Matt Kramer's New California Wine

[ludja]

I just finished re-reading Matt Kramer's first book on CA wine: Making Sense of California Wine. I really like this book; it was a great guide for us after we moved out to N. CA and started lots of wine tasting in CA. So, noticing that it was published in 1992--I did a search and saw that there is a new book that came out last year in 2004!

Matt Kramer's New CA Wine: Making Sense of Napa Valley, Sonoma, Central Coast and Beyond

Has anyone had a chance to read it yet?

Any comparisons to the first book?

[russ parsons]

i regret to say that it is still on my bedside table (damn that louis de bernieres "birds without wings"). but i do know matt quite well and i believe that the book was rewritten throughout. he is truly one of wine's few original thinkers (as he would be the first to tell you).

[MaxH]

Here are some notes I wrote elsewhere, for what they're worth on this subject. (I have not yet gotten far into the new edition.)

Matt Kramer's second edition on California (New California Wine, ISBN 0762419644):

The new book begins by explaining that when his previous version appeared in 1992, “the now-famous `explosion’ in prices and marketing -- the invention of `cult’ Cabernets; the proliferation of tiny labels selling for $50 to $100 a bottle -- had not yet occurred.” There is crucial history in a nutshell -- often overlooked by people who came to wine during the same period that Kramer cites.

Before association with Wine Spectator, Matt Kramer was known in the Pacific Northwestern US as a precocious young Portland-area dining critic of sharp standards and wit. I still have some of that writing on file, but don't need to look it up. Who could possibly forget Kramer's exasperation with pieces of beef filet "mounted on the seemingly inevitable slice of soggy bread" and sauces again and again "so heavily floured, if it were baked, it might have become bread." (These two clichés of his reflected no dislike of baking, that I know.) But he saved his best offense for pretence. He accused one restaurant of knowing no French but placing fake French on the menu. "Like an adolescent trying to appear suave, nothing is more pitiable ..." In another situation, a restaurateur with multiple sites where Kramer consistently found show rather than go, he described waiting in an entryway with a display of bottles on their sides; on inspection the bottles were empty, the capsules carefully replaced. "This row of empty bottles, slyly pretending to greater riches than actually lie within, captures the spirit of Horst Mager's Coach Street Fish House." [Quotations from memory with the usual hazards therefore. Originals published late 1970s.]

At the same time, Kramer published recipes and celebrations of food, and taught the region how to make a traditional (almond-milk) Blancmange, updated from Carême (no more isinglass). I used that recipe again recently with good success.