"A Moveable Thirst," by Kushman and Beal

[Fat Guy]

We recently received a review copy of "A Moveable Thirst: Tales and Tastes from a Season in Napa Wine Country," by Rick Kushman and Hank Beal.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part, maybe 60 percent of the book, is a narrative of the two authors visiting all 141 publicly accessible wine tasting rooms in California's Napa Valley in the course of a single year. Kushman (the narrator) is the television columnist for the Sacramento Bee, and Beal is executive wine buyer for the supermarket chain Nugget Market. The rest of the book is devoted to mini-reviews of those 141 tasting rooms.

Has anybody seen the book? I took a quick look through and it and enjoyed the passages I skimmed. It seems to cover a range of subjects and is definitely written with a good deal of humor.

If you're a Society member and would be interested in reviewing this book for the benefit of your fellow members, please PM me and, if you're the first to respond, we'll send you the book. Your part of the bargain will be to post a review on this topic within three weeks of receiving the book. [EDITED TO ADD: This book has been claimed, but keep an eye out for more offers like this, as we plan to make member-contributed reviews a regular feature.]

[Forest]

(Apologies as I’m a little behind on posting this, but I’ve been on holiday and had no access to the internet during my break!)

In “A Moveable Thirst: Tales and Tastes from a Season in Napa Wine Country” the two authors, Hank Beal and Rick Kushman, embark on a “Quest” to visit every public tasting room in Napa Valley and the resulting book comprises two parts. The first two thirds recount tales from this journey and the last third offers detailed reviews of all the tasting rooms.

The first part reads like it’s been written by a syndicated columnist (which it has). It’s divided by geographic area into chapters which are made up of smaller essay-like sections. Each of these sections/essays reads like an amusing newspaper column with its own beginning, middle and end. These are digestible little pieces which highlight a wine or tasting room while teaching the reader a little something more about wine. This format makes it an easy book to pick up and read just a bit here and there when the mood strikes.

Kushman effectively uses these “pieces” as a vehicle to deliver interesting, informative facts about the history of wine (such as Mondavi’s role in the wine world, phylloxera ravaging Napa Valley, the ‘76 blind tasting between French and American wines in Paris) and the technical aspects of winemaking (such as Brix levels or how elements such as weather, soil, timing of seasons, dropping fruit in response to weather all affect the final product.) But, these morsels of information are delivered in a phrase - or a few paragraphs at most - scattered throughout the bigger story of their adventure. So, they are easy to absorb (and probably a more enjoyable way to take in the info than an academic study on winemaking) but you don’t get anything really in-depth.

Depending on the level of interest of the reader, this is not necessarily a drawback, but there were definitely times when I wanted more. For example, he touches on the differences between old and new world wines in terms of production, consumption, pairing and serving. But, again, not in a very comprehensive way and I would have liked a little more insight into the differences he mentions. He also scatters names of winemakers, restaurants, and bars throughout the first section, which make for interesting reading but without structure to the insertions it would be difficult to use this portion of the book as a reference or guide for eating or tastings (unless you make notes as you are reading.)

In general, I don’t feel like I learned a great deal more than I already knew about wine. There were times when it refreshed my memory and a few new pieces of information here and there. But for having read close to 200 pages, I didn’t really gain that much knowledge. Perhaps teaching the reader about wine was not Kushman’s intention. But, if you are at my wine level (nowhere close to being an expert but with a healthy interest in and a bit more wine knowledge than the regular guy), don’t expect any great revelations.

In terms of writing style, the first two thirds are packed with of self-effacing humor, which I found somewhat simple and even slightly lame and annoying from time to time. Quoting him from the book: “Bad self-effacing humor. It’s all I’ve got.” And, there are times when you find yourself agreeing. It’s not that he’s entirely unentertaining – in fact, if his jokes came up in spontaneous conversation or blogs rather than a published novel, he’d probably get a good chuckle from me. But, when an author puts in the extreme effort necessary to write a book and has plenty of time to think about what he’s putting down on the page, I expect something a bit more polished and witty instead of stale and predictable banter. Additionally, he uses words like “cool” and “it rocked” to describe wines and/or wineries. I think this style of writing (which tries to convey a sense of fun-loving, youthful hipness??) has the potential to divide readers as some will find it fun and lighthearted, while others find it flip and grating.

The second section, written by Hank Beal who works in the wine industry, is a very detailed description of each of the tasting rooms visited by the duo. I think this would be useful for anyone planning a serious tasting spree through Napa. For each tasting room Beal provides the coordinates, hours, a description of the place, information on atmosphere, service, tasting tools, intangibles and extras, wine availability, picnic prospects, cost, directions and what type of wine drinker this is geared towards.

So, my overall opinion is that I didn’t learn much and didn’t find myself doubled over in laughter. However, I would say it was a fun book. At no point in time did I feel an overpowering urge to give up on it and think it would be an enjoyable read for those who are not expecting it to provide more than it does. What I did get from it was a real itch to go to Napa and visit the tasting rooms. In fact it even incited a short daydream that involved my moving to Napa, opening a winery and taking up bocce ball. (Although, I am in no way qualified to make wine – or play bocce ball.) It would be a great book to take along on a tour of Napa with its short essay format that makes for quick reading in between wine stops & puts you in a Napa mindset and the information in the back which would be particularly useful for mapping out your tasting rooms plans. (I believe Kushman indicated that there is no other compilation of all the tasting rooms in this area)

This is, of course, only just my opinion on it and if anyone has any particular questions about it, feel free to ask.

ETA: Thanks for sending it off and giving me the chance to read it.

Edited July 3, 2007 by Forest (log)