Book: Grapes & Wines

Grapes & Wines, Oz Clarke & Margeret Rand

Today I'm going to tell you about a book that I like very much. Previously, I mentioned that I bought two books from amazon.com, but I only wrote about one of them and did not tell you anything about the other one. Now I'm telling you about that other one: Grapes & Wines, Oz Clarke & Margeret Rand.

I saw this book on vinografi and I was curious enough to order a copy for myself. When the book arrived, I was very happy because I thought that I could love the book even only due to the quality of the print and the photos in the book.

Grapes & Wines

After telling the story of the wine and wine making in the first section of the book, the author goes into details of the main subject of the book, which is actually the grapes. Tens (or maybe hundreds) of grapes are listed with their characteristics. Some of the grape varieties are lucky (or significant) enough to get a whole section of a few pages for themselves. These sections provide the details about a certain grape variety such as the importance of that variety in worldwide wine production, or the characteristics of that variety and how they differ from a terroir to another.

After having read the first section of the book, I glanced over the sections on Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonney. I have to admit that I also browsed the index to check if there any Turkish grapes (peculiar to Turkey) mentioned in the book. I remember that I saw a few sentences on Boğazkere.

Grapes & Wines

Even though the authors writing is quite fluent and easy to follow, this is surely not a book that you would read from the beginning till the end as if you read a novel. This is a book that I will happily keep in my bookcase and that I will browse through from time to time maybe to read about a specific grape or maybe just to look at the pictures. It's been lying on my drawer since I bought it. My interest will probably diminish in time, but I doubt that I may one day forget its existence and leave it untouched in my bookcase.