BOOKS WE LOVE : Notes on a Book Cellar

When wine historian Leon Adams decided recently to sell his collection of wine books, people poured in as if they’d just heard Chateau Latour was on sale for $1.99 a bottle.

Wine books are a mania for a small group of people who collect “viniana” (which, incidentally, is the title of a 1930 wine book by Charles Walter Berry).

There is even a club for wine book collectors, Wayward Tendrils of the Vine, whose members view old wine books, especially first and limited editions, as prizes almost as important as wine itself.

This year’s crop of wine literature is bounteous, though possibly slightly lower in quality than in some past years.

The master of the genre is England’s Hugh Johnson, and in the past his books often topped the list of best of the year. Little could top his masterly “Vintage” of 1991, a monumental work on the history of wine. But Johnson’s prolific streak continued in 1992 in a collaboration with Australian journalist/winemaker James Halliday in “The Vintner’s Art,” (Simon & Schuster: $40; 232 pp.).

Subtitled “How Great Wines Are Made,” the book is well done--a thorough look at how grapes are turned into wine. However, California’s contributions (to say nothing of Oregon’s and Washington’s) appear only cursorily, leaving me feeling it was an afterthought--a disappointing hole through which you could drive a truckload of grapes.

Still, the work is readable and attractive (lots of photos and drawings), making it excellent for the beyond-beginner wine lover.

A commendable effort that I found well conceived, though less well executed, is “Making Sense of California Wine” by Matt Kramer (William Morrow: $20; 383 pp.). Oregon resident Kramer did a splendid job with his 1989 “Making Sense of Burgundy,” an original work in which he raised a number of intriguing, often puzzling, questions about the role that soil plays in wine. Kramer answered most questions using research others had been unwilling to do.

His California sequel also raises soil/quality questions, but he explores them far more subjectively. In my view, some of Kramer’s conclusions are incorrect and some winery profiles are off-target.

A better approach, I believe, is taken by Norman Roby and Charles Olken in “The New Connoisseurs’ Handbook of California Wines” (Alfred Knopf: $21; 388 pp.). This new edition, 12 years after the first, is more detailed, with an excellent look at California growing regions, generalized tasting notes on hundreds of wines and winery styles, vintage notes and ratings of producers based on grape varieties.

A most personal look at wines of the world is “Oz Clarke’s 1993 Wine Handbook” (Fireside/Simon & Schuster: $10; 280 pp.). This sprightly work is an essential for serious wine lovers, especially those who might find a wine with an unfamiliar name. Likely, it’s listed here with a rating. It has loads of useful information.

Three books about Spain are on the shelf. I prefer Ann and Larry Walker’s engaging look at Spanish wine and food in “A Season in Spain,” (Simon & Schuster: $30; 458 pp.). The Walkers (Larry writes on wine for the San Francisco Chronicle, Ann is a caterer) include recipes and suggest the best wines to go with each dish.

Also worthwhile are “The Catalan Country Kitchen” by Marimar Torres (Aris/Addison Wesley: $22.95; 179 pp.), and “The Wine Atlas of Spain,” by Hubrecht Duijker (Simon & Schuster: $40; 240 pp.).

I don’t recommend Simon & Schuster’s Regional Wine Guides (one on Spain and Portugal, the other on Italy, both $12.95)--both poorly handled paperbacks.

A huge-format paperback for the inveterate wine collector is “The Ultimate Guide to Buying Wine,” by the Wine Spectator Press ($6.95; 491 pp.). Unlike last year’s edition, it has some tasting notes and ratings (on a 100-point scale) for thousands of wines.

A drawback is that most wines were tasted only once and some only two or three years ago. Still, there is good information here, and wine collectors may want to have a copy near their bottles as a guide to which wine to consume first.

Almost as large in size and twice as heavy is a curious tome, “The Companion to Wine,” edited by Frank Prial, the esteemed New York Times wine columnist (Prentice Hall/Simon & Schuster: $60; 365 pp.).

This handsome coffeetable book has excellent photography, but the text is quite cursory. And there are a few irritating errors. (For instance, an out-of-date map that ignores a number of new wineries but tells you where to find several that are long defunct.)

In the wake of the CBS-TV “60 Minutes” broadcast “The French Paradox,” in which drinking moderate amounts of wine were linked with a lower risk of heart disease, Lewis Perdue, publisher of the Wine Business Insider, an industry trade publication, has written “The French Paradox and Beyond” (Renaissance Publishing, 867 W. Napa St., Sonoma, Calif. 95476: $12.95; 273 pp.).

Using medical studies and commentary by doctors to support his thesis, Perdue offers a rebuttal to anti-alcohol forces who, in Perdue’s opinion, don’t distinguish between responsible use and abuse. The text is a bit heavy-handed at times, but it contains a wealth of information never previously collected in a single work.

I enjoyed reading “Wine Snobbery” by Andrew Barr (Simon & Schuster: $20; 336 pp.; hardcover), originally published in 1988 in England. The thesis here is that many wine columnists (most of them in the United Kingdom) are also wine merchants and therefore have a conflict of interest. Barr takes shots at other sacred cows as well: He’s been criticized for this and one writer/merchant even sued him. Interesting though it is to the hard-core wine collector, the book is so uneven that newcomers may be a bit mystified.

In “Italy’s Noble Red Wines” (Macmillan: $60; 762 pp.), authors Pauline Wasserman and her late husband, Sheldon, analyze a region thus far neglected for English-language readers. What’s good about the book are the voluminous tasting notes and detailed comments on grape growing and wine making in the various regions of Italy. There’s a drawback too: Despite two indexes, it’s not always easy to find material in the book.