Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [114]
Photo Credit 22.2
Olives: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit, Mort Rosenblum (North Point, 1996). Rosenblum tackled olives before he got to chocolate, and for those of us who love olives this is an essential read. Olives symbolize “everything happy and holy in the Mediterranean,” and though there is nary an olive tree growing around Paris, it matters not. “Next time the sun is bright and the tomatoes are ripe,” Rosenblum advises us, “take a hunk of bread, sprinkle it with fresh thyme, and think about where to dunk it. I rest my case.”
Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky (Walker, 2002). Did you know that salt makes ice cream freeze, removes rust, seals cracks, cleans bamboo furniture, kills poison ivy, and treats dyspepsia, sprains, sore throats, and earaches? Salt is believed by Muslims and Jews alike to ward off the evil eye, and bringing bread and salt to a new home is a Jewish tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. I was humbled to learn that the La Baleine sea salt I’ve been buying for years is owned by Morton, and I was surprised to learn that most of the salt mined today is destined for deicing roads in cold-weather places around the world. (Readers interested in more myriad uses for salt should get the nifty Solve It with Salt: 110 Surprising and Ingenious Household Uses for Table Salt by Patty Moosbrugger.)
Wine Box
True wine lovers want to know about all the wines of the world, even if they may prefer French wines over others. The following books are all good general resources for wine and include sections on French wine. (And wine in a box, by the way, is decent if not good in France. Though I have yet to try an American boxed wine that’s a match for any of the French brands—if you come across one, please let me know.)
Great Wines Made Simple: Straight Talk from a Master Sommelier, Andrea Immer Robinson (Broadway, 2005, revised edition).
Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course: A Guide to the World of Wine (Abbeville, 2006, revised edition).
Michael Broadbent’s Vintage Wine: Fifty Years of Tasting Three Centuries of Wine (Harcourt, 2002).
The Oxford Companion to Wine, Jancis Robinson (Oxford University Press, 2006, third edition).
The Pleasures of Wine (2002) and Vineyard Tales (1996), both by Gerald Asher, wine editor at Gourmet for more than thirty years, and published by Chronicle.
What to Drink with What You Eat: The Definitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea—Even Water—Based on Expert Advice from America’s Best Sommeliers, Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page (Bulfinch, 2006).
Windows on the World Complete Wine Course, Kevin Zraly (Sterling, 2009, updated edition).
The Wine Bible, Karen MacNeil (Workman, 2001).
Wine People, Stephen Brook (Vendome, 2001). This is a unique collection of forty portraits of individuals involved in all aspects of wine production and consumption. The profiles are not limited to proprietors and producers, but also include wine merchants and traders, wine writers, a collector, an auctioneer, and a sommelier—and the majority are French. Brook reminds us that wine is a fascinating subject, “a culture that binds together the aristocrat and the peasant, the producer wedded to his soil and the sharp-eyed city merchant, the cautious grower and the extravagant consumer. It is a major source of conviviality. A raised glass can bring down, if only temporarily, national boundaries.”
The World Atlas of Wine, Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson (Mitchell Beazley, 2007).
ABOUT FRENCH WINE
Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer’s Tour of France, Kermit Lynch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988). Lynch, a wine merchant based in Berkeley, California, has earned a reputation for championing very good wines from smaller, sometimes eccentric producers that might never be found in the United States were it not for his efforts to import them. Lynch’s journeys around France, on routes and in cellars,