Description:
"I hope this book makes you thirsty." With these words, Joy Sterling, director of sales, marketing, and public relations at the family business, Sonoma County's Iron Horse Vineyards--concludes her introduction to A Vintner's Guide to Red Wine, her unabashedly opinionated, gossipy, not-even-close-to-all-inclusive, Sonoma-centric celebration of vin rouge. If you've ever seen her work the room at an Iron Horse winemaker's dinner, you'll see how her spirit translates to the pages of this purse-sized volume. It's like a package bus tour through New World claret country with chapters on Cabernet, Pinot, Merlot, Zinfandel, Syrah, with a Cal-Ital catch-all, and--as close as she comes to white wine--a few pages on Rosé and Blanc de Noir sparkling (which both require red grapes). The book has the unfortunate subtitle What to Buy and What to Drink in the Year 2000, making it sound like one of those Y2K panic inducers. But fear not: it's no guide to the booths at the Pinot Preparedness Expo. With a family belief that "the simpler the meal, the better the wine" should be, Sterling guides you through her 'hood, where you'll meet the neighbors--folks like Justin Meyer at Silver Oak. He makes one of California's most expensive Cabernets; he's also a former monk who once took a vow of poverty. You'll meet Burt Williams and Ed Selyem, makers of arguably the most sought-after Pinot Noir of the 1990s. In 1998, with no vineyards and only a corrugated shed with a plug-in radio, they cashed out for $9 million. Each varietal chapter ends with personal (and wonderfully biased) recommendations, a vintage chart (though some, like that for syrah, are woefully incomplete), and suggestions for food and wine pairings that are sometimes less than useful ("Complex Merlots are a flop with Asian cuisine"). Most wines--red or white--are. Pacific Northwest readers might feel a little besieged by the misspellings of Quilceda Creek and McMinnville, Oregon. But for anybody who has tasted their way through Sonoma, Napa, or the Central Coast, there's a lot to like in A Vintner's Guide to Red Wine. As Sterling says early on, "Winemakers are like novelists--individual voices telling a story." Thirsty or not, you'll find her story deliciously quaffable. --Tony Mason
| 
