One of the owners at work told me I should read it. I’m slowly chipping away at it and have mixed feelings on it. There are a lot of fun little stories that give a lot of context to regions, chateaus, growers, but the themes feel dogmatic. There was a line something to the effect of this wine took intelligence to make and it takes intelligence to appreciate. There is definitely feelings about overly large California wines vs. French wines with finesse. Overall, I am enjoying it so far, but there are moments when I roll my eyes when we get to sections where he blinds a wine essentially perfectly.
I already have my next “book” planned and it’s Larry Brook’s Liquid Geography. I say book because it’s been released chapter by chapter on Substack.
This is the first wine book I ever read. It influenced my appreciation of wine greatly. I think that what you are reading as dogmatic was Kermit’s reaction to the Parker effect. This was published in 1988 and I think that we were in full swing of pandering to the 100-point scale. Kermit really extoled the virtue of coming at wine appreciation from a more context-sensitive and holistic point of view. I still get Kermit’s newsletters and buy from his portfolio, even though our market has terrible representation due to a weak distributor.
The second wine book I read was Napa: The Story of an American Eden by James Conaway. I really enjoyed the historical recount and the characters whose imprint is still visible on the wines and wineries.
That is one of my favorite wine books and I make all of my employees read it. I really enjoy Kermit’s witty writing style and for a nearly 40 year old tome it feels remarkably relevant and influential today, especially when it comes to things like low intervention winemaking. Seeing Kermit’s name on a label usually makes a wine a pretty safe bet for me, and the story of how he connected with so many great and influential producers is pretty fascinating. Yeah, he definitely has a viewpoint that heavily leans AFWE so YMMV.
It’s one of the few wine books you can call essential reading to understand the wine world today. It’s a bit of a shame that fewer people are in a position to run out and buy Jayer or Chave after getting inspired by it, but that just makes it even more historically important.
Yeah this is a must read. Kermit definitely comes off a bit egocentric at times, but that can be said of most ‘pioneering importers’ in their books - Rosenthal, Thiese et al. But the grower profiles are great and it’s just fun to consider what it must have been like to try the wines of Chave, Coche, Trollat, Verset, Jayer, Tempier and more and realize that you found this incredible stuff that no one in the US knew about.
It’s also my favorite wine book, and it might be time for me to read it again. I don’t think it’s really about large CA wineries versus French, more about how small producers (his portfolio was just mostly French at the time) really have a personal relationship with the wine, the land, the food and history. I would think Kermit would be just as critical of generic French or Italian producers as he would of generic CA producers.
When I first read it I thought it was a revelation, and it helped me look at wine in a different way. At that time I hadn’t tried most of the producers, and now having tasted a lot of them and visited many of the wineries, it rings even truer.
As good and important as Adventures is for wine enthusiasts to read, it is very much a ‘moment in time’ type travelogue, and while the info about the blue chip properties is generally still usable a lot is outdated. I try and get Kermit fans to go to their web site whenever possible to get better and more current info, because so much changes with ownership at old places and emerging talents evolving into great new houses. I would also put Rosenthal and Theise in that category, especially with all their writings available online. When I first started in the industry we would get the Theise catalogs as hard copy yearly from the distributor, and I would read through them over bottles of wine constantly.
True story: about 20 years ago we hired a young intelligent guy as a part time employee who was just getting into the industry. One of the first things I did was put him on to the Theise catalogs for at-home education. Within a year, he got in contact with Terry directly, met up with him at a tasting and spent some time with him, and ended up moving to NYC and getting a job with Skurnik (Theise’s import partner at the time). Last I saw he was one of Rosenthal’s reps and primary content providers. The power of words.
I also read it years ago and like it quite a bit. I also agree that the themes reflect the time when it was written and when Kermit was introducing the US to not well-known wines. My palate was greatly influenced during my early days (grad school) by a small shop in Palo Alto that had daily tastings (Tues-Sat) and started out exclusively selling Kermit Lynch wines.
It’s a great wine book, especially if you don’t worry as much about the specific producers and focus more on the attitude towards wine that underlines the narrative. It’s probably second only to Hugh Johnson’s memoir in its influence on my love of wine. I’ve bought and given away a dozen copies over the years (many to people who worked for me at various wine shops).
I’ve read it several times but not for a while now, really enjoyed it. It’s probably time to revisit. Kermit is Kermit of course. Highly opinionated and his preferences won’t match for everyone. But for a long time when I was in a wine store looking at a bunch of unknown bottles, my best results came from picking out a Kermit import.
I reread this recently, originally purchased in 2007 when I began putting a bit more effort into learning about wine. I really enjoy it and it opened my eyes into perceived flaws in wine with sediment, etc. as a novice. Wish I would have tried to buy some Chave back then.
The properties themselves may not be up to date, but the tools he used to assess them have not changed.
This book basically is one of the most important wine books ever written, and I only wish most of the current critics would learn from the Joguet dialogue when comparing a blockbuster wine to one of elegance.
Yes, several years ago. Own the book, part of the wine library.
Looking at the book collection, I came across “Making Sense of Burgundy” by Matt Kramer. That is one region I have yet to explore. As a retiree probably not going to be a priority…
