I recently finished reading Charles Frankel's "Land and Wine", a
book about the geology of French wine regions by a geologist.
Needless to say, I was super excited about the intersection of
these of my two interests. Sadly, the book did not end up living
up to my excitement. The prose was engaging, yes, but I found
myself using Jacques Fanet's "Great Wine Terroirs" as a reference
for the viticultural details most chapters left out. Maps were
also lacking.
The most cringeworthy point though was reading that "Fermentation
is the job of bacteria ... also called yeast" in the chapter on
Burgundy. Either Frankel is disasterously uninformed about the
microbiology of the winemaking process or the translator at the
University of Chicago press is. Either way, I can hardly
recommend such a book.
Fun anecdotes about vintners using dinosaur femurs as truck tire
stops unfortunately just can't make up for what's lacking. Maybe
the French edition is better.
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