Reviews

Wine by Meg Bernhard

shanaqui's review

informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

Like a lot of the Object Lessons books I've read recently, Meg Bernhard's Wine is something of a memoir. At the same time, though, it does stick pretty close to the topic, and discusses the making of wine in a fairly close and involved manner: Bernhard went to vineyards and put herself to work, and spent time drinking the finished products in a thoughtful way. 

As a result, it balances the personal (of which there is quite a bit) with interesting titbits about how wine is made, the impacts of climate change on wine production (such as the impact of wildfires and the wines that have to be made due to the smoke taint on the grape skins), and about how we relate to wine. It also discusses women in the wine industry, the difficulty of breaking through as a master sommelier in a highly male-dominated environment (where men have outright used their status to abuse women).

It's still a highly personal book, discussing Bernhard's personal relationship with alcoholic, her blackouts, the sexual assault she suffered when drinking heavily, her relationship with her father who has similar issues. But it manages to balance that with information, with a grounding in fact, and it works well.

saragibson's review

informative medium-paced

3.5

fiendfull's review

3.0

Wine is another book in the Object Lessons series, in which an author explores an object in a particular way. The series tends to either focus on personal memoir mixed with the object in question, or explore different facets of that object, and in this one, there's a real sense of personal narrative alongside smaller snippets of the various power structures around wine and its production and consumption. The book is structured around the seasons, in terms of winemaking and also Bernhard's time visiting vineyards and wine producers, and it moves between topics fluidly in short chapters. 

 

For a book about wine, it doesn't focus on wine terminology or wine tasting notes, which makes it a welcomely approachable book, but at the same time, it doesn't always tell you much about wine. The exploration of things like the class and gender elements involved in wine appreciation and wine production are very interesting, and particularly the book appreciated the power structures around things like migration that make wine production possible. However, there perhaps could've been more parts that considered the vast history of wine and how it isn't always a pretty history. 

 

The rest of the book is describing Bernhard's own experiences and the people she meets, which isn't quite what I expected from the book, but will appeal to people who enjoy food and drink related memoir. It is an interesting counterpoint to the power structures of wine to also consider individuals, but sometimes these parts merged into one and weren't so engaging. The book engages with some intense topics, particularly sexual assault and alcohol abuse, and the former you might not expect in a book about wine, so it is worth being aware of. In such a short book, there's not much space to explore particularly alcoholism and how wine is tied up with this, which is a shame as it is an important dimension to talking about the topic. 

 

Wine wasn't quite what I expected as a book, but it offering a thought-provoking chance to think about wine and its production and consumption, alongside a memoir of learning about wine. Some of the more difficult elements that push against a rosy idea of wine were particularly engaging and I did end up wishing they could've had more space in the book, alongside perhaps more deconstruction of the history and myths of wine. It's the sort of book you could gift someone instead of a bottle of wine though, which is quite a good conceit.