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.

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.

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.

For a broad title like "Wine", this should have instead been called, "Me and My Life (and Some Spanish Wine)". Some useful info in the first 2 chapters, and then goes downhill from there. I enjoyed learning about wine along with her in the beginning. Yes, there is a real issue with sexism and sexual assault and predators in the wine industry, but not sure we needed a whole chapter in a short book that is supposed to be about the wider subject of :wine: to be given over to it.

I love this whole series, and this is a great addition to the lineup. The layout of the book is simple and beautiful. The text is both entertaining and educational. Reading this book is fun and rewarding and will almost certainly reward re-reading. Great work!

I wasn’t familiar with the Object Lessons series but found this an informative book about wine. The narrative skips around a bit but the storytelling is interesting and engaging. A good gift for any wine aficionado.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this digital ARC.

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!!

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.

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.

I wasn't familiar with this series of books. It was an interesting take on wine. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the early read in exchange for my honest review of the book.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.