Jancis Robinson and Linda Murphy, American Wine: The Ultimate Companion to the Wines and Wineries of the United States. University of California Press, 2013.

I’m in Sacramento this week for the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, the largest wine industry gathering in the Western Hemisphere. I came for the informative seminars of course but it’s the trade show that really takes my breath of away. Hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of products and services — wow! It makes me reconsider my vision of wine in America.

Wine isn’t just about bottles and corks and retail shelves and its not just California, either. The American wine industry is broad and deep, spanning the continent and reaching into almost every imaginable type of business and walk of life. Looking across the trade show floors (two of them because there are so many exhibitors) provides a dramatic vision of what wine in this country has become.

American Wine, the beautiful and informative new book by Jancis Robinson and Linda Murphy, has the same breath-taking effect. No matter how you think of American wine, this book shows you that there is more to it than you ever imagined.

Drilling Down Deep

The main text is organized around geography, as you might expect, starting with large national regions, then the wine producing states (with California getting the lion’s share of  the page count), then regions within states, AVAs, sub AVAs and so on.  As the authors drill down, they pass through many layers that include geography and geology, history, industry, viticulture, producers, personalities and finally the wines themselves.

As a test I worked my way though the Sonoma section in detail and it was an amazing experience to have all these dots connected so seamlessly and well and illustrated with beautiful photos and useful maps. By the end, after taking in all of Sonoma’s regions and AVAs, I felt that I had a much more nuanced understanding of this complicated and important region and its unique characteristics.

One of the things that I like best about American Wine is that it takes its title seriously and attempts to do for the entire country what it obviously does for California. You would expect the major producing states like Washington, New York and Oregon to get detailed treatment here and they do. But you might not expect detailed analysis of Colorado, for example, with its rapidly emerging industry, or Missouri with its important viticultural history. Indeed, every state makes wine in one way or another and every state gets serious consideration here. (Alabama and Mississippi get just a paragraph each, it must be said, but maybe that’s not a surprise).

A Bit Overwhelming

By the end of the book I felt a bit overwhelmed, and not just by the vast landscape of detailed information. It was more of an emotional response. American Wine helped me re-imagine America as a country where wine is deeply embedded in history and culture and widely embraced.

Wine consumption is still low in America if we judge by European standards, and wine still struggles to overcome the legacy of Prohibition. American Wine recognizes these challenges, but it projects an inspiring vision of wine today that suggests how it might evolve and develop in the future.

While no single volume can possible satisfy all interests (I’m sure my friend Karl will wonder why New Jersey didn’t get the attention he believes it deserves), I think this American Wine lives up its “ultimate companion” subtitle. Highly recommended.

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American Wine is the second new book Jancis Robinson has published this season. Wine Grapes, co-authored with Julia Harding and José Vouillamoz, came out just before the holidays. It’s a magisterial survey of global wine viewed through more than 1300 grape varieties. Writing just before Christmas, I declared it the best gift a wine enthusiast could hope to receive. Now you can add American Wine to the list.

Only one thing could make Wine Grapes better (apart from a lower price, of course) — access to a searchable electronic version. Jancis says they are working on it, but it’s not a simple task with a book of such size and complexity. Fingers crossed that we see it before too long!