Making Sense of California Wine

New York: W. Morrow, 1992. 1st ed; first printing (full number line). Black Quarto, color illus., mylar wrap; inscribed by author, 383 pages: maps; 23 cm Fine(+), Clean and crisp, inscribed by author on title page in fine dust-jacket. Hardcover. ISBN: 9780688104368

"With Making Sense of California Wine, Matt Kramer cements his position as the most insightful wine writer in a generation. His last book, Making Sense of Burgundy, excited critics to feverish praise: "It is simply the best book yet written on Burgundy" (Hugh Johnson). "This is Kramer at his most compelling. No one has written a more incisive narrative of how Burgundy got to be what it is" (Harvey Steiman, The Wine Spectator). "Mr. Kramer says some profound things about wine and civilization that will delight thoughtful wine enthusiasts" (Frank Prial, The New York Times). In Making Sense of California Wine, Kramer applies his style and insight in examining how and why California has become the most influential wine area in the world: California delivers the most advanced research in winemaking and the most sophisticated wine-marketing techniques. In an unprecedented chapter he demonstrates how economics has forced California to produce ever more Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay - and why that will continue for at least a generation. But above all, Making Sense of California Wine is an explorer's search for what Kramer calls "somewhereness." All the great wines of Europe offer a sense of place. This is why they are acclaimed. For California wines to be equally great, they too must deliver this sense of "somewhere-ness." Do California wines taste of a particular plot of land, like the great wines of Europe? Kramer says they do. After numerous comparison tastings and crisscrossing the California vineyards, he reports in detail about the particularities of place in California's best wines. He discusses hundreds of California wineries, singling out those that consistently deliver the "sensation of somewhere-ness." Also included is a "first": Never before has anyone compiled a detailed "Vineyard Registry." You see a vineyard name on a California wine label. But what about this vineyard? Who owns it? Where is it? What is its size? Which wineries make wine from it? Kramer tells you. No other wine book has ever provided such information. Making Sense of California Wine is a landmark book. It will do for California wine what Kramer did for Burgundy. In reviewing Making Sense of Burgundy for the English wine magazine Decanter, Christopher Fielden, himself an author of two books on Burgundy, commented, "I am not certain that he has made total sense of Burgundy, but he has certainly arrived as close to it as anyone who has written on the subject." In Making Sense of California Wine, Matt Kramer has done just that - again." Wine and wine making -- California.