Covering vineyards from all 50 states, this volume will quench readers' need for information and advice on this booming topic. A map of each state indicates the grape-growing areas and notable labels.

Covering vineyards from all 50 states, this volume will quench readers' need for information and advice on this booming topic. A map of each state indicates the grape-growing areas and notable labels.

Covering vineyards from all 50 states, this volume will quench readers' need for information and advice on this booming topic. A map of each state indicates the grape-growing areas and notable labels.

The incomparable Anthony Dias Blue—the world's leading expert on American wine—has revised and updated his definitive reference on America's wine-producing regions and wines. Both entertaining and informative American Wine takes the risk out of choosing the best wines and the best values—with maps, winery profiles, comprehensive tasting notes, ratings, and recommendations on more than 5,000 wines. Anthony Dias Blue is universally praised for his unpretentious wine prose—often witty and always thoroughly original—and for the authoritativeness and strength of his opinions. American Wine sparkles with the same spirit and sharp critical perspective that make his newspaper and magazine columns and radio segments so popular. Blue introduces the reader to the wealth of American wines and wineries from their beginnings to the present and gives background on American grapes, wine production techniques, and his amusing hypotheses on primitive man's discovery of wine. The heart of the book is the comprehensive listing, arranged by region, of more than 900 wineries, each including a description of the owners/founders, and a list of important characteristics, including vintage, type, and price, of all the wines produced by the winery. Thorough descriptions of each wine are provided as well as guidelines as to when the wines are ready. Individual wines are given quality ratings; Blue's rating system is easy to use and clearly highlights special bargains. With the seasoned eye and palate that years of experience have given him, Blue has researched and written this compendium with gusto, and the first edition of American Wine has been a resounding success. Updated and revised, this volume is indispensable to anyone how buys wine.

In this completely updated and revised edition, Anthony Dias Blue, the renowned wine expert and author of the definitive wine reference American Wine: A Comprehensive Guide, offers consumers his authoritative ratings of more than 5,000 domestic vintages, listed in an accessible, alphabetical format by wineries and their products.

James Beard Book Award Nominee 2016 Readable Feast Winner 2016 From the author of The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution comes the triumphant tale of how America belted France from atop its centuries-old pedestal as the world's top wine-producing and wine-drinking nation. Until the mid-1970s, most American wine was far from fine. Instead, it was fortified and sweet, and came from grape varieties prized less for their taste than for their ability to ferment fast. Even in big cities, a bottle of domestically made Chardonnay or Merlot was hard to come by—and most Americans thought wine like that was for the wealthy anyway, not for them. Then a series of game-changing events and a group of plucky entrepreneurs transformed everything forever. Within a generation, America would stand unquestionably at the world vanguard of wine, reversing centuries of Eurocentrism and dominating the Field. This change spawned hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in sales. European vintners found themselves altering centuries-old recipes and techniques to cater to these newly ascendant, free-spending tastes. The most popular fine wines worldwide became big, powerful, and loud—American, in other words. American Wine tells that story. All the big players and milestones are here, with never-before-told details and analyses based on fresh interviews. Written in a fast-moving, engaging style free of wine jargon, American Wine is the first of its kind: a book focused solely on the rise of fine wine in the United States since the early 1960s, in California and elsewhere, and how that rise altered the way the world drinks—for better or worse.

The U.S. wine industry is growing rapidly and wine consumption is an increasingly important part of American culture. American Wine Economics is intended for students of economics, wine professionals, and general readers who seek to gain a unified and systematic understanding of the economic organization of the wine trade. The wine industry possesses unique characteristics that make it interesting to study from an economic perspective. This volume delivers up-to-date information about complex attributes of wine; grape growing, wine production, and wine distribution activities; wine firms and consumers; grape and wine markets; and wine globalization. Thornton employs economic principles to explain how grape growers, wine producers, distributors, retailers, and consumers interact and influence the wine market. The volume includes a summary of findings and presents insights from the growing body of studies related to wine economics. Economic concepts, supplemented by numerous examples and anecdotes, are used to gain insight into wine firm behavior and the importance of contractual arrangements in the industry. Thornton also provides a detailed analysis of wine consumer behavior and what studies reveal about the factors that dictate wine-buying decisions.