http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/dining/the-best-wine-books-of-2014.html 2014-12-04 22:50:22 The Best Wine Books of 2014 Eric Asimov reviews five of his favorite new wine books. === This year’s harvest of the best new wine books includes works on Barolo and Barbaresco, a nefarious scheme to destroy precious vines in Burgundy and a book so lovely you will crave wines from Vermont, of all places. All would make great gifts. Even better, buy one for yourself. Among the world’s great wine regions, the Piedmont in northwestern Italy, home of Barolo and Barbaresco, has lagged far behind in focused English language appraisals. Kerin O’Keefe’s Ms. O’Keefe, who wrote a similar guide to Brunello di Montalcino in 2012, is thorough and authoritative. She is a critic in the best sense of the word, not shy with her opinions, which she offers without polemics or bluster. This book is not for novices; readers are expected to have an understanding of how wine is farmed and produced. But for those who have delved into Barolo and Barbaresco and want to know more about where the wines are made, the people who make them and the differences in terroirs, this book is inspiring and essential. I won’t mince words about While living in Italy, Ms. Heekin and her husband, Caleb Barber, fell in love with Italian food and wine culture. On returning to Vermont they established an osteria, then developed their small farm to provide vegetables, fruits, flowers and wine for the restaurant. Her husband cooks; Ms. Heekin is the sommelier and farmer. In her farming she takes a holistic approach, regarding wine as produce. She is naturally drawn to biodynamic agriculture, which views a farm as a self-sustaining unit in which the various elements all harmonize and reinforce one another. This method of farming requires meticulous powers of observation and attention to detail. It also imbues Ms. Heekin’s writing with a tactile, almost earthy quality and a well-grounded sense of wonder. The book is not solely about grape-growing. Ms. Heekin places wine in the context of a diverse farm, an alternative to the agricultural and critical view of wine as a monoculture. In the end, she writes, what’s most important is “the shared experience around the table that is defined by the culture of food, wine, friendship, ideas and heart.” If you can find her soulful wine, produced in tiny quantities and labeled La Garagista, it resonates with every sentiment in the book. Ms. Heekin’s wines are what some might call As a first step, they could do no better than Isabelle Legeron’s In pages rife with photographs, she voyages through the processes of grape-growing and winemaking, detailing the many areas where modern winemaking has diverged from ages-old practices. This is not a finger-pointing book. It’s rather inspiringly enthusiastic and will encourage readers to seek out the wines she names in her generous-but-not-comprehensive guide to producers working in natural wine. A few years ago, somebody was trying to poison the great vines of Romanée-Conti, the peerless grand cru Burgundy vineyard. This is the subject of Maximillian Potter’s deftly told Who would want to kill these vines owned by the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, perhaps the most exalted Burgundy producer? Mr. Potter uses this intrigue to tell the grander story of the domaine and its current proprietor, Aubert de Villaine, and by extension the story of Burgundy itself, a region that expresses all that is intellectually thrilling, aesthetically beautiful and soulful in wine. That’s a challenging task but Mr. Potter has the skill to bring history and Burgundian culture to life and make it compelling. I had a few quibbles. It’s wrong of Mr. Potter to suggest that any consensus exists that Romanée-Conti is the world’s greatest wine. Many people prefer La Tâche, also made by the domaine but from a different vineyard, or they prefer another Burgundy producer or another sort of wine entirely. Similarly, I imagine the self-effacing Mr. de Villaine might grimace at the sense of adulatory respect conveyed in the book, even if warranted. Nonetheless, if you are not a Burgundy lover already, this book will make one out of you. Sherry has been on the minds of many consumers in the last few years. As interest grows outside the realm of wine geeks, Talia Baiocchi’s approachable new book, In contrast to that work, Ms. Baiocchi’s book is more personal and informal, less scholarly and detailed, but more accessible to the curious novice and no less reliable. She writes evocatively of sherry country in Andalusia, of how she fell in love with the wines and the culture, and offers pithy critical profiles of the leading producers and their wines. Recognizing that many younger people come to sherry through cocktail culture, she devotes a significant portion of the book to cocktail recipes as well as to recipes for classic Andalusian dishes. Quick Takes Ian D’Agata’s Curious about sake but confused or intimidated? John Gauntner’s Though barely known even a decade ago, the Jura in eastern France has become an unlikely cult region among the wine vanguard. Yet little has been written about it, which makes Wink Lorch’s I’m not a fan of tasting notes, yet