Main description:

- examines the various narratives of wine and how it intersects with and illuminates current academic and cultural debates about the environment and about interpretation

- presents an in-depth exploration of wine culture and wine production in the USA

- engages with a broad range of writers and thinkers including Roland Barthes, M. H. Abrams, Susan Sontag, Louis Menand, Michael Pollan, Greg Garrard, John Guillory, Amitov Ghosh, Pierre Bordieu, and Barbara Hernstein-Smith

- draws upon extensive interviews conducted by the author with wine maker, writers and critics

- will be of great interest to readers looking to learn more about wine from cultural, literary and philosophical perspectives

Contents:

Introduction

Chapter 1. Against Tasting: The Problems of Blind Tasting and Interpretation

Chapter 2. On Balance: Numbers, Words, and Wine on a Page

Chapter 3. Death of the Winemaker: Are Winemakers Artists?

Chapter 4. On the Supermarket Pastoral and Natural Wine

Chapter 5. Postmodern Viticulture

Chapter 6. The Noble Grapes: The Canon of Grapes and the Literary Canon