Real Wine: The Rediscovery of Natural Winemaking

by Patrick Matthews

Book Overview

In the world of wine, high-tech is going out of fashion and great wine estates are going back to simple, non-interventionist techniques, banishing chemical sprays from the vineyard and additives from... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1840002573
• ISBN13: 9781840002577
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Mitchell Beazley
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Great for Wine

This book is the antidote to a world of soulless, manufactured, Parkerized, fruit bombs. If you like to buy wine based only on "points" or if you like oaky, butterball Chardonnay this will be a real eye-opener. After reading it, I could only wish that it be required reading for all Wine Spectator subscribers. I think that after reading this book many people would appreciate that great wine is wine with character, wine that reflects where it comes from. This point is central to real enjoyment of wine which can be as much intellectual as sensual. The author tells an engaging well-researched story with a provocative point of view. On the flip side, while I appreciate his taking a stand, he comes off with an almost blind hero-worship of all things French. A reflection of this is his belief that great wine is only made in limestone soils. The counter-examples to this are endless, including many of the best wines in the New World, Rochioli vineyard comes to mind. But while I might occasionally disagree with minor points, the author's advocacy of "natural wine" is compelling.In the midst of fascinating personal anecdotes the author manages to let readers in on the internal debates surrounding great wine, revealing the artistic and philosophical quandaries that the wine world faces today. This is a great book for anyone who loves wine

A thought-provoking read.

Many books on winemaking attempt to reduce a complex topic into a 'cookbook' approach to making wine. Instead, Matthews delves into the philosophical issues of what makes a 'real' wine. The goal is to understand how personal taste can be translated into the grape-growing and winemaking process.In the late 1990s, there has been a revival of natural methods that counter the industrial approach to winemaking. This book is centered on the tension between approaches to making wine that are used in the old world and new world. To illustrate this tension, this book focuses is mainly on California, where where is currently a swing back to more natural methods where there is currently a swing back to more natural methods although winemakers use both approaches. Some of the topics covered include: What is the role of terroir (site selection) in making wine? How do you choose which grapes to grow? How does one go about planting the vineyard? What makes some wine 'good' and some wine 'bad'?Matthews' book is thought-provoking. It is well worth buying if you are interested in wines and winemaking and some of the tradeoffs that winemakers are making in their search for wine that embodies the soul of the earth from which the grapes grow.