Recommended Reading

This is a compendium of worthwhile books I’ve come across on the topics at hand. Some are recent, while some are quite old. A few you can pick up just about anywhere, others will take some searching through your local library consortium, used book store, or one of the used book store search engines (I have the most luck with Alibris and Abebooks). I’ve provided links to Amazon below, where available, which help fund this site with a cut of the purchase price.

This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of every decent book on any of these subjects, and I’ll be adding to it over time. There are literally thousands of books on these topics, and, as someone who tends to accumulate (“collect” implies much more organization and reverence then I have) a whole lot of books on these subjects, most are crap, most of the rest are hopelessly out of date, and virtually all of them are good in one area of their purported subject matter and average or poor in others. The books below are those I believe are solid throughout their scope. Some of them are out of date, but they’re not crap. Certain things don’t change much, though of the three topics at hand, beer seems to be the most dynamic at the moment, and therefore has the fewer recommendations than one would expect given that my personal library has many more beer books than those on wine or whisky.

Currently Reading (last updated April 18, 2011):

The World Atlas of Whisky by Dave Broom (Mitchell Beazley, 2010).

Beer Books

Amber, Gold & Black by Martyn Cornell.  From the author of Beer: The Story of the Pint, reviewed above. Given that I found Mr. Cornell’s information on style history to be the runaway strong point of Beer: The Story of the Pint I had high expectations for this book.  I’m happy to report that I found Amber, Gold & Black a fascinating read with a treasure trove of research to support the story of an eclectic assortment of British beer styles.  Mr. Cornell does a wonderful job of laying out the history of bitter, mild, porter and india pale ale based on actual research (!) rather than repeated myth, and shines the light on styles you may have only heard about such as Burton Ale,and Stingo, as well as those that were news to me, such as Gale Ale and Mum.  There is a lot of information useful to the homebrewer here, as brewing information such as original gravities and hop varieties are provided for many of the historic beers discussed, and there is an excellent section on British herbs that used to be used for flavoring and bittering.  The book is self-published and available as a .pdf download (all 233 pages of it!) for the outrageous cost of £5!

The Brewmaster’s Table, Garrett Oliver (Ecco, 2005). Garrett picks up where Michael Jackson and Roger Prost leave off. This is a world-wide survey of “styles” but with extra emphasis on the U.S. craft beer scene, and the very near and dear to my heart subject of the joy of matching beer with food. Garrett writes with real passion, but manages to largely leave the breathless hyperbole that plagues much drinks writing behind.

Cellarmanship, Patrick O’Neill (CAMRA 2005 – link is to new 2011 edition) This is a relatively short book dealing with a somewhat obscure, and for most U.S.-based beer fans, largely useless topic – the proper care and serving of traditional cask ales. Mr. O’Neill is the long term cellar master at The White Horse on Parson’s Green, a long time bastion of both real ale and quality beers from around the world. I’ve had the pleasure of spending several sessions at this wonderful pub, so have a particular soft spot for it. The book itself is quite technical, but it gives real insight into what it takes to do cask beer right. It’s not merely a matter of hooking a coupler up to a keg, that’s for sure.

Farmhouse Ales, Phil Markowski (Brewers Publications, 2004). Mr. Markowski is the brewer at the wonderful Southampton Public House who brews the stylistic topics of this book – Saison and Biere de Garde – better than just about everyone else in the world. Here, the bulk of the book is made up of the history of these largely forgotten, but recently popular style. Mr. Markowski digs deep into the background separating the (great amount of) myth, from the (relatively small amount of) truth that remains about these styles. His prose is clear and engaging, and again shows real passion for the subject. A good part of the book is also dedicated to the brewing of these styles, which is certainly interesting to the homebrewers out there, as well as the more technically-inclined beer geeks.

Great Beers of Belgium, Michael Jackson (Lanoo Intnl. 2007). Out of the vast library of beer writing that Michael Jackson left us, this book is where his passion most clearly comes through. Here he is able to let his love for Belgium run to the full length of a book, rather than the small segments to which it is necessarily relegated in his more global beer books.

The Town and Country Brewery, W. Brande (Raudins, 1830). An incredibly influential book in its time, Mr. Brande’s classic is among a series reprinted by the beer and whisky specialist publishers Raudins. I also have the excellent Scottish Ale Brewer from this run of historically-significant books, but that one spends much of its time making passionate argument for brewers to adopt the much-scoffed technology of the hydrometer and the thermometer. While fascinating that such basic tools needed to be argued about, The Town and Country Brewer is a much more practical book, giving insight into small-time beer production in the early 1800s.

Wine Books

American Wines, Frank Schoonmaker and Tom Marvel (Duell Sloan & Pearce, 1941).

This book is an absolute classic, and should be required reading for anyone interested in California wines, in particular. The book was published in 1941, and provides a sad survey of the state of the post-prohibition wine industry in the United States. Apart from, quite literally, a handful or two of quality-minded producers, California was turning out vast oceans of “Port”, “Sherry”, “Malaga”, “Moselle”, “Chablis”, “Burgundy”, “Claret” and other names for generic swill stolen from European wine regions, and bearing no other resemblance apart from containing beverage alcohol.

Schoonmaker and Marvel issue a rallying cry for U.S. producers to embrace the making of table wines (as opposed to fortified wines which comprised 2/3(!!!!) of their sales at the time) labeled with true place names and the grape varieties from which they are made. They also predicted that the focus of quality wine-making should be in the areas of Napa, Sonoma, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and a few others, and that hybrid and high-yielding grapes should be replaced with vinifera grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay (at the time of the book there were about 100 acres of Chardonnay in all of California – there were over 100,000 acres as of the year 2000). The book really puts the amazing growth of U.S. wine production in perspective, and it is uncanny how accurate the authors’ recommendations turned out to be.

Angels’ Visits: An Inquiry into the Mystery of Zinfandel, David Darlington (some editions titled “Zin“)(Henry Holt & Co. 1991). Ravenwood was long ago sold to a big corporation, and Ridge seems to have fallen out of favor, but this chronicle of these two major players in the quality Zinfandel field is still an outstanding read. Both Joel Peterson and Paul Draper are well worth knowing more about, and the bevy of other personalities introduced are good people to know about as well. While a lot of the mystery of Zinfandel was removed when Dr. Carole Meridith finally pinned down its true identity (the Croatian grape Crljenak Kasletanski), this is ultimately a story of people, and their different philosophical and technical approaches to winemaking, that both led to fantastic wines.

Making Sense of Burgundy, Matt Kramer (William Morrow & Sons, 1990). I’ve still not found a better comprehensive Burgundy book. Kramer’s prose is clear, practical and entertaining to read. The basic information on the villages and vineyards has not changed, though certainly some of the ownership of particular portions of vineyards is different, and some of the producers profiled are no longer in business, or have substantially changed the way they make wine. Despite those shortcomings (that are merely a function of time) this is the book to grab (if you can find it – it took me two years to find it at a decent price) for an understandable, non-hyperbolic, comprehensive treatment of Burgundy.

North American Pinot Noir, John Winthrop Haeger (University of California Press, 2004). A very well done survey of the history of Pinot Noir on this continent. Attention is given to California and Oregon, but also New York and British Columbia. The book is split in half with the first portion providing general history on the viticulture of the grape, the clones, and the geographic places it is grown. The second portion provides profiles of producers. While there are certainly some other producers I would like to read about, one can have no idea whether Mr. Haeger tried to contact them and just received no cooperation, or whether his list of interesting producers is simply different than mine. Regardless, he hits most of the highlights, and the book is well worth owning.

Pacific Pinot Noir, John Haeger (University of California Press).  This is a companion volume to Haeger’s North American Pinot Noir.  This one skips the excellent history and geographic sections of his previous book, and focuses on producer profiles, and a lot of them.  The format of each profile is the same with a history of the producer, a recitation of vineyard sources, harvesting and wine-making protocals, and then anywhere from a couple to ten or so tasting notes.  I found lots of good information, but plowing straight through became a bit tiresome and confusing as the stats on producer bled into the next.  Mr. Haeger does his best to report the facts, but his personal palate preferences are necessarily present, and you can almost feel his pain in the descriptions of some of the wines he had to taste.  Overall, I was able to come up with a list of a dozen or so producers I had not previously tried that sounded interesting to my particular preferences (low-ish alcohol, high-ish acidity, low-ish oak influence).  If even a few of these work out, this book represents good value, and, for the pinot lover.

The Oxford Companion to Wine, 3rd Edition, Jancis Robinson, editor (Oxford University Press, 2006) This is my number one recommendation to folks just getting into wine. Yes, it’s a bit pricey. Older editions (I have both the first and second and have not stumped up for the third) have plenty of good information and can be found used at good prices. A lot of my basic information comes from the OCW. My protocol in my early wine days used to be to read every entry related to anything on the label of the wine I was drinking – the country, the grapes involved, the specific sub-region, and known winemaking techniques used (carbonic maceration, etc.). Great stuff.

Tasting Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover, Jancis Robinson (Viking, 1997). An enchanting (not a word I commonly use for those who may not know me) memoir of how one of the greatest wine writers of our time fell in love with wine. It is unabashedly honest and enthusiastic, and quick, refreshing read, especially for those mired in the minutiae of wine criticism, whether of the major critics, or of their own creation.

A Village in the Vineyards, Thomas and Sara Matthews (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993). One of the best of the American or Brit in French wine country for a year books. Thomas Matthews now (I don’t remember if he did then) writes for the Wine Spectator, but for this year he and his future bride rent a lovely, but quirky house in a town that, while technically in Bordeaux, produces much of its wine through the local co-op. Interesting French people, wine-related and not, are met, good meals and good wines are drunk and discussed. The writing is better than most, lacking much of the over-the-top fawning or borderline mocking tone that plagues so much of this genre.

The Wines of the Northern Rhône, Jonathon Livingston-Learmonth (University of California Press, 2005). Like North American Pinot Noir, this is an incredibly well done survey of an area which interests me a great deal. Mr. Livingston-Learmonth has long been captivated by the region and writes with both authority and passion for his topic.

Wine Bottle Closures, Jamie Goode (Flavour Press)  A scientific review of the closure studies to date of publication.  A fascinating, comprehensive and factual review of closure alternatives. If you want to understand the current research on how closures operate and what the benefits and shortcomings of each of them are this is your book.  Blessedly free of bias.

Whisky Books

Bourbon, Straight: The Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey by Charles Cowdery (Made and Bottled In Kentucky, 2004).  A very well done history of bourbon that clears up a lot of common misconceptions, and separates marketing liberties from what actually happened. Includes profiles of producers and interesting people from the bourbon industry. Well worth reading for those interested in this American spirit.

Classic Blended Scotch, Jim Murray (Prion Books, 1999). The one and only decent book out there on blended Scotch. Jim Murray is a prominent and prolific whisky writer, but tackles this subject with real love and passion. It’s a bit out of date now, with several of the brands having changed hands or disappeared, and new ones like Compass Box being absent, but there’s wonderful and engaging history of each brand as well as tasting notes that give you some idea of the style of each whisky.

Scotland and its Whiskies: The Great Whiskies, the Distilleries and Their Landscapes, Michael Jackson, Harry Cox Wright (Harcourt, 2001). Michael Jackson, of course, has left us with a wonderful library of fine whisky books, but this has been and remains my favorite. It’s not comprehensive, or even long, but the combination of Michael’s words and Mr. Wright’s stunning photographs tell the story of Scotch with passion and perfection. There is a paperback version out now that is much cheaper, but I don’t know how well it conveys the photographs. I’ll update when I see it in person.