Book Review: Volcanoes and Wine: From Pompeii to Napa, by Charles Frankel

Posted by | Posted in Book Reviews | Posted on 02-25-2020

“Why is there such a magic alliance between volcanoes and wine?” Geologist Charles Frankel goes looking for answers in Volcanoes and Wine, blending history, geology, and viniculture in an illuminating tour of some of the most curious winegrowing locales on earth.

Across eight chapters, Frankel covers several volcanoes of consequence to wine. Each chapter follows a similar construction, beginning with a general history and then moving on to volcanic history and the specifics of how the grapes are grown and the wine is made. Frankel also provides breakdowns of key varieties, cultivars, and producers, as well as detailed travel advice for ambitious readers who wish to visit. 

With the exceptions of Napa, Oregon, and Hawaii, the book is entirely European, with Italy—home to Mounts Etna and Vesuvius and the volcanic Aeolian Islands—getting the most love. Whether this is a product of Frankel merely writing about what he knows and where he’s traveled, or of Europe really possessing the only volcanoes of note to winegrowing, I would have liked to see a more global view.

I was most captivated by Spain’s Canary Islands, located off the coast of northwestern Africa. There, on the island of Tenerife, you’ll find 12,280 foot Mount Teide (last eruption: 1909) and the highest vineyards in Europe at 5,800 feet. On the island of Lanzarote, vines are grown in bowl-shaped dugouts with stones lining the rim. This technique, developed in the eighteenth century by enterprising villagers looking for fertile soil beneath post-eruption ash, affords the vines protection from the wind and traps what little rain falls on the island each year.

I continue to be fascinated by the feats of those who stubbornly insist on making wine wherever they want.

Still, stubbornness can be either admirable or foolish, and I’ve often wondered why people choose to live in places prone to natural disasters. (But I guess I’m talking more about hurricanes and tornadoes, which are annual threats, unlike volcanoes.)

There’s clearly something worthwhile (and worth the risk) about living in the shadows of volcanoes, because throughout history people have returned time and time again to the slopes of these irascible mountains, hellbent on bottling the incredible flavor latent in their soils. Take the Olivieros of the Fuocomuorto estate near Mount Vesuvius, for example. Their vines were planted in 1780 atop a lava flow from 1631, abandoned in 1906 after post-eruption mud flows, and then resurrected in 2006.

Look also at the way men and women have fought back against Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano. In 1669, a priest named Diego Pappalardo led fifty men armed with pick axes and iron bars in an attempt to divert an advancing lava flow. They would have succeeded had it not been for an angry mob from a neighboring village, which would have come into the path of the diverted lava flow, who ran them off with clubs and pitchforks. 1983 saw a failed attempt by local officials and volcanologists to use dynamite to reroute a lava flow. And in 1993 authorities successfully tamed a slow-moving lava flow with a combination of rocks (formed into a dam 66 feet high), dynamite, and 8,000 pound concrete blocks dropped by helicopter. 

Volcanoes and Wine will certainly stir your imagination. It’ll also fan your wanderlust. Both because it showcases exotic places flowing with wine and because the only way to have a taste is to travel. You won’t find these wines in Costco. 

My recommendation
Frankel’s book is well-researched, with the right blend of history, science, and wine. He did lose me a couple times, wandering off to other topics like coffee growing in Hawaii, but all in all, it’s a fun flyover of volcanic wine, with some really cool history and stories thrown in. Wine-drinking history buffs, this is your book.

Experiencing ZD Wines, Take Two

Posted by | Posted in Wine Reviews | Posted on 07-11-2019

ZD 50thLast October, I tasted through a trio from ZD Wines. Now we’re back for another round with ZD’s spring/summer releases. The 2016 ZD Reserve Chardonnay was the big winner for me last time, so I was curious to see if the Pinot and Cab would stand out more.

As usual, with Isaac delivering his excellent (and plentiful!) tasting notes in the more customary style for Terroirist, my notes take a different form, woven into vignettes that capture an experience and (I hope) inform as well as entertain.

Before diving in, let me say there’s nothing better than sharing an expensive bottle of wine with folks who’ve never been able to afford such a luxury, and seeing their faces as they reach for another pour. Read the rest of this entry »

Book Review: Wine Reads: A Literary Anthology of Wine Writing, edited by Jay McInerney

Posted by | Posted in Book Reviews | Posted on 04-23-2019

Book CoverI read so many books about wine, but few I’d call “literary.” With Wine Reads, Jay McInerney has skillfully brought together selections from some of the finest pieces of wine writing, both fiction and nonfiction, many of which I’ve never even heard of.

After reading cover to cover, I certainly agree that each of the selected works possesses something—“superior or lasting artistic merit,” according to Google—that elevates it into the realm of the literary.

As you’d expect, McInerney includes classics like Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route and George Taber’s Judgment of Paris. It’s great to revisit these foundational pieces of wine literature, but what I most enjoyed were the lesser-knowns, like Roald Dahl’s fun short story “Taste” and especially a 2015 essay that appeared in The Yale Review called “My Father and The Wine,” by scholar and writer Irina Dumitrescu.

Dumitrescu relates her memories of growing up in a Romanian immigrant family, making wine and so much else from scratch. Interspersed are honest moments capturing her family dynamic, and glimpses of what I want my relationship with my own children to be one day. I like this bit the best: “They will want to suck at the siphon hose and taste whatever you taste. They will laugh and smack their lips and assure you that the wine is very good. When you leave the cellar they will insist on carrying the bottle to the dinner table.”

I adored journalist A.J. Liebling’s “Just Enough Money,” where he argues that poverty lends itself to a special appreciation of food, and thus great food writing. The wealthy, on the other hand, tend to indulge and oversaturate because money allows. It’s “the crippling handicap of affluence.” There’s also a five-page piece from author, poet, and bon vivant Jim Harrison called “Wine.” It’s utterly bizarre, but I devoured it.

On the fiction side of things, there’s of course a chapter from Rex Pickett’s Sideways, as well as something from Michael Dibdin’s A Long Finish, a novel in the Aurelio Zen crime series.

Wine Reads contains twenty-seven selections in all, running the gamut of topics: the Mondavi spat, Nazi-occupied Champagne, and vine sabotage at La Romanée-Conti, to name a few more. It’s a book you can read piecemeal or cover-to-cover; although I prefer the latter, because it allows you to see what great diversity of thought and talent there is in the world of wine writing.

My Recommendation
I’ve ditched my Wine Spectator subscription. This is the kind of wine writing I want to read, the kind with literary flair. Wine Reads is for those of us who tend to find themselves with a glass in one hand and Henry James in the other.

Book Review: Lucky Country: Confessions of a Vagabond Cellarhand, by Darren Delmore

Posted by | Posted in Book Reviews | Posted on 04-01-2019

Lucky Country CoverLucky Country is the second installment in Darren Delmore’s nonfiction series Confessions of a Vagabond Cellarhand. (I reviewed the first, Slave to the Vine, back in 2017.) Like its predecessor, Lucky Country is an unvarnished look at cellarhand life during harvest, replete with ubiquitous and unabashed hedonism. Yet somehow, once again, Delmore plays it off without being overly gratuitous, and does great work in illustrating a parallel between the messiness of winemaking and that of human relationship itself.

Lucky Country picks up in February 2010 with Darren on his way to Australia on a harvest contract with Two Hands, escaping both a sexual fling that’s starting to smell of commitment and the sour way his work at Hirsch Vineyards had ended. His journey nearly ends before it starts, at the hands of a prying Australian customs agent. But somehow Darren is able to talk his way out of trouble, despite not having a proper work visa and looking like an unshaven vagrant who’s just Cookie-Monstered several handfuls of pot cookies on the flight over—which, in reality, he had.

The action proceeds linearly from there. Darren arrives at Two Hands, ready to work. He learns the nuances of the cellar there and meets a string of interesting characters. My favorite is Darren’s roommate Timmy, who I came to loathe for his mooching and stingy ways. Desperate to save money, Timmy resorts to eating cereal for every meal (literally), yet has no problem taking more than his portion of the bottles opened by others to share.

After four-or-so months, and the mishaps and drama that inevitably follow from overconsumption, drug use, and close proximity to so many interesting and complex individuals—and for that matter, from juggling flings with several alluring women—work comes to an end and Darren heads back to California for a short break before the harvest season there.

Like the first book in the series, Lucky Country did an admirable job of transporting me into this snippet of time in the life of someone very different from myself. And yet, we find common ground in our passion for wine.

On a personal note, my wife and I happened to be passing through Paso Robles on vacation last week, and thanks to a bit of serendipity we were able to meet up with Darren. He graciously offered to let us taste through four barrels of his wine, his second commercial vintage, each about 100 cases. He rents space at ONX Wines in Tin City and makes Pinot Noir and cold-climate Syrah under an eponymous label, Delmore. I found both approachable, balanced, and conspicuously unique. I’ve never had a Syrah that smelled so much like a handful of fresh soil, nor a Pinot that fills a glass with so many blueberry-purple hues. He has a mailing list and there’s more info on his website.

My Recommendation
Lucky Country is entertaining, funny, and real. What more can you ask of a book? It’s a quick read at only 166 pages and I’d say pick it up for any weekend perambulations in wine country. I look forward to the next installment in Darren’s wine-soaked adventures!

Book Review: Red Wine: The Comprehensive Guide to the 50 Essential Varieties and Styles, by Kevin Zraly, Mike DeSimone, and Jeff Jenssen

Posted by | Posted in Book Reviews | Posted on 12-17-2018

Red WineMy request for a copy of Kevin Zraly’s forthcoming biography was apparently premature, so the publisher sent me Red Wine instead. I hadn’t heard of it, but after poring through it in five- and ten-page sittings, I see why every wine bibber needs to.

Red Wine covers the basics of the 50 red wines you’re most likely to encounter. Full of beautiful photography and with just the right amount of detail, it might be the most practical coffee table book a wine lover can own.

Arranged alphabetically, each grape gets a two-page spread, with the exception of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and other biggies, which get more. To start, the grape name is listed and spelled phonetically—a tremendous blessing for those of us who can’t quite get the pronunciation right for grapes like Montepulciano (it’s MOHN-teh-pool-CHAH-no) and Sangiovese (SAHN-jo-VAY-say).

Next is a tasting profile highlighting the grape’s most common aromas and flavors, followed by a list of ideal food pairings. You’ll want these handy for your next dinner party. Or maybe you flat out want some specific wine recommendations. Zraly and team have you covered with suggestions for “Bargain,” “Value,” “Special Occasion,” and “Splurge” bottles.

Rounding out each chapter are a few paragraphs of abbreviated history, a bit on what’s noteworthy about the grape, and finally, where in the world it’s currently being grown in significant amounts.

What I love about Red Wine is it’s so darn handy. I can see myself using it in a variety of situations: pre-dinner-out research, deciding which wine region to visit next, or even in my own home wine making. A few weeks ago actually, when deciding whether or not to induce malolactic fermentation in batches of Lodi Petite Sirah and Carignane I was fermenting in the basement, I first turned to Red Wine to get a sense of each variety’s typical level of acidity. (We’ll see how that turns out though!)

Red Wine covers key wine styles and regions too. Read these sections and you’ll never again refer to Rioja or Chianti as a grape, and you’ll better understand what constitutes a Super Tuscan (spoiler: it’s kind of a catch-all).

My Recommendation
Some books I read and pass along. Red Wine is one I’ll keep around. It’ll probably find a home on the kitchen shelf next to my cookbooks and drink tomes. Much like Zraly’s Windows on the World, this is a book every serious wine drinker should have on hand, for reference, for inspiration, and for pure visual enjoyment.

Book Review: Corkscrew, by Peter Stafford-Bow

Posted by | Posted in Book Reviews | Posted on 11-26-2018

51tP9E8lxeL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_Corkscrew is a rollicking page-turner about a quick-witted womanizer named Felix Hart, whose bawdy, booze-filled escapades propel him up the ranks of the UK wine industry. The dialogue is tight and idiomatic, the characters have flesh, and the situations Felix finds himself in are unique to say the least.

There’s a chase scene with a pack of vicious fornicating ostriches; a hairy hermaphroditic powdered drug alchemist whom Felix sets aflame; a group of sadistic master sommeliers who never use spit buckets; and a death by cesspool.

Yea, Peter Stafford-Bow has quite an imagination.

The story begins with Felix in an interrogation room. He’s done something pretty bad; we don’t know what. As his interrogators press him, Felix gives them (and us) the whole story.

Getting his start in a local wine store, Felix’s career takes off when he bludgeons to death a notorious burglar who’s been terrorizing local shops. He takes a gig as a wine buyer and jets off to Bulgaria, Italy, and South Africa, where he negotiates deals, drinks a lot, and charms an endless stream of women.

I did find it a little too convenient that every wine merchant Felix encounters happens to be a good-looking girl who instantly wants to take him to bed, or exchange sex for wine perks. It does, however, give Stafford-Bow endless opportunity to deploy his considerable talent for euphemism.

In South Africa, Felix meets one of the story’s most interesting characters, Wikus van Blerk, an eccentric but much-sought-after winemaker. Wikus is an opinionated sage who has an entrenched point of view on everything, like the superiority of screw caps over cork or the blasphemy of wine filtration. “A winemaker who filters his wine is like a burglar stealing the family silver.”

Wikus’s “gun-toting African” partner Njongo delivers what is for me the most poignant moment in the novel, for its nod to geographic particularity and the shifting essence of wine. The three of them are out on safari, roasting freshly killed game and drinking bottles of Wikus’s wine. “I taste the stars,” says Njongo of a dark Shiraz, “unhidden by cloud. The African earth, caressing the vine. The promise of distant rain. The breath of the leopard.”

“That’s an African tasting note,” says Wikus, “And that’s why Njongo will inherit my estate when I’m gone!”

On more than one occasion, Corkscrew reminded me of Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King. It think because both novels blend absurdity and poignancy—or maybe simply because Felix, like Henderson, visits Africa.

I don’t want to give away too many of the novel’s best moments, but I will say that Corkscrew isn’t merely a series of random, disconnected happenings. Events build upon each other, as Felix gets himself into some real binds with the law and organized crime—the central dilemma concerns a large, conspicuously-low-priced shipment of Asti Spumante—and the draw for the reader is seeing how he wiggles out.

My Recommendation
Corkscrew is a bit too crude at times for my liking. That said, there were moments when I actually laughed out loud. I’d recommend it for anyone looking for an easy read full of lasciviousness and wine (a la Sideways, I’d say), particularly those inclined toward “cheeky” British humor.

Experiencing ZD Wines

Posted by | Posted in Wine Reviews | Posted on 10-18-2018

ZDWinesThe most exciting thing about a bottle of wine is the potential it holds for fostering community, intimacy, and relationship. As I said before, nobody drinks wine in a vacuum. We empty our glasses in all kinds of places, among friends, family, and even strangers.

This past month I received three bottles from ZD Wines, a Napa Valley producer that’s celebrating its 50th anniversary this harvest. My wife and I even used one of the bottles as an occasion to get to know our neighbors.

2016 ZD Reserve Chardonnay (SRP $77)
It could’ve been the post-Ultimate Frisbee thirst and fatigue, but this bottle stood out as the true winner of the trio. All it took was Jim Croce on the record player and a cool glass of ZD Reserve Chardonnay to sooth our aching bodies. “Apply,” was my wife’s first impression. I smelled lychee, something floral (maybe chamomile), vanilla, and allspice.

The extended yeast contact came through quite clearly, as the wine was nice and creamy and coated my tongue. It left my mouth watering slightly, despite any notable acidity. I tasted spice and—surprisingly but not at all unpleasantly—a hint of salinity. The winemaker did well to forgo MLF, as too much butteriness would surely have marred the harmony of oak, flowers, and spice. Sprawled out on the floor and sweaty, ceiling fan whirring, we agreed it was an excellent Chardonnay.

2015 ZD Cabernet Sauvignon (SRP $75)
When you live in a four-unit apartment building, you don’t have much excuse for not knowing your neighbors. After a year and a half of passing pleasantries, my wife and I decided it was high time we get acquainted with the couple our age living below us. And what better excuse to do so than a premium bottle of wine?

Turns out the gentleman preferred beer. So over dinner, board games, and dessert, while he put back the Yuenglings, the lady, my wife, and I savored the ZD Cab—and I discretely scribbled tasting notes on a pad of paper under the table. The wine was dark and dense with a notable lack of tannin but a delightful blueberry character. 22-months in American oak had given it rich aromas of vanilla and cola. The bottle emptied quicker than I could record all of my impressions, but it did its job facilitating great conversation and laughs. Our neighbors have promised to reciprocate with dinner soon and I’m sure the folks at ZD will be happy to know they’ve played a part in what looks to be the beginnings of a more neighborly relationship.

2016 ZD Founder’s Reserve Pinot Noir (SRP $82)
Okay, sometimes I just drink wine alone. It had been an insanely hot week and, of course, my AC unit decided to give up the ghost. With my wife gone and the windows down I popped this beauty in the refrigerator. The evening’s aptly selected movie, Mississippi Burning, played as I puzzled over what turned out to be quite an enigmatic Pinot.

From the start, nose firmly in glass, it wasn’t giving me much. It just sat there, dense and ruby, mocking my inadequacy. So I let it alone, until it would relent and reveal to me all of its wonderful qualities. I blinked first, of course, and the wine greeted my tongue with a wonderful acidic tingle—just what I needed in the heat—and gave forth odors of overripe strawberries and anise, but little else. At a point, I stopped trying to figure this wine out and just enjoyed it. It was well structured and enjoyable, but didn’t have the wow factor I would expect at this price.

Book Review: Tasting the Past, by Kevin Begos

Posted by | Posted in Book Reviews | Posted on 07-02-2018

Tasting the Past - Book CoverThis book wouldn’t exist had Begos not found himself bored in a hotel room in Jordan. Reaching for a bottle from the minibar, he encountered Cremisan Cellars, and sparked a journey that has culminated in Tasting the Past: The Science of Flavor & the Search for the Origins of Wine.

Begos documents his visits to some of the oldest wine sites in Europe and the Middle East, searching for (but as you’d expect, not conclusively finding) the origins of wine. Along the way he encounters experts, scientists, and passionate winemakers who, each in their own way, are seeking to discover and experience wine in its most ancient forms.

A former MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow, Begos does an excellent job striking a balance between travel writing, history, and science—the science, thankfully, isn’t too heavy handed. What I admire most, however, is his relentless curiosity.

Begos could not shake his desire to learn more about Cremisan’s unusual grapes (Baladi, Jandali, Hamdani) and to understand why, in a world full of thousands of wine grape varieties, each suited to its particular clime, we have limited ourselves to just a handful. Most of it is market driven, of course, but Begos laments how we’ve “rammed the famous [i.e., French] varieties” into so many unsuitable habitats.

A recurring theme in the book is the friction between nature and viniculture: what the vine desires to do and what man makes it do. It’s actually what I found most compelling. For instance, I was surprised to learn (so was Begos, when Swiss grape geneticist Dr. José Vouillamoz told him) that “if you plant the seeds from any grape … the new vine will have different flavors and characteristics.” It seems obvious, until you realize what this actually means, that the varietals familiar to us today have all been propagated through the centuries by cuttings alone.

How had I not known this?

Take Cabernet Sauvignon. It was born of a “vineyard love affair,” as Begos calls it, between Sauvignon Blanc (yes, a white grape) and Cabernet Franc, 200-300 years ago in southwest France. Carole Meredith, plant geneticist at UC Davis, puts it simply: “A single pollen grain landed on a single flower and a single seed grew into a single plant. Every Cabernet Sauvignon vine across the world comes from this one original vine.”

The modus operandi of modern winemaking is to “lock in the tastes but shut down any evolution,” says Begos. But this desire for vinicultural consistency comes at a price.

Because today’s most popular wine grapes exist in a state of arrested evolution, they’re particularly susceptible to pandemic disease (which is what happened during the Irish Potato Famine). Climate change, too, will increasingly come negatively to bear on a world full of vines that have been artificially kept from adapting and evolving. For winegrowers, if Begos’s experts are right, it looks to be a losing battle.

The silver lining here is novelty. There exists the possibility for entirely new varietals with new flavors—flavors not merely coaxed out of existing varietals by the next great winemaking process innovation, but flavors born organically of seed and soil. A few winemakers are already on it, says Begos.

Tasting the Past is a rallying cry for the obscure grape and for regional particularity. I’m on board with that. There’s a great big world out there beyond the French grape.

My Recommendation
There are so many great stories and characters contained within Tasting the Past’s 250 or so pages, and Begos’s journalistic style keeps it all moving. I liked, too, that each chapter concludes with information on how to obtain the wines he discusses (although some are unattainable outside of the wineries themselves). Anyone who wants to know what else is out there, beyond even what your local Total Wine can supply, will want to read this book. Those with a bent toward wine history, paleobotany, or grape genetics will be especially pleased.

Experiencing the Wines of Stewart Cellars

Posted by | Posted in Wine Reviews | Posted on 06-05-2018

stewartMost wine reviews consist of two things: a series of sensory descriptions (which are increasingly imaginative, to say the least) and a number between 85 and 100. There are exceptions, to be sure. But in most publications—this one included—the wine review now fits a standard template.

For those who taste and review thousands of wines annually, I would imagine that the process can get quite clinical. I picture a clean, controlled environment, like a science lab, complete with white coats, laboratory flasks, and perfectly polished glasses.

Sure, that might be hyperbole. And don’t get me wrong; I love the reviews on Terroirist from Isaac Baker. But I can’t help but think about how most reviews don’t convey enough about how we actually experience wine.

For me, the most exciting thing about a bottle of wine is the potential it holds for fostering community, intimacy, and relationship. With the right person or people, in the right setting, and with the right food, that which a winemaker has passionately and painstakingly crafted to be good, can become very good. Those are the stories I want to hear!

Stories are what captivate us, what draw us in. So, what if wine assessment took the form of a vignette, that documents and entertains, interlaced with the qualitative notes we’ve come to recognize and value?

A month or so ago I received three new releases from Stewart Cellars as samples. This (below the fold) is how my wife and I experienced them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Book Review: Napa at Last Light, by James Conaway

Posted by | Posted in Book Reviews | Posted on 04-16-2018

Napa at Last Light Book CoverWith Napa at Last Light, James Conaway brings his trilogy on America’s most iconic wine region to a close. His conclusion, based on decades of experience in the region, is that Napa, like so many other once-pure places in America, has been despoiled by commercial interests, and perhaps irrevocably so.

But Conaway does more than state the obvious. He does an excellent job of exploring some of the specific instances of self-interest and political and legal maneuvering, if not outright corruption, that drove Napa to this place.

In 1968, the powers that be in Napa County voted unanimously in favor of the Napa County Agricultural Preserve, an ordinance that established agriculture as the “highest and best use” of land in Napa Valley. Conaway homes in on a “small change” to the ordinance from 2008 that “seemed innocuous but was in fact as potent as an aggressively metastasizing cancer cell.” That change was an eight-word addition (see italics) to the long-held definition of agriculture: “Agriculture is defined as the raising of crops, trees, and livestock; the production and processing of agricultural products and related marketing, sales and other accessory uses.”

This new definition said, in effect, that the activities of wine tourism were just as much a “highest and best use” of Napa land as grape growing.

Napa at Last Light looks at both sides of this battle between agriculture and commercialism, preservation and development, through the stories of individuals and families living in valley. Conaway’s account is, however, highly biased; it’s by no means objective journalism. (He actually describes it as a combination of “narrative journalism and personal reflection.”) Conaway distinctly aligns himself with the farmers and preservationists who hold to the spirit of the original ordinance and the old definition of agriculture, not the “drifting one percenters” who flock to Napa to develop the land and become “lifestyle vintners.”

I understand Conaway’s protective stance toward the place he holds dear and once labeled an American Eden, but I grew tired of his negativity. He tends to draw stark good-vs-evil contrasts, and even gets nasty with the people he dislikes, referring to a group, at one point, as “lucky spermers.” There’s no need for that.

It’s hard to keep track of all the characters in the book, but perhaps the most interesting, even admirable, and foremost among those whom Conaway glowingly profiles, is Randy Dunn, winemaker and owner of Dunn Vineyards. It was Dunn who, in 2005 and 2006, led efforts to acquire and preserve a 3,000-acre parcel of land on Howell Mountain known as Wildlake, even putting up $5 million of his own money. Conaway, who appears to be a friend of Dunn’s, admires the winemaker’s mix of sentimentality, agricultural know-how, and self-determination, and shares the story of the time he helped Dunn safeguard his property against approaching wildfires.

Conaway has a flair for the dramatic. In the wildfire story he imagines a scenario in which the fires have encircled them and he and Dunn are forced to stand in the middle of the property’s pond and listen to the fire consume all that Dunn had built.

You can tell what Conaway dislikes by what he renders absurd. Most notable are his belabored descriptions of Napa’s more opulent attractions, like the Red Room at Raymond Vineyards. But the root of his ire are the wealthy individuals, particularly from Texas (which made me laugh), who, having accumulated their fortune elsewhere, move on Napa like they would any land ripe for development and profit taking.

Conaway’s crosshairs here fall on Craig Hall, owner of HALL Wines and one time part owner of the Dallas Cowboys. Conaway laughs at the décor at Hall’s winery, calls his wine “another overripe cabernet sauvignon reaching for cult status,” and delivers a selective biography with emphasis on Hall’s shortcomings. But Hall’s principal sin is Walt Ranch, a vineyard project, potentially including some other development, which would level thousands of oak trees and steal the water supply from a community of innocent retirees.

While I take issue with Conaway’s unwillingness to take a serious look at opposing viewpoints and his tendency to disparage those he disagrees with, I ultimately come down on his side. Napa is a finite resource and there has to be a line drawn when it comes to development.

A few final comments on the structure of Napa at Last Light.

I admire Conaway’s non-linear approach, but it jumps around a bit too much. The storylines converge and diverge, characters appear and disappear, making it hard to keep everything straight—although the moments when everything clicks together are rewarding. There’s something to be said, too, for simple expression. There’s no need, in my view, for opaque sentences like this one from the first chapter: “The essence of a thing that by virtue of excellence testifies to an aspirational ethos promptly loses it by embracing brand, which is primarily the assertion that one has arrived, whether or not one really has.“

My Recommendation
Napa at Last Light is one-sided and pessimistic, but strangely, still a great read. And few books are timelier. With a major vote on what some consider the fate of Napa to occur in June (for a great overview, see Esther Mobley’s recent article), Conaway’s book is essential background reading that’ll give you at least half the argument.