Review Week: Adventures On The Wine Route
I can go on with a flowery book review telling you how lovely it is to read Kermit Lynch’s seminal book on French wine in the 1970s. But that’s not really the style of this blog. The style of the blog is to get right to the point:
If you’re starting to get serious about wine, this is the book you should read.
There are other junior books to go read like Fear of Wine. I’m sure they’re fine but I didn’t read them. When you make the jump to the next level, go read this book.
With his accounts of scoping out France for his wine import and wine retail businesses, Kermit Lynch achieves what so many wine education courses fail to achieve: to make learning really easy for the student. Learning that Mouvedre dominates Provence just sticks with you without even realizing it just by taking in Lynch’s chapter on Provence. Reading stories about the content makes you retain the content. He covers all the major regions of France, from the big Bordeaux to the unheralded Languedoc. This isn’t a teaching book though. It reads like essays or even novellas. You’ll take a ride and come back enlightened.
It’s also a nice reminder that issues confronting wine don’t go away. Even back then, Lynch dealt with conglomerates moving in on small producers, filtering vs. unfiltering, and the delicate nature of dollars versus art.
If you’re in a wine store and you see a Kermit Lynch Importer label on the back of the wine, there’s a good chance you’ll be happy when you pop the cork. Until then, pick up this book and give it a good read.
