From planting vines to savoring the finished product, Jeff Cox covers every aspect of growing flawless grapes and making extraordinary wine. Fully illustrated instructions show you how to choose and prepare a vineyard site; build trellising systems; select, plant, prune, and harvest the right grapes for your climate; press, ferment, and bottle wine; and judge wine for clarity, color, aroma, and taste. With information on making sparkling wines, ice wines, port-style wines, and more, this comprehensive guide is an essential resource for every winemaker.

There are nearly 1,400 known varieties of wine grapes in the world—from altesse to zierfandler—but 80 percent of the wine we drink is made from only 20 grapes. In Godforsaken Grapes, Jason Wilson looks at how that came to be and embarks on a journey to discover what we miss. Stemming from his own growing obsession, Wilson moves far beyond the “noble grapes,” hunting down obscure and underappreciated wines from Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, France, Italy, the United States, and beyond. In the process, he looks at why these wines fell out of favor (or never gained it in the first place), what it means to be obscure, and how geopolitics, economics, and fashion have changed what we drink. A combination of travel memoir and epicurean adventure, Godforsaken Grapes is an entertaining love letter to wine.

Stone age wine -- The Noah hypothesis -- The archaeological and chemical hunt for the earliest wine -- Neolithic wine! -- Wine of the earliest pharaohs -- Wine of Egypt's golden age -- Wine of the world's first cities -- Wine and the great empires of the ancient Near East -- The Holy Land's bounty -- Lands of Dionysos : Greece and western Anatolia -- A beverage for King Midas and at the limits of the civilized world -- Molecular archaeology, wine, and a view to the future.

The lush, sun-drenched vineyards of California evoke a romantic, agrarian image of winemaking, though in reality the industry reflects American agribusiness at its most successful. Nonetheless, as author Erica Hannickel shows, this fantasy is deeply rooted in the history of grape cultivation in America. Empire of Vines traces the development of wine culture as grape growing expanded from New York to the Midwest before gaining ascendancy in California—a progression that illustrates viticulture's centrality to the nineteenth-century American projects of national expansion and the formation of a national culture. Empire of Vines details the ways would-be gentleman farmers, ambitious speculators, horticulturalists, and writers of all kinds deployed the animating myths of American wine culture, including the classical myth of Bacchus, the cult of terroir, and the fantasy of pastoral republicanism. Promoted by figures as varied as horticulturalist Andrew Jackson Downing, novelist Charles Chesnutt, railroad baron Leland Stanford, and Cincinnati land speculator Nicholas Longworth (known as the father of American wine), these myths naturalized claims to land for grape cultivation and legitimated national expansion. Vineyards were simultaneously lush and controlled, bearing fruit at once culturally refined and naturally robust, laying claim to both earthy authenticity and social pedigree. The history of wine culture thus reveals nineteenth-century Americans' fascination with the relationship between nature and culture.

Science and Technology of Fruit Wine Production includes introductory chapters on the production of wine from fruits other than grapes, including their composition, chemistry, role, quality of raw material, medicinal values, quality factors, bioreactor technology, production, optimization, standardization, preservation, and evaluation of different wines, specialty wines, and brandies. Wine and its related products have been consumed since ancient times, not only for stimulatory and healthful properties, but also as an important adjunct to the human diet by increasing satisfaction and contributing to the relaxation necessary for proper digestion and absorption of food. Most wines are produced from grapes throughout the world, however, fruits other than grapes, including apple, plum, peach, pear, berries, cherries, currants, apricot, and many others can also be profitably utilized in the production of wines. The major problems in wine production, however, arise from the difficulty in extracting the sugar from the pulp of some of the fruits, or finding that the juices obtained lack in the requisite sugar contents, have higher acidity, more anthocyanins, or have poor fermentability. The book demonstrates that the application of enzymes in juice extraction, bioreactor technology, and biological de-acidification (MLF bacteria, or de-acidifying yeast like schizosaccharomyces pombe, and others) in wine production from non-grape fruits needs serious consideration. - Focuses on producing non-grape wines, highlighting their flavor, taste, and other quality attributes, including their antioxidant properties - Provides a single-volume resource that consolidates the research findings and developed technology employed to make wines from non-grape fruits - Explores options for reducing post-harvest losses, which are especially high in developing countries - Stimulates research and development efforts in non-grape wines