A Wine Journey Along the Russian River

Steve Heimoff has written a wine book, a geology text, and a history lesson all in one volume. A superb treatment of several complex subjects, he writes with an intense love of his subjects....and has obviously spent an enormous amount of time researching each facet of it. It should be a must for anyone interested in California wine.

. . . . which flows into the Pacific Ocean north of San Fransisco, is a marvelously varied strip of wine country. The river itself, as author Steve Heimoff makes clear, cuts its way through many different wine areas, and so this geographical feature--rather than winemaking itself--constitutes the unifying theme of the book. This book which is filled with the sense of place, could be just another great American travelogue. But contrary to expectation, Heimoff abandons the river for a chapter on clones and the politics of American Viticultural Areas. Now before your eyes glaze over, I have to agree with Heimoff that the business of creating new grape varieties and cloning them may be at the heart of the improvement in American wine for the next several decades. He is one of the first popular wine writers to recognize this and explain it all in layman's terms. These two achievements-making the region come alive and explaining the mystery of the clones, make this a must-read for developing students and lovers of wine.