggest names in California wine. — location: [5021](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=5021) ^ref-18019 --- England and the United States, the world’s two most important fine-wine-consuming countries in terms of market influence. — location: [5030](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=5030) ^ref-18999 --- all accounts suggest that the quality of most earlier wines made with the same grapes in the same places used to be quite poor. — location: [5107](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=5107) ^ref-57513 --- Mencía from Bierzo ranks today among Spain’s most chic red wines, — location: [5152](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=5152) ^ref-29135 --- In Croatia, the best-known grapes, at least outside the country, are Crljenak Kaštelanski, which DNA profiling has shown to be the same as California’s Zinfandel, and its close cousin, Plavac Mali. — location: [5176](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=5176) ^ref-24185 --- Called “Villa dei Misteri,” this red allegedly provides a sensory link with wine’s ancient past. — location: [5201](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=5201) ^ref-29590 --- The company’s 1968 Taurasi wines (there were four separate bottlings) did for the family, the region, and the grape much what Ferruccio Biondi-Santi had done for Brunello di Montalcino almost a century earlier, — location: [5208](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00856PC0E&location=5208) ^ref-16182 ---