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Messages in bottles

May 10th, 2008 Liz C. - Alicia Ashman

Growing up in Wisconsin, I have to admit that in my family the beverage of choice on a night out was most likely beer, or if at a nightclub, a brandy old-fashioned.  So even though my mother enjoyed her occasional glass of Mogen David, wine was not something I knew or even thought much about.  Fast forward a few decades and I had reached the point of a glass of wine while dining out, but was pretty uncertain about the whole thing. I mean: are they all dry?  And what is this about flavors of apricots, blackberries, and oak?  I thought wine came from grapes!  So color me confused and pretty much heading back to beer.

Well, they say with age, comes wisdom.  I’m not sure of that, but certainly change comes with age, and I am once again tiptoeing into the world of wine.  This is thanks mostly to a younger sister now living in Portland, Oregon.  It is pretty hard to visit without also visiting the wineries nearby, and with Geni’s assistance I am actually both learning about and broadening my tastes in wines.  But I am still very much a novice, so when the book To Cork or Not to Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle by George Taber came across my desk, I grabbed it with the thought of learning a bit more.

And so I entered a fascinating world about the battles for enclosures to hold the wine.  The author starts with a little history about the various vessels used to hold wine through the ages but the focus is the development of the wine bottle and the use of cork as a seal.  Why cork and how it became a monopoly despite continued problems from the point of view of the wine makers is at the heart of the book.  Besides the history the author gets behind the science of winemaking and the why and how of cork or the more recent uses of plastic or screwcaps matter to the winemaker, the marketplace, and the consumer.  I especially enjoyed the side trips employed by the author in his “Message in a bottle” sections which give a personalized look into the world of wine.

Entry Filed under: Nonfiction