I want to thank my good friend and premier winemaker Lloyd Anderson of Walter Dacon Wines for suggesting I peruse "Reading Between the Wines" by Terry Theise and I apologize to Lloyd for taking so long diving in to this marvelous book.
If you like wine, especially if you critique wine, this is a must read. It masterfully pulls us away from the scores and the hype and the over-the-top bullshit descriptions and presents the LIFE of wine.
Virginia Madsen describes the pride of nailing her soliloquy in Sideways during her interview on the Kevin Pollak Chat Show. As you remember "Maya" describes the reason she loves wine is that it is a "living, breathing" thing. And that is the nature of this book. Not the taste and the price and the rating; the book invokes the sense of place, the people and the REASON for the wine's existence. The wine's life not just in this vintage; the book describes the wines very being over decades and generations.
I visited the regions in Germany that Theise cherishes; hiked the steep slopes of Schloss Johannisberg with my father and over looked the castles on the Rhein. And although I had a fraction of the exposure that Terry has achieved over the course of his illustrious career, I too felt the rich history, the warm welcome and pride of wine growers who have crafted the hillsides with rootstock for centuries. You cannot avoid it. The air, earth and water are filled with a magical essence that resonates in every drop of the wine.
Thank you Terry for writing a book that captures that essence and thank you again Lloyd for sharing.
Please read the book and post your thoughts,
