Wine Books by Mike Veseth
Mike Veseth is the author of more than a dozen books, including four (soon to be five!) books about wine, business, and society.
You will find wine books by Mike Veseth at all the usual online and brick-and-mortar locations (click on the Amazon, Books-a-Million, IndieBound, Powell’s or Barnes & Noble button to order your copy today).
My first wine book analyzed the three global forces that I see shaping: globalization, commodification, and the thirst for authenticity. Wine Wars and Benjamin Lewin’s terrific In Search of Pinot Noir were named wine books of the year 2011 by Paul O’Doherty, the book reviewer at JancisRobinson.com. Wine Wars has also received a Best American Wine Book award from Gourmand International and the Silver Medal in the category of Best Business and Economics Book 2011 from ForeWords Reviews.
Wine Wars II: The Global Battle for the Soul of Wine (2022).
Here’s the inside scoop on the wine world.
Globalization has pushed back the borders of the wine world, creating a complex, interconnected market where Old World and New World wines and producers compete head to head. Writing with wit and verve, Mike Veseth (a.k.a. the Wine Economist) tells the compelling story of the war between the market forces that are redrawing the world wine map and the terroirists who resist them. This is the battle for the future of wine—and for its soul. The fight isn’t just over bottles bought and sold, however; power and taste are also at stake. Who will call the shots in the wine market of the future? Who will set the price? Whose palate will prevail? Veseth masterfully brings all of these questions together in the only book on the wine business written for all lovers of wine.
Around the World in Eighty Wines (2018).
Inspired by Jules Verne’s classic adventure tale, Mike Veseth takes his readers Around the World in Eighty Wines. The journey starts in London, Phileas Fogg’s home base, and follows Fogg’s itinerary to France and Italy before veering off in search of compelling wine stories in Syria, Georgia, and Lebanon. Every glass of wine tells a story, and so each of the eighty wines must tell an important tale. We head back across Northern Africa to Algeria, once the world’s leading wine exporter, before hopping across the sea to Spain and Portugal. We follow Portuguese trade routes to Madeira and then South Africa with a short detour to taste Kenya’s most famous Pinot Noir. Kenya? Pinot Noir? Really!
The route loops around, visiting Bali, Thailand, and India before heading north to China to visit Shangri-La. Shangi-La? Does that even exist? It does, and there is wine there. Then it is off to Australia, with a detour in Tasmania, which is so cool that it is hot. The stars of the Southern Cross (and the lyrics of a familiar song) guide us to New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina. We ride a wine train in California and rendezvous with Planet Riesling in Seattle before getting into fast cars for a race across North America, collecting more wine as we go. Pause for lunch in Virginia to honor Thomas Jefferson, then it’s time to jet back to London to tally our wines and see what we have learned.
Why these particular places? What are the eighty wines and what do they reveal? And—spoiler alert!—what is the surprise plot twist that guarantees a happy ending for every wine lover? Come with us on a journey of discovery that will inspire, inform, and entertain anyone who loves travel, adventure, or wine.
If you want to know how something is changing, look to the extremes, the edges, where changes happens first. Extreme Wine In Extreme Wine, wine economist and best-selling author Mike Veseth circles the globe searching for the best, worst, cheapest, most expensive, and most over-priced wines. Mike seeks out the most outrageous wine people and places and probes the biggest wine booms and busts. Along the way he applauds celebrity wines, tries to find wine at the movies, and discovers wines that are so scarce that they are almost invisible. Why go to such extremes? Because. Mike argues, the world of wine is growing and changing, and if you want to find out what’s really happening you can’t be afraid to step over the edge.
Money, Taste, and Wine: It’s Complicated (2015).
Money, Taste, and Wine: It’s Complicated received the 2016 Gourmand International award for Best Wine Writing. 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!
>>><<<
You might also be interested in some of the non-wine books …
Globaloney 2.0: The Crash of 2008 and the Future of Globalization (2010).
Globaloney: Unraveling the Myths of Globalization (2005).
The New York Times Twentieth Century in Review: the Rise of the Global Economy (2002).
Selling Globalization: The Myth of the Global Economy (1998).
Mountains of Debt: Crisis and Change in Renaissance Florence, Victorian Britain and Postwar America (1990)