Think for a moment of a glass of Californian wine. For most people, the word comes to mind, along with , , , and , and perhaps , or on the opposite end, — all words that describe a drink that journalist Jon Bonné refers to as “Brand California” in , his book about another kind of oenological pursuit in that land of plenty. Like a lot of the culinary world in recent years, the world of wine is changing. The “whereness” of a wine — a sense that the precise place in which it’s grown and made is reflected in its taste — is becoming more important to more people; subtlety of flavor is prized above power aromas; and vineyard and winery imperatives like sustainable and additive-free, respectively, are becoming a new norm, one with roots that reach back to pre-industrial times. Bonné wants us to know about this new batch of Californians, wines made by producers who are after a more profound, classic style. For these bottles, the vineyard surpasses the winery in terms of importance.

What’s in the soil counts, and hands-off, let-nature-do-its-job ethics prevail. In such bottles one finds liquids that are fresher, lower in alcohol, and made of a wide variety of grapes, from obscure Amaron to Portuguese Alicante Bouchet. The familiar Cabernet and Pinot Noir can also be found, only now grown in particular spots chosen for their suitability for specific grapes. There are less of the science-of-wine, UC Davis–sanctioned methods that have driven much of the area’s wine industry in recent decades, and more small-scale ampelography (or vine identification) projects. Less whole state, more individual vineyard. “Although modern consumers are far more concerned about the origins of their food than they once were, keenly eyeing the source of that organic spinach, their concern goes out the window when it comes to wine,” writes Bonné. His book aims to fix that for wine-loving readers. Bonné takes a look at the state of Californian wine — much of it marked by the pursuit of what he straightforwardly calls ‘Big Flavor’ — by examining who’s doing what differently, more gently, and alongside smaller wineries.

He makes a case study of Francis Ford Coppola’s Inglenook, which has moved in recent years from a jug-style drink to a Zinfandel wine with clean, “energetic flavors…reminiscent of that grape’s serious-minded past.” What results is an almost-100-page guide to these new California wines where he even maps out the state by vineyard, and by the grape varieties grown on each. is an engaging story-driven look at the changes underfoot in the state’s wine industry. Bonné examines how wine works everywhere, then and now. A chief ingredient in Bonné’s book is the people involved with those hundreds of bottles. The history of wine, with its components of land, markets, eating, business, and companionship, is inevitably the history of who we are. It’s a tale as multifaceted and contradictory as the facets of the drink itself. Wine is an agricultural product, a philosophical pursuit, and a way to know the regions of the world. It is a highly personal and much-defended cultural identity.

Here are four more books that explore our historic relationship with the grapevine and the product of its fruit: the love of drinking wine, the obsession with growing it, and what to do about buying and tasting it. An Unlikely Vineyard: The Education of a Farmer and Her Quest for Terroir by Deirdre Heekin Inspired by time spent in Italy and France, Heekin and her farmer husband Caleb Barber set out to farm in Vermont in a way very different from most of their state-mates. best wine bars londonTheir eight acres, 1,600 feet above sea level in the Green Mountains (called the Berkshires in Massachusetts) offered them a unique way to tell the story of Vermont. best wine packagesThey paid close attention to its soil, climate, and seasons. buy wine in usaRelying on organic and bio-dynamic principles and carefully choosing only the grape varieties that would thrive in this often harsh environment, Heekin turned her hand to winemaking, too. top french wine books

Her wines are now being recognized as of the U.S.’s best small-production bottles, made from grapes grown alongside apple, pear, and plum trees; herbs, vegetables, and flowers. Heekin and Barber’s tale is one of a new generation learning to be farmers. In the book, they explore how they and their farm fit into the rugged VT landscape, and the right ways to eat and drink there, with poetry-infused details along the way: “Tonight is the second night of harvest. best red wine for french foodThe white grapes destined for classic dry white wine have all been pressed and funneled into the large 14-gallon glass demijohns where they will spend a significant part of their adolescent lives. best white wine christmas dinnerThe full harvest moon crests the tree line at the bottom of the meadow, and as it rises so does the cap of grape skins.

We witness the whoosh of the start of fermentation as the grape must pushes to the top of the big glass jars and the magic turning of water into wine begins.” A Hedonist in the Cellar: Adventures in Wine by Jay Mcinerney From his 1984to this year’s novelist Jay McInerney is known for his explorations of the past three decades of life in New York City. He is also an astute wine drinker. He’s covered his passion for wine in magazine with essays that are collected in and that have earned him Salon’s approval as Best Wine Writer in America. There are chatty chapters on the differences between German and Austrian Riesling, with Riesling strong-hold Alsace convivially explored, too. There’s Provençal rosé, a standard in pink wine but often overlooked when it comes to the delicious details of how it’s made and where, exactly (but not overlooked in book). He covers the new style of California chardonnay, what real Soave wine is and why you should drink it, Chile’s spicy reds, and the strangeness of New York’s Finger Lakes wines.

McInerney’s much-loved personal and laid-back but no less writerly style is brought to his coverage of France’s white Condrieu wines, made of the aromatic viognier grape: “Why do I like it so much? you may ask,” he writes. “Parsing out the pleasure of Condrieu is a little bit like trying to explicate a haiku. But I can tell you that I love it because white peaches are my favorite fruit and Condrieu frequently tastes like white peaches, though it sometimes verges on apricot. Certain English tasters equate the aroma with May blossoms, but for me, nonhorticulturist that I am, it simply reminds me of certain gardens in springtime.” Judgment of Paris by George M. Taber In 1976 in Paris, at a small taste-off between top French wines and unheard-of Californian ones, the latter took the highest marks from some of France’s top sommeliers and wine writers. The one reporter present filed his back-pages piece for magazine, a seemingly unnoticeable article on an easily overlooked event that would set off a global market for wines made in the Americas and elsewhere.

In , Taber, that reporter, gives an official account of what happened that day, and across the world in vineyards and wineries and on dinner tables since. “Although my story was scheduled, I knew that the odds of it getting into the magazine were long,” he writes. “If, as expected, the French wines won, there would be no story. But you never know, and a wine tasting—where maybe I’d get a chance to try a few of the wines myself—seemed, at the very least, like a perfectly wonderful way to spend an otherwise slow afternoon.” The unusual people responsible for California’s early modern winemaking days — a professor, a real estate lawyer, and an immigrant from then-Yugoslavia — are fleshed out in these pages, enthralling characters who match some of the new world’s most breathtaking vineyards, planted in response to that Paris day, all of which Taber covers in his engrossing, storytelling style. Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France by Kermit Lynch

The 25th anniversary edition of this now-classic travelogue written by groundbreaking U.S. wine importer Kermit Lynch was called “One of the pleasantest and truest books about wine I’ve ever read” by American food writer M.F.K. Fisher upon publication. And it’s finally on par with the rest of the wine world, having started out light years ahead. For the anniversary release, Jay McInerney chimes in: “Kermit Lynch is as brilliant a writer as he is a taster, and his quest for authentic wine is more relevant than ever.” Lynch’s quest began in France’s Beaujolais and Loire Valley in the 1980s, where he went looking for bottles of the country’s germinating natural wines movement. The movement gathered grower and winemaker together in one person under the french term and vehemently shrugged off farming and winemaking conventions established by the new Industrial Age’s reliance on chemical fertilizers and additives. Lynch did the same for us U.S. drinkers with France’s undersung stateside wine areas from Chablis to Provence.

He created doors for like-minded wine importers to open further in years to come, all so that the rest of us might drink smarter and better. “In France, vintners who change their style to copy what is seen as the winning formula or recipe in order to cash in are called, which means ‘wine whores,’ but I’m more polite,” he writes. “I call such wines ‘pop wines’— sort of like pop music. You calculate what a critic or the general public requires and you try to fashion a wine that is suitable. I like pop music. But I find that pop music, especially from my era, the 1950s and ‘60s, shows more diversity than pop wines now do. We all know the characteristics necessary for 100 points in the media during the past thirty years, and the vocabulary does not include descriptions like light-colored, light-bodied, thirst-quenching, elegant, or charming.” His up-close coverage of the landscape, people, and wines he found remains as inspiring and impossible to put down as ever.