Notre Dame de Paris. The famous cathedral in Paris, France was severely damaged a few days ago by fire.
While fire raged in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, I thought of how many times I had enjoyed visiting it during my travels to Paris.
Here is a tribute video using video footage taken during a 2010 trip to Paris and photographs taken in 2001 and 2015.
Music by Ilya Marfin from Fugue.
What makes Soave Classico exceptional - and separate from Soave DOC?
In this short video, you'll join Austin Beeman and Suavia on the hills of Soave Classico to explore that question.
This is Episode #65 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman.
Transcript:
Two villages have Classico area inside their territory. One is Soave, so the main village, and is on this side, over here, and the other one is Monteforte and is on the other side of this hill. So our hills are right in the middle between the two districts.
And here you can see clearly what's the difference between Soave Classico and Soave D.O.C. Soave D.O.C is the flat area you see there. It's a huge area of production of white wines. It's the largest area of production of white wines in Italy, so it's very, very large. From the flat basically come all the wines that people sadly are accustomed to know as Soave, so a very cheap, low-quality, easy white wines. Very big quantities. Not very high quality. Here is another world.
This is our main territory, the basalt rocks. So these black stones that sometimes are really, really big, like masses, which we can find all around inside the soil and the color of the soil which is ... it goes from the black to gray to red, reddish. It full of minerals, so all these are characteristic like minerality and richness in element, go directly into the wine so the wines are very mineral, complex, and sometimes you have also kind of smokiness that comes directly from this kind of soil.
We grow Garganega in this way, which is particular way because yeah, I think the growing season you are more ... you see the most use of small vines, but here this method is a very ancient one, and it's called Pergola Veronese and you see that we let the vine to grow up until it is like two meters more or less, and then we leave the branches of Garganega to fall down on these iron threads.
And this is why we will follow the nature of Garganega plant because it is a plant with branches that tends to go downwards and not upwards.
Also, the berries of Garganega ... the skin of the berries is very delicate and so especially during the hot summers, it needs to have like umbrella, an umbrella to be covered.
And so in this way, all the leaves of the vine act as an umbrella on the branches, on the grapes, and so they don't get sunburned basically. So this is the most clever way to grow Garganega and it's also the historic one.
With the Trebbiano we use this system because the nature of the vine here is more to use the Guyot system. The branches of Trebbiano are very vigorous, so they tend to go upwards and not downwards so they don't need the iron threads to support the branches, and the skin of Trebbiano ... Trebbiano is a very strong variety and the skin is thicker than Garganega and so it doesn't need that umbrella that Garganega needs.
Root Cause by Steven Laine is a globetrotting ‘beach-read’ thriller set within the world of wine.
Corvina Guerra, a flying winemaker for one of the world’s biggest wine brands, discovers the devastating aphid Phylloxera in an Italian vineyard. Even worse, this strain is resistant to the grafted rootstock that saved European wine production in the 1800s. Corvina partners with Bryan Lawless, a disgraced Master of Wine candidate, to find the ‘root cause’ of this outbreak. They will quickly discover that this is an malevolent attack and the entire world’s wine production is at stake!
This is a truly global adventure with sequences in California, France, Italy, South Africa, Hong Kong, Chile, London, Canada, and more. The action is fast paced and suspenseful, but always stays light and fun.
Steven Laine has also seeded this novel with large amounts of wine knowledge that will excite any reader with a casual interest in wine. For sommeliers and wine experts, you aren’t going to learn anything new here, but you’ll likely have a great time reading it.
“I rate this book 88 points on the 100 Point Wine Rating Scale popularized by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate and others.”
Buy the book with this Amazon link and support this blog.
The best things about Root Cause:
The dialogue is always snappy and speaks in the voices of the characters. I could see this turned into a 10 episode Netflix show with little change to the dialogue.
The use of the world of wine. There are so many cool little sequences in different wine-producing countries and different aspects of the wine business. I was originally worried that it would focus on only Italy and California, but Laine really makes good use of the whole planet.
The least effective parts of the book:
There are so many situations and wine regions referenced that I never felt that any of them got their descriptive due.
Part of the attraction of the wine business is the bucolic landscapes, luxury restaurants, delicious food, and old-world villages.
I was really hoping for some lush sensory sequences akin to what one finds in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels or Peter Mayle’s novel of Provence, France. When that world-building occurred, it was often rushed past for the next plot sequence. I’d recommend removing about 40 pages of plot and replacing it with 25 pages of immersive description.
In conclusion:
This is a fun read and expect anyone with at least a passing interest in wine to enjoy it. I’m looking forward to reading Steven Laine’s next novel about wine.
FTC Disclosure:
I received a free copy of this book in return for posting an honest review.
In my job at Cutting Edge Selections, we currently sell in Ohio and Kentucky some of the wineries referenced in the novel.
Check out more wine book reviews
