When I was studying for my Certified Specialist of Wine exam, I found The Art and Science of Wine to be a valuable resource. World famous UK wine writer Hugh Johnson and Australian winemaker/writer/wine critic James Halliday have done a great job of exploring and explaining how both art and science are involved in the [...]

Pacific Rim Winery, located in West Richland, Washington, is almost exclusively a Riesling producer. The first Pacific Rim Riesling was produced in 1992 as a brand within Bonny Doon Vineyard in Santa Cruz, California, and used grapes from California, Washington, and Germany. In 2007, owner Randall Grahm decided to downsize Bonny Doon and spun off [...]

A classic “who-dun-it” with an interesting twist at the end, Peter Mayle’s The Vintage Caper is a book you should read, especially if you like to sip a glass of wine as you read crime fiction. This is the first of his twelve books that I’ve read, but I now wish I had read some [...]

Pacific Northwest Wining & Dining is billed as a cookbook, but it’s much more than that. It’s also a story about the uniqueness of the Pacific Northwest, its people, its places, its chefs, and its winemakers. Braiden Rex-Johnson (that’s a name you can’t forget) takes you on quite a tour through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and [...]

When I first saw this book, When the Rivers Ran Red: An Amazing Story of Courage and Triumph in America’s Wine Country, on the shelf of my local Barnes and Noble, I knew I had to buy it, not for the great title, but for the last name of the author, Vivienne Sosnowski. When you [...]

As a prolific reader, I’m regularly prowling the aisles at local bookstores, and especially the wine books section. The title of this book, Educating Peter: How Anybody Can Become an (Almost) Instant Wine Expert, is what first caught my attention. Then, when I scanned the Introduction, I knew this was a book that I wanted [...]

The wine trails guy, Steve Roberts, has done it again, completing his trifecta of Northwest wine guides with this book, WineTrails of Idaho. Earlier this year when I was visiting with Steve about his WineTrails of Oregon book, I asked him what was next and he mentioned this book, so I wasn’t surprised when I [...]

My first impression of Drink This: Wine Made Simple by Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl was that I wish I had written it myself. It has a tremendous amount of information for the wine novice presented in an easily understood manner. However, when I got to her list of wine varietals, each of which she devotes a [...]

I’ll get right to the bottom line: One Vintage: A Year in the Vineyard by Chris Jones is a good, short read, and a very attractive book. I thought its $30 price tag was a little high in this market, but that’s for you to decide. For over ten years, Chris Jones and her husband [...]

Let’s get right to the bottom line: What to Drink with What You Eat by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page is a great book. It is not an easy reading bedside book; but it is a superb reference work, the most comprehensive and useful book of its type that we’ve ever found. LaGayle, our food [...]