Books to Inspire Hunger and Thirst

Wine textbooks are crucial, but they may only rarely move you. What about books that teach you not only how to think about wine but how to feel about it?

It’s a tossup over whether my overstuffed apartment holds more wine or more books. The number of bottles tumbled about, particularly over the pandemic year, is rivaled only by the scattered stacks of volumes that sadly will never earn shelf space. It would be foolish to ask which I love more. But if you insist, I can reluctantly imagine life without wine. Books? Impossible. To put it another way, if I am traveling or even heading crosstown, I panic over whether I have something to read, not whether I’ll have a bottle to uncork. You cannot drink a book. But you can always read about wine. While I collect books on diverse subjects, nothing gives me more pleasure than those that include scenes with good meals and copious amounts of wine.