Nonfiction
Kermit Lynch, Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France.
Join Kermit Lynch, one of the U.S.’s most respected wine importers, as he visits his French producers and brings their personalities (and his) into the wines. M.K.L. Fisher wrote that it is “one of the pleasantest and truest books about wine I’ve ever read.” While first published nearly 33 years ago, it remains an excellent read: well-written, insightful, opinionated and funny. We suggest getting the 25th Anniversary edition.
Sergio Esposito, Passion on the Vine: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Family in the Heart of Italy.
Esposito was born in Naples then immigrated with his family to Albany. He opened New York City’s Italian Wine Merchants 1999, a shop committed to importing and offering to the American market traditionally-made Italian wines. In 2004, months after his second child was born, Esposito, his wife, two young children and his parents left for a two and a half month wine-buying tour of Italy. This is their adventure, sharing food and wine with now iconic winemakers from Barolo to Sicily with a return to visit relatives in Naples wedged between.
Terry Theise, Reading Between the Wines.
As a wine importer, Terry Theise mainstreamed Austrian and German wines as well as grower-Champagnes. He is also a gifted writer. In this book, he argues that “wine can be a portal to aesthetic, emotional, even mystical experience― and he . . . asserts that these experiences are most likely to be inspired by wines from artisan producers.”
Patricia Atkinson. The Ripening Sun: One Woman and the Creation of a Vineyard.
Have you dreamed about moving to France and making your own wine? It’s hard. Atkinson did it; her first harvest failed. The relationships that Atkinson develops among her Bergerac neighbors and winemakers provide the sustenance that have kept her there for 30+ years. Atkinson’s Clos d’Yvigne is enjoyed by Bruno in one of Martin Walker’s mysteries (below).
Fiction
Two series set in the South of France are must-reads for those who enjoy mysteries: M.L. Longworth’s Verlaque and Bonnet series (10 books as of 2022) set in Aix-en-Provence and its environs, and Martin Walker’s Bruno series set in Perigord (16 books). Food and wine feature frequently in both. Start with book one in each series and make new friends of the characters who repeat.