Vendange - Tales of monsieur Petitpois - écossais!
Vendange is the French word for vintage – and these short stories are 'grape-pickers’ stories.
Very few people are fortunate enough to be mentored in food and wine best of the beast and wine pairing – which wine you should choose to accompany a meal. I was lucky and the instruction I received over many French lunches and dinners opened my eyes to the complexities of fine wine and how the choice of the right wine for a particular dish elevates the experience from mere grazing to hedonistic delights.
I wanted to learn more about wine and decided to go and make the vendange in what is arguably one of the finest areas of wine in the world - the Haut Médoc - north of Bordeaux. What started as a 'one off' working holiday turned into an annual pilgrimage covering seven vintage years during which I found out everything I wanted to about the subject.
Vendange isn't a dry book about the wine making process, nor is it a wine tasting book - more a collection of anecdotes gathered in my pannier along the way. My wine adventure started in the autumn of 1979 and finished in 1986 and during that time, the wine industry changed forever and I was lucky enough to witness it. learn about robe,nose & body.
5.0 out of 5 stars An Insider's Humorous Glimpse of the Bordeaux Harvest. December 6, 2013
By Robin C. Piggott
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
A few weeks back while perusing the sections on Wine and Memoir I stumbled upon a book that caught my eye. The magic of finding little gems tucked away in the inner depths of Kindle is something that is not only pleasing but that often leads to other books that you would probably never have found. Such is the extent of Amazon's catalogue and the intricacies of its ranking system that many books that deserve to be read and reviewed just get hidden only being discovered by accident.
The finding of a book on Kindle which deals with one's own specialities, in this case, wine and its provenance, is always for me as exciting as venturing into a second hand book shop for the first time. You just never know what lies hidden on the next shelf.
This book of short stories by Ian Wallace Campbell is one that every Wine lover will enjoy, whether you are a novice just discovering wine, as we all are at some stage, or someone for whom wine is no longer the mystery that it once was.
The Author's introduction to Wine at the coal face of a busy restaurant is both amusing and informative. The Missing Steak episode is hilarious in the extreme. The book provides a backdrop to a fascinating number of years during which Ian explores the delights of the Bordeaux wine region of France, while learning a great deal about the finer points.
