Land and Wine (Terre de Vignes)

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.