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.

A professional booze writer whose life spins out of control tries to piece it back together by embarking upon an epic wine-fueled adventure that takes him to every corner of the U.S. Part vision quest, part guidebook, part journey into the bizarre tapestry of American life, it will make you laugh, make you cry and teach you a whole lot about wine. Former Playboy magazine nightlife columnist Dan Dunn has a made a career out of drinking. Yet this man’s man—a connoisseur of beer and whiskey—knew next to nothing about one of the major drinks enjoyed the world over: wine. When a fateful tasting experience coincided with a serious existential crisis, Dunn decided to hit the road on a journey of discovery. To quench his thirst for knowledge (and be able to throw down with the experts), he would educate himself about the industry glass by glass, from winery to winery, in nearly every region in the United States. His bold 15,000-mile road trip took Dunn from Sonoma, California, to Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, where he twirled, sniffed, and sipped glass after glass of a vast array of wines with vintners, savants, and celebrities, including Kurt Russell and “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” Jonathan Goldsmith. Dunn’s mission was to transform himself from a heartbroken schlub who barely knew the difference between Merlot and Meritage, into a confident connoisseur capable of wowing others simply by swirling some fermented grape juice around in his mouth and pronouncing it “troubling, yet brilliant.” In American Wino, Dunn shares it all—the good, the bad, the sublime. As his wine knowledge grows and becomes more complex, he shares it with the reader in the form of digestible, actionable nuggets in each chapter. It’s like a wine-tasting course at your local community college extension program, only with more sex and less crushing despair. An intoxicating blend of travel writing, memoir, and booze journalism that pairs earthy humor with fine wine for hilarious and enlightening results, it is the story of one man’s journey to find himself—and everyman’s journey to better understand the true spirit of this divine elixir.

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.

"American Hardcore sets the record straight about the last great American subculture"—Paper magazine Steven Blush's "definitive treatment of Hardcore Punk" (Los Angeles Times) changed the way we look at Punk Rock. The Sony Picture Classics–distributed documentary American Hardcore premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. This revised and expanded second edition contains hundreds of new bands, thirty new interviews, flyers, a new chapter ("Destroy Babylon"), and a new art gallery with over 125 rare photos and images.

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.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1866.