Wine

Object Lessons

by Meg Bernhard, Christopher Schaberg (Editor), Ian Bogost (Editor)

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

While wine drunk millennia ago was the humble beverage of the people, today the drink is inextricable with power, sophistication, and often wealth. Bottles sell for half a million dollars. Point systems tell us which wines are considered the best. Wine professionals give us the language to describe what we taste.

Agricultural product and cultural commodity, drink of ritual and drink of addiction, purveyor of pleasure, pain, and memory - wine has never been contained in a single glass. Drawing from science, religion, literature, and memoir, Wine meditates on the power structures bound up with making and drinking this ancient, intoxicating beverage.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Genres: Food, Wine, Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2023

Reviews

[Mai H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Winter

The chapter where I learned what stick season was, and not just due to that song. A good song, I will admit.

Blame colonization. Blame their sexy accents. However, the French have beautiful words for things, and here, I give you the word terroir.

Wine is personal. Most things are. It should make you feel something. And whether that is from the smell or the taste or the feeling, find one that means something to you. Unless you don't drink. Which is absolutely fine.

Spring

This section talked a lot about how certain grapes only do well in certain climates, but that's all changing due to climate change. A sad statistic is how many French farmers committed suicide after their yields were low.

Another thing to note is how wine language is told by the languages of white Europeans. Cabs are often described with the flavor of red currants. Red currants aren't allowed to grow in most of the States. That doesn't offend me. What offended me was the Asians trying to describe wine using the food of their youth, and getting judged for it.

Summer

While social drinking feels safe and normal enough in other countries, college drinking culture in the States is an abomination. Binge drinking is normalized. So is underage drinking. I'm not knocking anything. I participated. But between this and the pervasive driving culture, something has to change.

This is relevant when the author drinks too much and barely remembers being raped. Not shaming anyone here. It happens more often than not, and is reported even less.

Fall

Everything affects the taste of grapes, and what grows. As wildfires persevere in California, what does that do to the crop? How do wines taste? How has the change in climate determined growing seasons?

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here are the factors I consider when I pick a bottle of wine: red or white (or, rarely, rosé), dry or sweet or somewhere in between, price, what the label looks like. (This is a significant advance from what I used to consider, which was limited to price and label.) My s.o. also considers things like we have had and liked this wine before, but to be honest I just cannot be bothered.

In Wine, Bernhard adds another level of consideration, looking at where and how wine is produced—what that tells us about a wine, and what memory means for what we taste in a given glass. From her I learned wines should make you feel something, she writes, —nostalgia or homesickness or delight or passion. Wines that provoked an emotional response made the best sort of conversation. The worst review a wine could receive was silence at the table afterward. (loc. 135*)

Taste and smell are subjective, but Bernhard notes with some wryness that the vocabulary of wine tasting has become rather standardized, not to mention something that people use to classify other people—liking X type of wine suggests someone lowbrow; using Y vocabulary suggests someone educated. One of the reviews Bernhard finds on a wine-rating app describes one wine as having "just a hint of sleet in the finish" (loc. 317), which, excuse me, what? I'd like to know what sensory memory that writer is pulling from—and I'd also like to propose a drinking game whereby participants compete to describe wine in the snootiest terms possible, and the description that is the best combination of accurate and snooty wins.

As the book goes on (as the bottle empties?), Bernhard moves from discussions of class and gender and power to tackle the impact of climate change on wine, from drought leading to richer wine with higher alcohol content, to ruined crops, to wildfires leaving smoke-ravaged wine in their wake. (I didn't know that smoke stays in grapes, generally ruining any resulting wine—some winemakers have tried to take that ruination and run with it, and that's the one thing Bernhard describes that I'd really love to try.)

What we're left with is an uncertain future for wine. Grape growers will continue to grow grapes, and winemakers will continue to make wine, but perhaps in different regions and with different emphases (more rosé?) than before. Perhaps wine will get, as a whole, sweeter. Or smokier. Perhaps our vocabulary for wine will change.

3.5 stars—this is part of Bloomsbury Academic's Object Lessons series, which I've had a fabulous time with since learning about the collection. Individual mileage will vary with individual books, but as a whole I class them as thoroughly enjoyable nerd reading.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*I read an ARC, and quotes may not be final.

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

For such a short book, this is astonishingly wide-ranging and comprehensive, exploring all aspects of wine making and wine drinking, incorporating climate change, sexism in the industry, labour laws, sommeliers, and just the sheer enjoyment of drinking wine. Meg Bernhard spent time working in vineyards and talking to a whole variety of wine growers and professionals. She brings in just the right amount of personal experience to the subject and provides an enormous amount of information in a lively and accessible way. Definitely one of my favourites of the wonderful Object Lessons series, even though my interest in wine is virtually nil, my knowledge even less and my enjoyment limited to the very occasional glass. But I am so much better informed now. A great read.

[Peter Baran · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was quite surprised that the Object Lesson on Wine would take such a tried and tested route. The individuals journey into understanding wine via a year working with it is already a pretty established genre, albeit often as subtext to personal growth. I'm pretty much used to the American centric tone of this series now, and Bernhard's story of a year in Europe working indie vineyards at least gets to the heart of some of the tensions between old and new world wines, without really delving deeply into history, facts or stats. Initially as it unfolded I thought it was a bit of a missed opportunity - but as with the more populist objects in this series (Football being a perfect example), hundreds of those books already exist. Moreover, this memoir meanders gently as a person telling you a story over a bottle might, and is a warm and inviting conversation.

There are some lovely tidbits in here, but this isn't an Object Lesson about dazzling you with its research. Instead in showing how her wine journey broadened her own personal development (and assuages some previous trauma that we get on to later) she illustrates contradictions in the way class, money and snobbery are all tied into the essential being of the current wine trade. There is a big class issue she deals with early on, small producers versus the mega-vitners and the power of distribution, and then a very large chunk on the sexism in the system. But all of this is contrasted against a growing and production calendar which is temperamental and harsh, and what that teaches you about rural lives and perhaps how to properly appreciate this drink. Most impressively though Bernhard does balance the personal with the macro-political, and shows how they mirror and influence each other. All of which she does without snobbery, or indeed the opposite. She likes wine, she knows there are aspects that are problematic but here is her journey into enjoying and having a healthy relationship with the drink. A lovely Object Lesson.

[Nora Rawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started at a wine bar and was very taken with the writing, and finished on a trip to Spain--it was lovely reading of the La Mancha and Catalonian vineyards, and interesting 'discovering' wine through the eyes of a novice, as I'm someone who grew up hearing about buying the futures that bob Parker did from the wine store he shopped, which was also my father's wine shop--of swirling wine at the table, and hearing it discussed at big dinners whose purpose was the unveiling of Bourdouxs and Burgundys, though I fear I have little palate from this--little palate, but much innate familiarity, which is a certain type of cultural privilege. I think perhaps for this reason, for how close it was to my upbringing, I could have wished for a bit less focus on abuses within the sommelier training program, and a bit more of the history, but I suppose that's the leeway we want to give the things we care for. the discussion of how tasting notes were developed and the range they can have was worthwhile, though again, coming from a long familiarity with wine, I have trouble (a failure of imagination to be sure) picturing *not* feeling entitled to use the scents and tastes I recognize. A little less awareness of Woke and a little more desire to go into the appreciation would have helped this one I think--though it is worth considering the labor conditions of the harvest to be sure.

[Neal Tognazzini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just discovered this series of short books about ordinary things, so I decided to read a few. This one is part memoir (of time spent living and working on vineyards in Spain) and part lesson on the history and economics and politics of grape growing and wine making. I thought it was well written and very fun to read.

[Alex Sarll]

My reviews of Object Lessons often seem to involve some element of bemoaning any given book's distance from the ideal of the series that I've basically invented. This time, it was that the topic was surely one which had been extensively explored already, including in plenty of books for the general reader. Concerns which were amplified when, early on, Bernhard went to work in Spanish vineyards and seemed prone to passing along remarkable wisdom of the soil which felt more than a little familiar: '"Smell is the human sense most strongly associated with memory," Carmen told me." My word, really?

But even here there were hints of something more, like the way a sommelier who comes across as a beach bum can be just as infuriating as the standard snooty model (sommeliers as a trade, or rather cartel, really don't come out of this book well). And as the book goes along, organised with the seasons of the winemaking year as its spine, it came into its own. The less romantically earthy side of country living intrudes, sometimes even tipping into rural gothic, and Bernhard pokes more at the way the world of wine intersects with inequalities of race, gender and class. And overshadowing it all, as it does everything, the collapsing climate, which threatens wine in both the obvious ways (drought and blazing sun blasting the grapes) and ones I hadn't thought of (wildfire smoke marring the taste of the grapes that do survive). I finished these sections feeling like I could do with a drink - not least because it may not be long before that option is lost to us.

Plus, I learned here about the USA's long-standing prohibitions on blackcurrants. I mean, fair enough - they are obviously more dangerous than a society where every murderous nutjob has free access to automatic weapons.

(Netgalley ARC)

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wine is another book in the Object Lessons series, in which an author explores an object in a particular way. The series tends to either focus on personal memoir mixed with the object in question, or explore different facets of that object, and in this one, there's a real sense of personal narrative alongside smaller snippets of the various power structures around wine and its production and consumption. The book is structured around the seasons, in terms of winemaking and also Bernhard's time visiting vineyards and wine producers, and it moves between topics fluidly in short chapters.

For a book about wine, it doesn't focus on wine terminology or wine tasting notes, which makes it a welcomely approachable book, but at the same time, it doesn't always tell you much about wine. The exploration of things like the class and gender elements involved in wine appreciation and wine production are very interesting, and particularly the book appreciated the power structures around things like migration that make wine production possible. However, there perhaps could've been more parts that considered the vast history of wine and how it isn't always a pretty history.

The rest of the book is describing Bernhard's own experiences and the people she meets, which isn't quite what I expected from the book, but will appeal to people who enjoy food and drink related memoir. It is an interesting counterpoint to the power structures of wine to also consider individuals, but sometimes these parts merged into one and weren't so engaging. The book engages with some intense topics, particularly sexual assault and alcohol abuse, and the former you might not expect in a book about wine, so it is worth being aware of. In such a short book, there's not much space to explore particularly alcoholism and how wine is tied up with this, which is a shame as it is an important dimension to talking about the topic.

Wine wasn't quite what I expected as a book, but it offering a thought-provoking chance to think about wine and its production and consumption, alongside a memoir of learning about wine. Some of the more difficult elements that push against a rosy idea of wine were particularly engaging and I did end up wishing they could've had more space in the book, alongside perhaps more deconstruction of the history and myths of wine. It's the sort of book you could gift someone instead of a bottle of wine though, which is quite a good conceit.

[Book Club of One · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meg Bernhard's Wine joins the Object Lesson's series of short, books about the hidden lives of ordinary things, focused on wine. Organized to follow the growth cycle of the grape, Bernhard takes us from winter maintenance and planning to picking, pressing and bottling. Alongside the natural cycle of growth, Bernhard takes time to explore other aspects of the wine industry and more generally the consumption of alcohol or the perception of drinkers and their ability to consent, the latter especially as Bernhard has experienced it in her life.

Drawing on this personal life, Bernhard details her experiences working at various farms and wineries, and the accounts of others and research to further details some of the sections. Like the reader's opinion of a book, the experience of tasting wine is highly subjective. However, in living up to the series goal of the hidden lives, Bernhard elucidates the racial and economic inequities of the industry and the rampant misogyny of the sommelier trade. We learn about the training of the sommelier, and how male dominated that field is, and as in other industries, how that power has been both a barrier and an opportunity for abuse.

While Bernhard's field experience was cut short by the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the greatest threat to the wine industry is climate change. It is well known that the place the grapes are grown impacts flavor, but the air quality also has its effects. As many grape growing regions are effected by hotter summers and the threats of fire, this impacts the quantity and quality of wine able to be made year to year.

Much of the work is Bernhard direct experience. The hard physical labor of caring for the vineyards and then harvesting and making the wine. Alcohol as it existed in her home growing up, a mother who avoided alcohol for religious reasons and a father who hid it around the house and drank when alone. Especially jarring is Bernhard's collegiate experience of first abstaining, and then embracing drinking because of its central place in college social life.

Wine is the opportunity to consider wine through many different facets, as a product, as part of drinking lifestyles, as a product of agriculture and as Meg Bernhard has experienced it in her life.

I received a free digital version of this eBook via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.

[Darius Ostrowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe that this is my twelfth(!) entry in the Object Lessons series, short books that focus on the hidden history of everyday objects. Although the concept is excellent, I have had a very up and down relationship with the series, it seems that I alternate between “very interesting” and “not at all”. Luckily for me, “Wine” by Meg Bernhard, definitely fell into the very interesting category.

Of course, one cannot explore the concept of wine in a short introductory book, literally libraries full of guides have been written about the subject. So the author here takes a different approach, writing about her relationship with wine in the context of visiting and working in Spanish vineyards over the course of the four seasons. Think of this as a memoir of Ms. Bernhard’s exploration of wine culture, from grapes to glass. And along the way, we learn a little about the history around wine as a sociological force.

There is a large gulf between the people who produce our wine and the people who enjoy it. We see the plight of the small producers as they are faced with challenges throughout the winemaking process, from unpredictable weather to uncertain labor conditions to competition from the large producers. And as we all are learning to cope with climate change, the effects on the wine industry are already causing shifts in production and geography. Ms. Bernhard takes us through the marketing and selling of wine as well, from snooty sommeliers to rampant sexism and racism in the power structure. And we also explore the drinking culture, from college kids to wine auctions. Through it all we have the author sharing her personal experiences, from abstinence to overconsumption to appreciation.

When this series is at its best, it illuminates and educates about things that we know little about, or take for granted, or didn’t even know existed – that’s what makes this a fascinating idea and collection. This chapter informs us about something that we take for granted, allowing for a greater appreciation before we take that first sip.

I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Bloomsbury Academic via NetGalley. Thank you!

[Theediscerning · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that starts out fine, but soon goes down the lefty, autobiographical route that seems to interminably pull at the creators behind this series. Our author is on a year-long sojourn in Spain, learning about wine from staying with its producers, and seeing the whole calendar of the grape, from pruning the vines to the eventual bottling. She starts unable to speak fluent Spanish, Catalan or fluent wine, but proves to be a wonderful guide to things we might never have considered. For yes, I grew up with Jilly Goolden on UK TV saying how wine tasted of pine cones, slug trails and tramps' boots, and suchlike, but even the more common and useful descriptors can show wine culture to be exclusive. If you've never experienced cassis, how can you engage with the terms used?

But after the midpoint things go heavily off-topic. It does get round to wrapping things up nicely, on point, but between we're very skippably talking about other issues. We have the plight of the harvesters, about which the same could be said for absolutely everything us in the west consume, so I fail to see how the implied guilt is going to work. But we also have another issue, on which even the author seems to admit to not really needing to write about. If as she says "the industry, LIKE EVERY INDUSTRY, is tainted with problematic power dynamics" (my initials) why yack on about it here? Not to sound unsympathetic, but people bought this for the wine and not the whine.

On the whole, however, this is definitely a suitable entry for this series, allowing the casual browser to read about or around an everyday item they never expected to. On past form it could have been a hell of a lot worse. And for what it taught me and got me to consider when it was on topic, it's a clear three and a half stars.

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wine, by Meg Bernhard, is another volume in the excellent Object Lessons series. Here, we get a memoirish overview of her introduction to wine as well as some wonderful tidbits that serve more as entertainment than education.

For the readers who sometimes lament that these books scare them (though they usually avoid admitting that and make their whining seem objective rather than a temper tantrum) because they often touch on their entitlements, it is here but probably, even by your low standards, not too offensive. It is hard to argue with the verifiable facts presented here when it comes to class, gender, and climate change.

If you seriously thought a book in a series that is designed to be both short volumes and from a personal perspective that you were going to get a full history of wine as well as explanations of the many variants, then you're either desperate to find something to complain about or you're amazingly stupid. This isn't an encyclopedia, it isn't meant to be comprehensive, and such a textbook would have very little if any personal element. In other words, it would be the opposite of a book in the Object Lessons series. Some people, they just love being negative.

I think this will appeal to those readers who expect to read some interesting anecdotes, enjoy a bit of memoir, and gain a new, or at least different, perspective on wine and winemaking.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this courtesy of NetGalley.

I know that I say almost every one of these is both personal and academic, but this one is the MOST personal of all the Object Lessons I've read so far. In fact, it's mostly personal: there's a bit about the current experience of owning and managing vineyards, and making wine, in both Spain and the USA... but this is predominantly the story of the author, and her intersection with wine. Of growing up with basically no alcohol in the house, starting to drink in college, binging alcohol and experiencing many negative consequences of doing so. Then, travelling to Spain to work on vineyards, and learning about the processes necessary to make wine: the intense work necessary to maintain the vines, the work of fermenting and bottling, and so on.

Bernhard's reflections on her vineyard experiences are poignant - the stressful nature of such agriculture in the current climate crisis, the necessary connection to the environment that must be understood to get the most out of the vines, and what such physical labour can mean for someone completely unaccustomed to it. It's a good reminder that so much of what people in highly industrialised countries take for granted does still rely on intense, human, manual labour.

WINE does not attempt to be a history of the beverage, nor an anthropological exploration of its place in modern America; it's not a deep dive into the business, nor a paean to the joys of drinking. It's one person's meditation, on how she has experienced it in her life. It's quite lovely.

[E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

People who really like the history aspect of other books in this series probably won't like this one as much because this reads more like a memoir than an object history, but that's actually what makes this my favorite of the ones in this series I've read so far. I enjoyed how Bernhard's hands-on experience through the process of winemaking (specifically with the growth and harvesting of grapes) formed the different sections of the book and how she wove in little snippets of the history and philosophy of wine and practical aspects of making, selling and consuming wine. I also appreciated how she briefly addressed the future of wine, namely how climate change and its affects have altered the process and outcome of winemaking (for example, it had never occurred to me that wildfires and smoke can alter the taste of unharvested grapes to such a degree that it would affect the taste of the wine they make).

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley, Bloomsbury academic and the author for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I’m not sure how to write this degree. It was not what I was expecting. I was hoping to become really knowledgable about all the worldwide wines. The variations, the grapes, the tannings and the flavours. HOWEVER the storytelling of this book was quite fascinating and I found it an enjoyable read if not expected. I wouldn’t say the writing was magnificent or captivating as you would often find from an epic novel from a critically acclaimed author but it wasn’t difficult to read, the pace was nice and fitted the book.

Overall, read the synopsis and if it is for you then I’m sure you will find it great!!

[Sharondblk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid addition to the Object Lessons series. This is one of the more autobiographic volumes, and I was here for it. Meg talks about wine, but it's more about wine in relation to other things: her travels, climate change, language, snobbery and gatekeeping. The second [part addresses some serious issues like sexual harassment, gender, the more negative side of drinking. It's a bit all over the place, but in a good way. Like sitting down with a friend over a glass of wine and listening to her musings.

I was given a free e-Arc from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Ula Tardigrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wine is such a broad topic that can be approached from so many different angles, so I didn't know what to expect from this slim volume - but I loved the way the author chose to explore it here. She has written a personal, intimate essay that focuses on wine as an experience - but not just the social experience of drinking wine together, but also the experience of making it. Served in small chunks - or rather sips - it gives you a similar pleasure to drinking a good vintage.

The book is a part of an interesting series, Object Lessons, about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Thanks to the publisher, Bloomsbury Academic, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A warm hearted and light memoir of a year in the life of wine through the author's experience in Spain. I liked learning about wine production through a less formal book. A great book that balances wine and personal takes, with focus on how class, culture, sexism, climate change and so much more have an impact on the industry.