Book & Film Reviews

In a hedonistic description of Pinot Noir, Haeger quotes Joe Fleishman writing in Vanity Fair magazine: “At their best, pinot noirs are the most romantic of wines, with so voluptuous a perfume, so sweet an edge, and so powerful a punch that, like falling in love, they make the blood run hot and the soul wax embarrassingly poetic.” It is a true pity that the same varietal has also experienced far less than adequate oeno- logical coverage until now. Filling the void to overflowing, Haeger’s masterful text stands as a veritable gold standard in the field. Using the wines of Burgundy as a historical benchmark, and launching point, Haeger traces the historical development of Pinot Noir and the initial challenges it presented to North American wine makers. They mistakenly treated the varietal in the same manner as other red wines, notably among them Cabernet Sauvignon. As Haeger is quick to point out, the mistake here was that Pinot Noir, vis à vis other reds, is generally appreciably lower in tannins and notably higher in acidity. Once these fundamental differences were taken into account, the development of acceptable, good, and exceptional Pinot Noirs was well underway. And the trend continues uninterrupted. The book is encyclopedic in its coverage, namely: a comparison of Burgundian and North American Pinot Noirs; the broad areas of production in California, Oregon, and Canada: , in California, the Southern Central Coast, the Greater Salinas Valley, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Los Carneros, the Russian River Valley, and the True Sonoma Coast; in Oregon, the famed Willamette Valley; the Okanagan wine producing area that lies just beyond the American-Canadian border, about half way between the Continental Divide and Vancouver; and the Greater South Shore of Lake Ontario. These regions comprise over 95% of North American Pinot Noir. The remaining areas include the Pacific Pinot Zone in California, that lies to the north of San Luis Obispo; the Southwest, also in California; and, finally, the Mid-Atlantic States that include Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. Each of the major wine regions is described meticulously in terms of its history as well as its terrain, terroir, and general descriptions of the vineyards therein. In a final part of this section of the book, Haeger compares the various major regions in terms of Size, Climate, Growing season, Soil content, Altitude, and the wines that are produced in each. There is also a very informative section on the development of Pinot Noir clones both in Burgundy and in North America. As Haeger puts it, the cloning of grapevines (here, Pinot Noir, in particular, although it is part of a more general viticultural issue) “…developed as one by-product of a more fundamental interest in growing healthy vine plants capable of producing commercially viable quantities of good fruit, in the face of growing threats from viral and other diseases.”

Individual wine regions are described in detail, each replete with maps and the specific or individual wine making practices, as well as the profiles of six dozen key producers; in addition, information is provided about: the varietal as developed at each of the wineries; extensive and detailed tasting notes of each of the multiple vineyards belonging to the winery; the wine growing and winemaking processes; upcoming Pinot Noir producers or ones to note in the future; finding enjoyable Pinot Noirs; and a delightfully written and very useful guide to the successful pairing of Pinot Noirs with food. One great challenge is pairing Pinot Noir correctly with seafood dishes. Haeger agrees with the notable Chicago chef, Charlie Trotter, that adding meat, meat stock, or mushrooms to the preparation serves to make the dish more Pinot Noir “friendly.” In summary, Haeger’s treatise on North American wine is a must read for oenophiles the world-over. As such, it serves the dual purpose of a very enjoyable piece of prose; as well as being a most valuable reference source for information about the history and vicissitudes of North American Pinot Noir.

Professor Thomas Pinney’s A History of Wine in America provides a magisterial overview of wine in America since Prohibition. His coverage is broad and detailed. He travels region by region throughout the United States dealing with industry trends, consumer behavior, individual personalities and public policy. The narrative steps year-by-year through the decades, dealing with the crises of an industry that struggled to establish an identity and secure an economic role in a society that was mostly indifferent or actively hostile. It also chronicles the industry’s unsteady growth as the consumer base expanded and production adapted to the specific demands of the market. With its breadth of coverage his treatment is a welcome addition to the more narrowly focused literature such as James Lapsley’s Bottled Poetry: Napa Winemaking from Prohibition to the Modern Era, to which Pinney makes regular reference.

Together with his previous volume, which covered the period up to Prohibition, Professor Pinney has now made available the story of five centuries of wine in America. The previous book covered several centuries; this book covers eight decades. But these 80 years witnessed a transformation from devastation to desolation and on to a pain- fully fitful recreation of the American wine industry into something that had not existed before. Pinney concentrates on wine production in America and American consumption of American wine. There is little global context and he mentions U.S. wine imports only in passing and mostly ignores U.S. wine exports, which have (as he notes on page 340) become important recently. The 369 tightly packed pages of narrative are accompanied by 110 pages of endnotes, 25 pages of published and unpublished sources, and a 25-page index. The endnotes and list of sources provide a wealth of detail for the committed reader. The book is a narrative filled with data and stories of the people responsible for the modern wine industry in America and one imagines that there are more stories that the author could have shared.

The drama begins with the text of the Volstead Act, which appears on page one. Pinney mentions in passing that besides being the author of Prohibition in the United States, Vol- stead was best known as a supporter of farm interests in the Midwest. He does not note the irony of the agricultural destruction that the Volstead wrought or that Volstead was also the co-author of the Capper-Volstead Act, which provided the core legal support for farmer cooperatives, which became so important to the development of the wine industry a few years later. In Chapter 3, Pinney establishes the importance of cooperative wineries in the regeneration of the industry, especially in production of bulk wines that were a major force in the industry in the 1930s and for many years thereafter.

Pinney shows us how even Prohibition was not able to destroy the wine industry altogether as the remnants struggled to maintain some viability while they waited for the experiment to end. For the growers and wineries that survived Prohibition the post- Prohibition period was almost as difficult. New ventures entered, market prices fluctuated and the industry struggled with the Great Depression, much as did the rest of agriculture. The 1940s brought relief, as they did for other farm industries and during the war years higher prices created a short-lived prosperity. While not explicitly stated, the facts recounted indicate how much the wine industry is a part of agriculture, and how its history and fortune is linked to that of fruit and vegetable processing and marketing more generally.

The development of the wine industry for almost four decades, from the 1930s to the 1960s, was a struggle with disappointment following enthusiasm for those interested in creating a substantial wine market and wine culture in America. For many years much of the industry, that centered in the Central Valley of California, relied on sales of fortified wines – port, muscatel and sherry. This market encouraged the production of high-yielding low cost grapes and the use of raisin grapes as a major part of the crush. Sales of table wines were a minor part of the whole and were associated with the coast of California. Even in the 1960s, as table wine began to replace the fortified wines in the mix, much of the new demand was in the form of flavored wines or wine coolers, which also drew on very low-price grapes. It was not until the late 1960s and 1970s that what we now think of as the wine revolution in American finally took hold.

Just as the economic fortunes of the wine industry tracked that of other horticultural crops, so did the periodic use of public policies to enhance prices. Unlike the farm subsidies typical for grains, direct government payments were not available. Instead growers used various supply control schemes to limit production or shift it off the wine market and thereby raise prices. While details varied, each attempt was short lived at best and brought little relief. Advocates simply found no effective collective mechanism to limit supplies that was strong enough to counter the private incentives to maintain or expand production.

One theme of the book is the use of research, technology and innovation to build the winegrape and wine industry. The emphasis on both quantity and quality was a hallmark of systematic research and industry innovation. As the industry grew and adapted, it could not rely on centuries of tradition to guide the choice of varieties, locations and produc- tion practices. While individual growers and winemakers did considerable work, university researchers, in Washington state, at Cornell and a few other schools in the east, and espe- cially at the University of California, initially at Berkeley and later at Davis, came to play the central role in providing systematic research to support the industry. The tradition, reaching back to Hilgard in the 1880s, was renewed under Cruess and continued by Joslin, Amerine and Winkler, to name a few. Their work was not isolated to the laboratory or the field experiment. They participated actively in industry affairs and were increasingly relied upon by growers and winemakers. In the east with a much smaller industry and therefore much less institutional support, individual innovators, sometimes with informal networks of collaborators, developed practical information for their own use and that of their neighbors. For those outside California, major concerns were cold climates and con- ditions inhospitable to vinifera grapes. Steady progress allowed the gradual development of the Eastern wine industry, which now has devoted local customers and a strong base of activity in almost every state.

Despite market growth, Pinney develops a recurring motif of disappointment with wine consumers in the United States. First, he is dismayed that most American consumers do not appreciate wine at all or do not appreciate “quality wine” as much as they should. Sometimes, he attributes this failure to the wine industry for neglecting to cultivate a solid consumer base. At other times, this failure seems to be attributed to fundamental features of American history and culture. A second disappointment is that parts of the industry and some wine aficionados appear to appreciate too much “quality.” The final pages of the final chapter make explicit the author’s views. He longs for a wine culture in which wines he enjoys can be available at prices he can afford on a daily basis, and he wishes that more Americans shared this appreciation. He disdains the “idea that wine is inseparable from the worst forms of conspicuous consumption…” (pp. 368–69). And, he links the failure to cultivate a broad customer base for every day table wines with the emphasis, at least among those most closely associated with wine publicity, on wines for only the wealthy few or the special occasion.

Economists will find this an interesting and useful book, but this is not an economic history in that there is little economic analysis of historical events. For example, in account- ing for “the Big Change” in the industry that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, Pinney outlines numerous hypotheses and concludes that they all may have contributed. But, the idea of quantifying the contributions of income growth versus some broader cultural shift or improved grape varieties or wine making techniques does not appear on his agenda. Throughout the narrative economic issues arise, but economic questions are neither posed nor answered. No book can do everything and there is much work left for the economic historian of the wine industry.

In a break with much academic writing in economics at least, Professor Pinney makes little attempt to maintain a veneer of objectivity. His personal priorities color the story from the start. He champions the cause of wine in America and, despite its ups and downs, the story he tells is one of progress and optimism. He is clear that the forces for “good” are those that foster a successful industry and the forces for ill are those that interrupt the flow of progress. He wants consumers to value “quality” and he wants the industry to lead consumers to this ideal. He likes the idea of small personal wineries, but he appreciates that, in America, the large firms have often produced innovation and the bulk of the wine that is affordable for daily consumption. These views are not always explicit, but they are not far below the surface and the reader is not confused about where the author stands.

Economists will also find small frustrations scattered throughout. These include the casual use of statistics and a dearth of charts or tables. In many places the narrative would have flowed more naturally with reference to a time series chart or table of price or tonnage comparisons across regions. Instead, the text is encumbered with lists of selected numbers that leave the reader thirsty for a more systematic treatment. And, when economic trends and comparisons are considered, there are periodic slip-ups. For example, in comparing winegrape prices in California between 1968 and 1978, no accounting is made for the effects of general inflation during a period of very rapid climb in the general price level. When the author says, “In 1968, to take that year as a starting point, the average price per ton of wine grapes in California was $71; a decade later, in 1978, it had tripled to $210” (p. 232). The author and many readers will know that this statement mixes changes over time in the relative price of wine grapes, changes over time in the composition of wine grapes by variety and by region as well as the overall change in the price level. Unfortu- nately, while not affecting the basic message, such neglect makes it harder for readers to appreciate what was actually happening during this period.

For wine economists, A History of Wine in America will be fascinating and informative. It will also generate hypotheses and supply ideas for understanding the current situation of the wine industry on a global basis. The list of cited works and sources and the detailed footnotes will supply leads to follow up for further study. But, the most enjoyable feature of this history will be the wine industry stories, and more of them would have been even better.

Anyone who is fairly serious about wine — from the relatively casual collector to the most knowledgeable oenophile — will tend to be skeptical about a commercial movie, particu- larly a Hollywood studio movie, in which wine consumption plays a central role. But very early in Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” when Miles (Paul Giamatti) — a sad-sack, failed writer of novels and a lover of the grape — explains to his friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) — a good-looking but over-the-hill television actor — how a white sparkling wine (1992 Byron) can be made from 100% Pinot Noir grapes and yet not exhibit even a tinge of red color, the first evidence appears that this movie about wine may have gotten it right.

That verdict was cemented for me just a few scenes later when the friends are driving through a bucolic countryside of vineyards in Santa Barbara County, at the beginning of what is to be a week-long bachelor party for the two in wine country prior to Jack’s wedding, where they eventually meet up with love-interests, Maya (Virginia Madsen) and Stephanie (Sandra Oh). Miles recommends a local winery to visit because of its excellent Chardonnay, at which suggestion Jack says, “I thought you hated Chardonnay.”

Miles quickly responds, “I like all varietals. I just don’t generally like the way they manipulate Chardonnay in California — too much oak and secondary malolactic fermentation.” At that moment, in a dark theater in Brookline, Massachusetts, I turned to my wife and said, “This is going to be good!” And it was … the first time I saw it, the second time, and the third time (which was at home with friends and a meal and a set of wines to accompany each of the scenes).

This is a seriously good movie, indeed an excellent one, the most recent of a long line of “road movies” that themselves are part of a “road literature” that includes Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But back to the movie, and the wine.

In “Sideways,” Miles is a classic oenophile, even if most of us would prefer not to be identified with a character who is (otherwise) distinctly unattractive in so many dimensions. But Miles gives himself away with his assessment of the nose of the first wine he and Jack taste at the first winery they visit (which was in reality, Sanford): “… a little citrus… maybe some strawberry… passion fruit… and there’s a hint of like asparagus… or like a nutty Edam cheese.”

With such descriptions of wine — and that’s only the first of many in the film — it may come as a surprise that there is no mention, none whatsoever, of wine ratings, those numerical assessments popularized in the United States by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate and The Wine Spectator. Long discussions in the film about specific wines — old and new — never mention ratings. Why? A clue is found in the novel on which the movie is based, Rex Pickett’s excellent novel of the same name, published in 2004 (St. Martin’s Press).

In the book, when Miles is packing for his trip, he tosses into his suitcase a copy of Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine (Oxford University, 1999), which he describes as the “brilliant and exhaustive tome on everything you ever wanted to know about the universe of wine. … I wanted to have with me the one book that had supplied me with all the basics of my one undying passion…” So, Jancis Robinson is his guru. And if you have read Robinson’s entertaining autobiography, Tasting Pleasure: Confessions of a Wine Lover (Viking, 1997), you know of her complete disdain for numerical ratings.

For those who have not yet seen the film, let me offer a checklist of wines that make appearances, some only very briefly. If you are able to identify every one of these in the film, you deserve to open a particularly good bottle tonight from your cellar: 1992 Byron Sparkling, Sanford Vin Gris, Kalyra Chardonnay, Kalyra Cabernet Franc, Fiddlehead Sau- vignon Blanc, 2001 Whitcraft Pinot Noir (Santa Maria Valley), Sea Smoke Botella Pinot Noir, Kistler Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, Latour Pommard 1er Cru, Hitching Post Bien Nacido Pinot Noir, Hitching Post Highliner Pinot Noir, Andrew Murray Syrah, and 1961 Cheval Blanc.

Another challenge: seven wineries appear in the film, but their real names are not used. It is not impossible to identify them: Andrew Murray, Fess Parker, Fiddlehead, Firestone, Foxen, Kalyra, and Sanford.

Enough questions. Here are some answers, although to other questions. For the readers of this journal, I offer some wine trivia from “Sideways:”

Most of the wine used in the wine-tasting scenes was non-alcoholic, and the actors wound up drinking so much of it that it made them nauseated. Hence, they had to switch periodically to the real thing.

The picture that Miles looks at when at his mother’s home is actually a photo of Paul Giamatti and his father, Bart Giamatti, former Yale president and Major League Baseball commissioner.

The 1961 Cheval Blanc that Miles is saving for a special occasion is blended from Merlot and Cabernet Franc, the two grape varietals that Miles specifically denigrates in the film.

Anecdotal evidence, as reported by the international press, indicates that subsequent to the film’s release, sales of Pinot Noir increased by between 20% and 500% in various mar- kets.

The film’s cheery advertising poster portrays a bottle on its side, suggesting that the title, “Sideways,” refers to the cellar position of a wine bottle. But Rex Pickett’s novel makes clear from the first page that “sideways” is the characters’ slang for drunk. And, in truth, the novel is considerably more forthright and darker about the alcoholism that is very much a part of the story: Miles drinks to excess, particularly to drown his frequent sorrows.

Having said that, let me end with what is surely a high-point of the film, both for lovers of wine, and lovers in general. Maya asks Miles why he is so into Pinot Noir. His response, which is both moving and revealing, is this:

I don’t know. It’s a hard grape to grow. As you know. It’s thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It’s not a survivor like Cabernet that can grow anywhere and thrive even when neglected. Pinot needs constant care and attention and in fact can only grow in specific little tucked-away cor- ners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing growers can do it really, can tap into Pinot’s most fragile, delicate qualities. Only when someone has taken the time to truly understand its potential can Pinot be coaxed into its fullest expression. And when that happens, its flavors are the most haunting and brilliant and subtle and thrilling and ancient on the planet.

On hearing this, Maya’s heart opens to Miles for the first time. A few moments later, it’s Miles turn to ask Maya why she is into wine. Her answer:

I like to think about the life of wine, how it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing, how the sun was shining that summer or if it rained… what the weather was like. I think about all those people who tended and picked the grapes, and if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I love how wine continues to evolve, how every time I open a bottle it’s going to taste different than if I had opened it on any other day. Because a bottle of wine is actually alive — it’s constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks — like your ‘61 — and begin its steady, inevitable decline… And it tastes so fucking good.

Now Miles is swept away. And so am I.

George Taber has written much more than a book about a wine tasting. Sure, the Judgment of Paris must be the most famous organized wine tasting of all time. And sure, California cabernet and chardonnay wines topped fine French products on French soil with French judges at a time when such an outcome (1976) was considered impossible by everyone- not just the French!

But Taber’s book is more than the story of a wine tasting. In the same way that Sea Bis- cuit is more than a story about a horse race and The Jackie Robinson Story is more than a story about baseball, Judgment of Paris is the story of the development of the California wine industry and of the personalities who made it happen. If ever a story about wine could rise above the ubiquitous “cooking, wine, and spirits” category and find a wider public, this is it.

As the only journalist present for this historic event, Taber, a long time business reporter who was then at Time magazine, is uniquely situated to set the record straight. Taber tells his story by following the history of the two men who made the winning American wines: Mike Grgich, then winemaker at Chateau Montelena, who produced the chardonnay, and Warren Winiarski, founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, who produced the cabernet. Both these men have wonderful, classic American life stories of movement from nothing to something. Mike Grgich (born in Croatia 82 years ago as Miljenko Grgic?) arrived in the Napa Valley on a Greyhound bus in the summer of 1958 via Canada, where he had immi- grated in the hopes of a better life (and with $32 sewn into a shoe!) Warren Winiarski, for- merly a lecturer at the University of Chicago in their (now defunct) Great Books program, followed Route 66 to California with his wife and two young children with the same goal. Both men certainly had some familiarity with the products they were about to produce, but this was a far cry from what you can learn in a university today in Davis, Bordeaux, or Roseworthy (the famous enology program in Australia).

We learn a lot about the paths these men take and how they ended up being in the right place at the right time. Some of the common features of their good fortune seem almost eerie. Though Robert Mondavi gets a whole chapter devoted to him, the name that crops up over and over is J. Leland (Lee) Stewart. Amazingly, both Grgich’s and Winiarski’s first jobs in Napa were as assistants to Stewart. Connected to the Stanford family, Stewart’s Souverain Vineyard provided some of the finest early examples of Napa cabernet sauvi- gnon. (I have recently tasted Souverain cabernets from the 1960’s that remain delicious.) These early days in the Napa Valley were days of cooperation, conviviality, and a lot of learning by doing.

The research behind Taber’s writing is truly staggering. Taber tracks down the story behind the winemakers of all the wines in the competition, both American and French. We learn that the Veedercrest Chardonnay in the competition was made by Al Baxter, a bohe- mian spirit if ever there was one, who was a Professor of Philosophy at Berkeley and the author of the mystery novel Stay Me with Flagons! (The wine didn’t do so well, however, ranking 9th out of 10.)

There is a big payoff to Taber’s research, and especially to his felicitous writing style. We see it best in Chapter 19, where he tells the story of the “Stunning Upset.” Taber does two things admirably in this chapter. First, he sets the record straight. (Here I have a dis- claimer to make: I have published my own statistical analysis of the results of this wine tasting at http://www.liquidasset.com/tasting.html. As Taber correctly points out, however, the official tabulation did not include the scores of the English and American judges, who organized the event, while mine did! Though the overall results are not altered by this change, I am happy to stand corrected.) As Taber says, “…a whole mythology about the tasting grew up…as people in both California and Franc embellished the event….In fact, my major objective in writing this book was to set the record straight.”

And then Taber brings to life the complex interaction of the judges and their own reac- tions to the wines. Standing like a fly on the wall, while the judges tasted the wines blindly, Taber reports, “I soon realized that the judges were becoming totally confused. The panel couldn’t tell the difference between the French ones and those from California.” And, as they say, the rest is history.