A Vineyard in My Glass

A Vineyard in My Glass

Gerald Asher

Language: English

Pages: 288

ISBN: 0520270339

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Gerald Asher, who served as Gourmet’s wine editor for thirty years, has drawn together this selection of his essays, published in Gourmet and elsewhere, for the collective insight they give into why a wine should always be an expression of a place and a time. Guiding the reader through twenty-seven diverse wine regions in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and California, he shows how every wine worth drinking is a reflection of its terroir—in the broadest sense of that untranslatable word. In evocative reminiscences of wines, winemakers, and the meals he has had with them, he weaves together climate, terrain, and local history, sharing his knowledge and experience so skillfully that we learn as we are entertained and come to understand, gradually, that the meaning and pleasure of a wine lie always in the context of its origin and in the concurrence of where, how, and with whom we enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

grands crus classés one is (figuratively) on firmer ground: Among more than a thousand Saint-Emilion vineyard estates, eighty-four are classed, and eleven of those are premiers grands crus classés. (In the Médoc—including Haut-Brion, actually in Graves—there are sixty grands crus classés, of which five are premiers.) In a wrinkle worthy of Animal Farm, Château Ausone and Château Cheval-Blanc are considered more premier than their peers. They are referred to as the “A list,” whereas

Unlike vines in other regions, secured to stakes or trained along wires, vines for Soave are spread horizontally across arbors, called tendoni and pergole, a few feet above the ground. The difference between the two is slight: A tendone is a single, narrow, flat beam about six feet across, supported by posts on either side of the alley that runs between the rows, whereas a pergola is an open arch formed by two poles, each attached to an upright stake and the whole arrangement resembling a pair of

Blvd. to the eastern bank of the Sacramento River Deep Water Ship Channel. . . . ” In fact, the viticultural area is shaped like a pear, its top four or five miles south of Sacramento, incorporating both sides of the river roughly as far as the ship canal on one side and Interstate 5 on the other. (Merritt Island, fully contained within it, is also itself a viticultural area.) Grape grower John Baranek was the moving spirit behind the petition. His family’s firm, the Herzog Company, had been

years after it had been planted, the vines were still looking rather sorry. Used to the luxuriant growth of Napa Valley, she wanted to know what those smart fellows who had assured her that vines would do well in this region had to say for themselves.” But “sorry” vines hold the secret of Carneros quality. Devigorated (winespeak for weakened) by its environment, a Carneros vine has neither water nor nutrient to spare for excessive foliage. It fruits sparingly, too, in accordance with some

categories, from cool (2,500 or fewer degree-days) to hot (degree-days in excess of 4,000). These categories have come to be viewed as indicators of which grape varieties are best suited to different regions. Simple though it is, the system has been helpful to California winegrowers. But it can be misleading because it cannot distinguish between one region with fairly constant temperatures throughout the growing season and another with extremes—a freeze in April and then a heat wave in

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