Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France

You’ll learn more about wine in the first chapter of this book than most full volumes on the subject. The writing is clear and elegant. If you want to understand what France has to teach the world about wine, this classic is the best place to start. Every page is sensory perfection.

It is so nice to find someone so down to earth, realistic and at the same time picky about what makes them happy in wine. He does not "score" wine, he tells you, in a beautiful manner why he likes the wines. How the back stories, mystery and people that work the land, are therefore shaped by it make wine enjoyable not an arbitrary number assigned by a certain person in Monkton, Maryland. The French attitude toward wine has morphed, even since the writing of this book, with the globalization of tastes propagated by scores and a general "sameness" with everything in our world. However living 20 minutes from Kermit Lynch's wine shop in Berkeley, I can promise you that he has not bent to any market trends, and after reading this book, perhaps neither will you.

Kermit Lynch is an importer of artisanally made wines. His book is both a diary of his search for wines of authentic character throughout France and a manifesto in defense of an ethic of winemaking that is falling out of fashion. The wines Lynch adores are not always the greatest wines in the world, but there is a certain idiosynchratic appeal to them. They are crafted according to a philosophy that abhors chemical or mechanical adulterants and emphasizes minimal human intervention during the wines' elevation in cellars. Consequently, when nature cooperates, they are expressive of the subtlest elements of their vineyards' terrain, and they taste best with the cuisine prepared where they are grown. But they are risky to make and must be sold in a marketplace that seldom rewards the effort.Lynch's best chapters are his entries on Provence, the Rhone, and Chablis, which give readers a clear sense of what these wines ought to taste like, how the regions' winemaking traditions have evolved over time, and what differentiates extraordinary examples from underachievers. Each chapter focuses on a handful of producers recalcitrant to change with whom Lynch has longstanding relationships. His analysis, with winemaking scion Gerard Chave, of the component parts of the legendary J. L. Chave Hermitage (one of the best wines in the world) might be the most vivid deconstruction of a taste ever put into words. The chapter on Provence is one of Lynch's more saccharine entries -- his ties to the family behind Bandol's Domaine Tempier are personal, and Lynch introduced and evangelized this hitherto obscure wine to American markets -- but it makes an eloquent case in favor of the rustic and less glamorous country wines of France. True to Lynch's evident loyalties, then, the chapter on the gold standard of French wine, Bordeaux, is among the weakest in the book, focusing on a small producer in Graves unrepresentative of the sprawling aristocratic estates that characterize the region. It tells a charming story, but it is only a footnote to the story of Bordeaux.Lynch, to his credit, seldom romanticizes his work and does not disguise that he is a businessman who seeks these wines because he loves them but also because it is his trade. Because he has carved out for himself a small market for specialties in a large industry increasingly tending towards uniformity, his interests differ from most importers', inspiring him to remark that he sometimes feels more like a historical preservationist than a winebuyer. Wherever Lynch travels he is as likely to be disillusioned by a once-illustrious producer succumbing to cheap shortcuts as he is to find a truly special product he can sell with a clean conscience to customers who trust his name as a talisman of authenticity. He betrays his commercial interests somewhat by drafting some passages almost as advertisements for his wines, most of which don't need it, and also by repeatedly condemning the practice among American and Engli

This is an older book now (1987), but it is timeless in its content and an important read for anyone who wants to understand more about the wines of France and the story behind them. Wine is an agricultural product, produced by farmers. There is not a lot of glamor in the production of wine - it is hard work and full of frustration, as the producers have to deal with a variety of uncontrollable factors - weather, unreasonable reviewers, fickle consumers, etc.In Adventures... Kermit Lynch gives us a highly personal view of the lives of some of the more colorful wine characters he has come to know in his annual wine-buying travels to France. These profiles are informative and entertaining and provide a backdrop to a better understanding and appreciation of wine. The book travels through the major wine-producing regions of France and peppered throughout each chapter are Kermit's views on many aspects of wine production, distribution and marketing. Reading this book in the early 21st century one understands the profound effect this important wine merchant has had on the business of wine, over the past 15 years.I have read this book twice and will re-read it everytime I travel to France in the future - both to help me remember which vineyards to seek out, but also as a reminder of how to engage with the vignerons I meet - every vigneron has a story - they are all different and all are worth listening to.Kermit introduces us to several of these stories and I hope some day he writes a sequel. In the meantime, this is one of my favourite all-time reads.

I picked up Adventures on the Wine Route from my book shelf again tonight after about a year. You know, it's not one of my favorite wine books. It's one of my favorite books. He has a very simple but effective formula of a strong engaging, passionate voice, he's a consummate storyteller, and you know what? He can write. That's what it comes down to. Can you tell a story? Can you write dialogue so the tempo and phrasing are true to life, as well as the words. Can you describe a man, a scene, a frustration? Can you make your reader feel it? Just in setting down a simple anecdote, Lynch has an elegantly subtle touch, no less than some of the wines he praises.

The most enjoyable book on wine I know, and one of the few that provides a warm human side to wine. Kermit Lynch describes 20 years of voyages through France looking for wine to import for his store in Berkeley, CA and his experiences along the way. The stories range from unbelievably crazy, to frustratingly French, to warm and touching. Through all these experiences, Kermit Lynch succeeds in conveying the French culture and beauty of French wines and the people who make them. Kermit is one of the few Americans that seem to understand French wine and succeeds in conveying these differences and how to appreciate them. If planning a trip to France for wine tasting, this book is worth a 1000 guides who try to rate the wines on some scale of 5 stars or 100 points. It is not guide, but it offers understanding and human warmth that will enhance the enjoyment of French wines and French wineries.