The Great Wines of America: The Top Forty Vintners, Vineyards, and Vintages

Paul Lukacs' lusciously readable volume is a tribute to American wine, and its very existence is a tribute to American wine drinkers. As he observes, it's a book that "[o]nly a generation ago...would have been regarded as a joke." [p.13} Of course, a generation ago was the ego-mad, lightly-smoked seventies when anything seemed posssible. In that generation, a few hundred Americans invested their time and their money in making wines and some of those wines ended up among the world's best. Lukacs' book consists of forty portraits that are more about winemakers and winegrowers than about the wines themselves. No matter. Their quixotic vision attached to a modest and very earthy end-a bottle of wine- makes for forty very interesting heroes and heroines. These are the people who invested lives and fortunes in wine at a time when that investment seemed romantic to very few Americans. When they began, they had little reason to believe that great wine was possible and not much reason for thinking that their countrymen would ever care about it if it were. But interesting or even compelling subjects aren't enough to make a good book, and Lukacs's prose is, like a good wine, well balanced and generous. He wears his extensive knowledge of wine graciously and shares it easily. It's no small part of the book's charm that every chapter is loaded with information about the history and culture of wine so that the book ends up as worth studying as well as browsing. Having written a wine book myself, I appreciate the difficulty of the job. Best of all, the individual chapters are an endorsement for the idea that there is serious purpose in simple pleasures. The Great Wines of America belongs on the same shelf, and a bit ahead of, Butler's Lives of the Saints. While Butler's saints are often difficult people, and their virtue something of a rebuke to the believing reader, Lukacs's pioneers are people we could imagine being ourselves. When they succeed, we do too. And besides, between saints and winemakers, who would you rather spend your time with?

This is a carefully focused look at the best of current American wines and wineries. The subtitle makes it clear that the wineries (and the vintners) share equal billing with the wines. The book is not intended to be read from front to back, but rather to be looked at from time to time, to learn more about a particular grape variety or wine-growing region. The author has visited each winery, explains how it came into being, and quotes extensively the key persons involved with its success. The reasons for selecting the particular wine become evident as the chapter on it and the winery making it unfolds. The chapters are all about ten pages long, including a page of maps and a page giving the label and notes on vintages to buy and when they will be at their best. The very long editorial review given above misses some key points. Perhaps the author simply read the book straight through (not what is intended, as noted above). However the chapter on Stone Hill Norton hardly could have been studied very carefully. Norton is the only grape variety in the book that is native to the U.S. It is not an eastern, labrusca, variety. Unless you have tried it (I have) you cannot seriously make an comparison of it with a "lush" cabernet sauvignon. The two grapes simply are different. They each can be truly outstanding, but not identical. The editorial reviewer does make one accurate point: the chapters indeed ALL are informational. But that is the purpose of the book. The repetition claimed by that reviewer is so that the reader can start with any wine of interest. The variety of approaches used by the author are calibrated to the variety of wineries, some with a long history others very recent, some corporate and others small and family run. There are many lists of "best" wines. They all give only brief justifications for the selections. This book does much more. It will be rewarding reading for novices and experts, alike.