books and wine: homework can be fun!

Summer, what summer? It’s been crazy busy and now that my daughter is safely into her new school routine ~ I still can’t believe she’s actually in high school ~ I thought I would do a little reading to help me come back to earth, so to speak. ‘The Geography of Wine” by Brian J. Sommers was a great exploration of various world wine regions and what makes them unique from a geographer’s perspective. What I liked about his approach was he took a subject that had the potential of being very dry (wait ~ was that a pun? you know my policy on puns ~ bottoms up!) and boring but made it very accessible and interesting.

If you’ve ever been curious about terroir and the role geography plays in the concept, this book summons all aspects. In a way that’s easily read for the lay person, Sommers deftly explores the biogeography of the grape, how urbanization affects wine geography, and economics ~ including the politics of wine with respect to its’ unique growing regions. In the last chapter, he discusses his own love of wine and how in each glass,  not only do you taste the grape but you taste a great deal about the culture of where it’s grown, nurtured and loved.

I’ll write more about terroir in another post but in the meantime, I’d like to recommend this book as a great reference for discovering that what goes into your glass is so much more than just fermented grapes.

Cheers!