Sample the untold history of Texas's wine industry in this book filled with fascinating stories and photos.Spanish colonists may have come to Texas to spread Christianity, but under visionary Father Fray Garcia, they stayed and raised grapes. Later immigrants brought their own burgundy tastes of home, creating a unique wine country. When a North American pest threatened European vines, it was Texan scientist T. V. Munson who helped save the industry overseas. When ...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA fascinating, entertaining exploration of the plants behind alcoholic beverages, blending botany, history, science, gardening, and cocktail culture**—now updated to include a guide to planting your very own cocktail garden to go with more than fifty drink recipes.**Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley, tequila from agave, rum from sugarcane, bourbo...

Every great dish has a centre of gravity, a flavour or essence that pulls together other ingredients into a coherent and compelling whole. Indian curry spices, fiery Thai chilis, lemony citrus, smoky barbecue rubs—these are all flavours that we adore and that get our taste buds asking for more. Flavour is, quite simply, what makes us passionate about food and drink. At last, here is a cookbook that focuses on this fundamental concept.Organized around eleven distinctive tastes, from...

Praise for KINGS OF TEXAS"Kings of Texas is a fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. It's concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous, and very readable. It should find a wide audience."-Larry McMurtry, author of Sin Killer and the Pulitzer Prize--winning Lonesome Dove"This book is about the King Ranch, but it is about much more than that. A compelling chronicle of war, peace, love, betrayal, birth, and death in the region where the Texas-Mexic...

There's a world of words to describe wine, but only seven you need to know to understand it.Wine is one of the most written about beverages in our history, with dictionaries dedicated solely to the words and phrases used to describe it in the ever-expanding world of self-professed wine connoisseurs. Inside this informative guide, you will discover:New paradigms to better understand the wine worldA brief history of wine and famous winemarker ...

Tasting the Cape is a guide to the world-renowned Cape winelands, a travelling companion and more. Filled with insights from one of South Africa's most influential food and wine critics, the book offers the wine lover a new and accessible approach to South African wines by grouping the featured estates by character - the formal types, the wacky ones and the quiet achievers. Tasting the Cape will not only introduce you to the legends of the Cape winelands and the history o...

Terroir connotes a sense of place that imparts a distinctive character to wine. A central component of terroir is the soil and its immediate surroundings. Thus, an understanding of the basic properties of soils and how they function as a "living skin" on the earth's surface is of fundamental importance to grape growers and winemakers. Stripped of scientific jargon, Understanding Vineyard Soils explains to a wide audience how soils form and why they are so variabl...

"Almost as much guide book as it is cookbook . . . the authors dive into the ingredients unique to Provencal cuisine and the history of the region." — KitchnProvence, the beautiful region that sits at the scenic crossroads of southern France, the Italian Alps, and the Mediterranean, has long been an area of historical import and distinct culture. But above all else, it is known as a producer of some of the finest food and wine France has to offer, with a c...

The Globe and Mail best-seller, and #1 best-selling wine guide in British Columbia, is back!James Nevison's annual, unpretentious guide for everyday wine is back, with the top 100 wallet-friendly wines for 2015.In this expertly selected collection, you will find the very best value for your money across white, pink, red, sparkling, and fortified wines. Get the scoop on $10 wines that taste like they're $30, and $20 bottles that will knock your socks ...

Focusing on two Arizona towns that had their origins in mining bonanzas—Tombstone and Jerome—historian Eric L. Clements offers a rare study dissecting the process of bust itself—the reasons and manners in which these towns declined as the mining booms ended. Tombstone was the site of one of the great silver bonanzas of the nineteenth century, a boom that started in the late 1870s and was over by 1890. Jerome’s copper deposits were mined for much longer, beginning in the 1880s and enduring ...

The Texas Hill Country wineries have roots as old as any around. Texas grapes grow in soils made from ancient sea deposits, similar to the grape-growing regions of Europe. Texas wine culture arrived in the 1600s with Spanish missionaries who settled and planted vineyards in El Paso del Norte. The 1800s brought German and Italian immigrant farmers to Texas; they considered wine a staple of everyday life. In what is now America's No. 5 wine-producing state, the Texas Hill Country was named b...

New edition of the bestselling guide to whisky.The ever-expanding world of whisky can be a daunting one, with a deluge of new brands, distilleries and literature on the subject making it all but impossible for the amateur whisky drinker to find their way. Blair Bowman provides a compact and accessible, easy-to-use guide to help budding whisky enthusiasts on their way.The Pocket Guide to Whisky explores every kind of whisky, from the well-known Scot...