One Thousand Vines: A New Way to Understand Wine

This boldly innovative book invites you to understand wine. Instead of a march through region by region, or grape by grape, sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier offers an ambitious, rewarding, and fresh approach which synthesizes knowledge from across a range of disciplines, from anthropology to geology to microbiology.

With nary a word to say about pairing any particular wine with any particular food, this book assumes and rewards a deep interest in wine. It casts its gaze forward to a world affected by climate change and aware of groundbreaking research in many fields.

One Thousand Vines consist of three sections:

• Reading Vines: their origins and domestication; the concept of cépage, a French term more expansive than variety; the vines themselves from roots to leaves to flowers to fruit; rootstocks and grafting; ecology both below and above ground

• Reading Landscapes: climate; geology, including rock varieties; terroir, explored as a social construct as well as a physical one; distribution routes; legally defined wine districts

• Reading Wines: how it is made; how it is tasted; how it is consumed

Were One Thousand Vines the work of a team of scholars, it would be impressive enough. The fact that it was written by a working sommelier announces a singularly important new voice in the world of wine writing.

Hardcover. Color photographs and maps throughout.