Money, Taste & Wine: Best of the Best Wine Writing 1995-2020

Gourmand International has been spotlighting the best food and wine books and writing for 25 years and for this year’s big fair in Paris they are recognizing what they consider the “best of the best” of the last quarter-century.

I am happy to announce that my book Money, Taste, and Wine: It’s Complicated! has been shortlisted for the 25th anniversary best wine writing award (it previously won the 2016 best wine writing prize). Here is a quick summary of the book in case you haven’t read it yet.

As wine economist and best-selling author Mike Veseth peels away layer after layer of the money-taste-wine story he discovers the wine buyer’s biggest mistake (which is to confuse money and taste) and learns how to avoid it, sips and swirls dump bucket wines, Treasure Island wines and toasts anything but Champagne. He bulks up with big bag, big box wines and realizes that sometimes the best wine is really a beer.

Along the way he questions wine’s identity crisis, looks down his nose at wine snobs and cheese bores, follows the money, surveys the restaurant war battleground and imagines wines that even money cannot buy before concluding that money, taste and wine might have a complicated relationship but sometimes they have the power to change the world. Money, Taste & Wine will surprise, inform, inspire and delight anyone with an interest in wine – or complicated relationships!

I admit that it warms my heart to be on a short list with authors like Steven Spurrier (see below).  And the nominees in the other categories (full pdf list here) read like Who’s Who of wine wriiting.

Very exciting. Big thanks to Gourmand International and everyone who helped make Money, Taste, and Wine such a success.