"Whoa! Does anybody really still publish books like that?" a co-worker asked as I toted a pair of enormous wine tomes to my desk.
Yes, there still are glossy-covered, encyclopedia-sized doorstops out there. And a couple of them are actually worth at least something approximating their enormous weight.
"Exploring Wine" (Wiley, $65 and about that many pounds) is actually the third edition of a seminal work from the Culinary Institute of America. It has been thoroughly updated on such topics as Chinese wines and food-wine pairings that go way beyond white-wine-with-fish rules.
Another behemoth, "Opus Vino" (DK, $75), examines no fewer than 4,500 grapes and almost as many producers the world over. I'll get back to you with more when I've finished it -- in about 2014.
Even more striking are a pair of "mere" coffee-table-sized works.
"Into the Earth: A Wine Cave Renaissance" (Panache Partners, $50) digs deep (sorry) into subterranean California, where vintners have carved out caverns that they use for aging wines. The travails and triumphs of real, live cave men (but not from the Cro-Magnon era) are chronicled, and the photographs by Daniel D'Agostini with Molly Chappellet are stupendous.
For those of us who love back stories with our wine, Tanya Scholes' "The Art and Design of Contemporary Wine Labels" (Santa Monica Press, $45) is a godsend. Talking to both the winery folks and the designers, she deftly delves into what kind of thinking and experiences went into the look of labels that range from the (seemingly) straightforward to the what-the-heck-is-going-on-there?
For regular readers of Matt Kramer's columns in the Wine Spectator -- he's the best reason to get the magazine, in my view -- a good bit of the material in the collection "Matt Kramer on Wine" (Sterling Epicure, $19.95) is not new. But it still is as fresh as his fertile mind, which avoids the trappings of snobbery that too often comes with his level of expertise. Instead, he dissects the wine world in smart terms that anyone can understand and appreciate.
