Fall has brought a windfall of great books celebrating wine, cocktails, and drinks culture.
Feel in need of a cellar re-fresh? Then Dan Keeling’s Pick Your Bottles has got you covered; David Gleave’s insider guide to Barolo & Barbaresco, meanwhile, is an essential read for any lover of Italian wine. A Story of Gastronomy & Wine goes behind the scenes of Chateau Haut-Brion’s extraordinary memorabilia collection, while The Cocktail Hour and The Goto Bartender’s Guide will both have you thirsting.
A Story of Gastronomy & Wine: Château Haut-Brion Library
Bordeaux’s Château Haut-Brion isn’t just a legendary first-growth – it’s also home to the largest private collection of antiquarian wine and gastronomy books, artworks, and artefacts in the world. That collection is now the subject of a high-spec new book by Rizzoli New York, being produced in partnership with Haut-Brion proprietor HRH Prince Robert of Luxembourg.
One hundred and fifty prize pieces from the estate’s treasure trove of books, menus, wine lists, letters, and manuscripts have been re-produced with accompanying text by the Brazilian art historian and curator Petro Corrêa do Lago.
Curiosities include a sixth-century Egyptian papyrus and a letter written by a companion of Joan of Arc, as well as menus from Louis XIV’s Versailles and a handwritten note on wine by Pablo Picasso. There are letters from Winston Churchill and Pope John XXIII expanding on the joys of champagne, and technical drawings from wine-focused research of Louis Pasteur; a sideways look at the famously gourmand Louis XVIII (who, as we learn, consumed no less than 14 fish dishes on a ‘fast’ day) and a spread simply devoted to the beauty of apples.
The visual pacing is excellent – there’s lot to please the eye. And entries are grouped by theme: ‘Diplomacy and Gastronomy;’ ‘The Food and Wines of America;’ ‘The Art of The Butler,’ which allows you to dip in and out.
Naturally, the book also tells the story of the 500-year-old estate itself, which was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson, who visited in 1787. This is an absolute feast of a book that any owner will re-visit again and again.
$85, strandbooks.com
The Goto Bartenders Guide by Kenta Goto and Noah Rothbaum
No cocktail book this year has made me keener to get out my shaker than this gorgeous, gold-bound guide by Kenta Goto, owner-bartender of the celebrated Japanophile Bar Goto on New York’s Lower East Side.
Co-written with Noah Rothbaum (The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, The Whiskey Bible), it features a wealth of original – but still very do-able – classics inflected with the flavors of Japan: an Ume Paloma, a sake-laced Sakura Martini, a Shiso Gimlet, a Kumquat Whiskey Sour, a Sencha Highball. Japan’s shochu-based answer to the highball, the Chūhai, also appears in a number of mouthwatering guises, laced with lemon, lychee, and coffee.
The Tokyo-born son of a restaurateur and a kimono dealer, Goto approaches the preparation of drinks with a meticulousness that’s a hallmark of Japanese bartending. He gives very precise instructions, for example, regarding stirring (two rotations per second on average) and shaking (Boston shaker vs three-piece) “so nothing is left to chance.” And he also adapts these depending on whether the drink is being prepared in a professional bar or a domestic setting (where, he rightly argues, things such as ice can be very different).
But unlike many bartender-authored handbooks, he doesn’t resort to jargon or expect his reader to own a sous vide – Goto admits, rather charmingly, that at home he stirs his cocktails with a metal chopstick.
$45, barnesandnoble.com
Pick Your Bottles by Dan Keeling
Dan Keeling has made a career out of cherry-picking the good stuff – before he co-founded the London-based Noble Rot wine bar and publishing empire, he was a music A&R best-known for signing Coldplay to Parlophone. So Pick Your Bottles, his third book, makes compelling reading.
“I’ve focused on 100 wines I keep reaching for,” he explains in the introduction, “bottles that drink far better than their price suggests.” The emphasis is on smaller producers with, as he puts it, “a clear point of view.”
But don’t be put off by that price tag. Even if you are a La Romanée Conti collector (and as anyone who has read his last book, Who’s Afraid of Romanée Conti, will know, Keeling has drunk his fair share), this book has plenty to offer – each profile is full of color, insight and humor.
Featured winemakers range from Champagne’s Bereche & Fils and Tenerife’s Suertes del Marques to Californian new-waver Rajat Parr. There are also more off-piste entries for Chartreuse and retsina. Keeling tackles knotty questions such as what makes a wine ‘great’ – with a bit of help from Jarvis Cocker; value versus price; and shares insider tips for assessing a wine’s pedigree (clue: check the importer on the back label). Guaranteed to re-boot your wine-drinking, whatever your knowledge and budget.
$32, barnesandnoble.com
The World Wine Atlas 9th Edition by Hugh Johnsons MW, Jancis Robinson MW and Julia Harding MW
I own a whole wall of drinks books, but there are a few I turn to again and again. One of those is The World Wine Atlas, the peerless reference book by masters of wine Hugh Johnsons and Jancis Robinson (co-edited by Julia Harding MW). Now in its 9th edition, this vinous encyclopaedia combines detailed maps with entries on each region’s terroir, classifications, and key grapes.
The new edition features eighteen new maps, in addition to revised cartography, to reflect how the wine world has changed since the last edition, published in 2019. This includes the emergence of new winemaking regions in northern Europe partly as a result of climate change; two pages are now devoted to wine from Benelux, Scandinavia, and the Baltics. The Atlas also delves more deeply into issues including sustainability, and provides handy potted guides to the production of wine and its social and cultural history.
It lands at a time when more winegrowers are also championing indigenous grape varieties – so if you want to know your Xinomavro from your Žametovka and your Rkatsiteli from your Baga it is essential reading. A compelling snapshot of a wine industry, and a culture, that’s constantly in flux.
$69.90, bookshop.org
Barolo & Barbaresco – The Primacy of the Vine by David Gleave
David Gleave might not be well-known in the wider world, but in wine circles he renowned as the co-founder of Liberty Wines, arguably the top importer of fine Italian wine in the UK, and supplier to restaurants including the River Café. Since 1986, he has spent an average of three months a year in Italy, a country he adores – something I saw first-hand when I traveled with him around the Langhe (the home of Barolo and Barbaresco) several years ago. The winemakers there don’t just respect him but treat him as one of their own, making this an important contribution to the body of work on Italy’s most celebrate wine region.
It could have easily been a grandiose tome – and it’s true, it weighs a ton – but the tone of the book is conversational and even funny at times. The first chapter begins: “There is no better way of understanding the lie of the land than hopping on a bicycle.” There is also a glorious chapter at the end on ‘Eating in the Langhe,’ with restaurant recommendations and signature dishes.
The heart of this book is for serious oenophiles, with detailed entries on key producers including Gaja, Massolino, and Conterno, as well profiles of top vineyards, accompanied by granular notes on viticulture, winemaking, and terroir. You’ll also find everything you ever needed to know about Nebbiolo, the region’s signature grape.
£75, amazon.co.uk
The Cocktail Hour: A Drinker’s Companion by Tim Hayward
I must declare an interest here – Tim Hayward is a colleague of mine on the Financial Times, and I have been a long-time fan of his brilliant food columns and books. This, his latest effort, is a hymn to the cocktail hour, written very much in the spirit – as he’s the first to admit – of the enthusiastic amateur. One of my all-time favorite drinks books, Everyday Drinking by Kingsley Amis, is in a similar vein – witty, opinionated, a bit rambling at times, in a way that makes you thirsty.
Hayward is a stickler for details, and his Instagram account is full of experiments comparing chilling rates in martinis, sizing up bartools, and stress-testing ingredients. And his book, likewise, delves joyfully into the minutiae of each step (to the extent that I’d suggest only sitting down to read it once you actually have a drink in hand). His quest for the perfect glass sees him scouring vintage catalogues, re-watching Hitchcock movies, and taking numerous forays onto Ebay, before a friend scouting for him stateside finally tracks down the ultimate vintage set in a junk shop in Tallahassee.
Classic cocktail recipes are loosely grouped by family – Sours, Italianos, Southerners – and accompanied by Hayward’s own photographs, along with entries rich in historical detail and amusing anecdote. A joyful, unapologetically bibulous hymn to 6 o’clock.
$26.99, crateandbarrel.com
