A Great Book about Pinot Noir

I stumbled across Marq De Villiers' great book The Heartbreak Grape: A California Winemaker's Search for the Perfect Pinot Noir, explaining Josh Jensen's pursuit to make the best Pinot Noir in Califoria. Regarded as "the A River Runs Through It for wine lovers..", this book captures the pursuit of excellence for the most fickle grape. Highly recommended.

Marq has some brillant quotes. I'm less than half way done but here is a quick sampling:

• "[wine]... is where culture and agriculture meet... " (p. 4)
• "Wine has almost infinite variety and complexity, an ability at once to surprise and overwhelm the most sophisticated palate and to give simple pleasure to millions of people. Wine is international, virtually universal, with a history almost as old as man...with its own poetics of sensation." (p. 5)


• "[great winemakers]...are magnificently obsessed, ceaselessly self-questioning, constantly attempting to move their product towards some elusive and ineffable ideal...perfectibility is legitimate and a grand obession." (p. 5,9)
• "[graduates from UC Davis] had to learn through mistakes to understand something profound about the wine, which is that nature is older than they are and has more tricks up her provocative sleeve than will ever be discovered in the ... laboratory." (p. 6)
• "...each picking contributes its character to the amalgam of the finished wine." (p. 8)
• "to make good wine is a skill but to make great wine is an art...winemaking is an emotional as well as industrial task" (p. 9)
• "...at what point did this winemaker first conceive of making this wine? Could I identify that moment, and trace the wine through its long journey from conception to this moment here, the wine being poured into a glass at a small dinner paryt..." (p. 12)
• Josh Jensen tells a chef, "I'm as much a marketer as a winemaker these days." (p. 14)
• Josh Jensen put in his mailer, "we ship our rare and precious products to a thirsty world." (p. 20)
• "[a winemaker] is part custodian and part creator of the wines." (p. 22)
• "[Pinot Noir] is called the heartbreak grape because it is so stubborn, so particular, so elusive, so damn difficult to get right...the greatest pinot noirs...are tantalizing, elusive, poetic, thrilling...No other red wine..can seem so ripe and fragile, so decadent and clean, so irrestible." (p. 25-26)