I had many problems with the book. Here is my review from the January 1 issue of the California Grapevine wine newletter (the oldest continuous wine news letter in California):
Napa Valley Then & Now, Kelli A. White, Rudd Press, Oakville, CA, 2015, 1,255 pages, hardback, $95.
It’s a shame. The core of this book (profiles and tasting notes on 200 Napa wineries) is really well done but there are so many problems with the construction and layout that it substantially detracts from the utility of the work. The book is massive. Each page is 8.75 inches wide and 12 inches tall. It is 3.5 inches thick and weighs in at a hefty 12.8 pounds. Given these huge dimensions the book is not one you can sit in a chair and read at your leisure. It demands two hands to carry it and a table to set it on.
Making it even worse is the fact that the book is printed in gray ink. So, reading it at the table demands bright lighting. The author states she wanted to create a Napa Valley reference book along the lines of Michael Broadbent’s legendary Great Vintage Wine Book. Broadbent’s work was detailed but not so massive that one could not read it while sitting down in a chair. Perhaps this book should have been published in two or three smaller size volumes.
The author, a sommelier at one of the upscale Napa restaurants, has selected over 200 Napa Valley producers to profile. Many of these are cult wine producers such a Screaming Eagle or Scarecrow. They are expensive and often unattainable for most wine lovers. While there are some old standbys in the book, like Louis M. Martini, Joseph Phelps and Beringer, most of the entries are for the ultra-elusive producers. For each producer there are descriptions of the history, the winemakers, and the vineyards. Many times there are interesting asides regarding some facts about the topic. This material is followed by tasting notes on wines of the winery sometimes going back into the 1960s. But therein lays another problem. The tasting notes are undated. It is impossible for the reader to judge the freshness of the comments. To her credit the author, apparently recognizing that too often readers only look at the scores, has eliminated them. The reader must read the text. For each wine there is a gauge that looks like a car’s gasoline gauge, that the author uses to indicate if the wine is still on the upswing, or has started to fade. It seems artificial. The coverage is oddly spotty. For example, in the section on the Schrader winery, she points out that there was one year that they did not produce their amazing Aston Pinot Noir. But in the subsequent tasting notes section there is but a single note for this wine. I can’t tell if the notes in the book are limited to those wines diners brought into her restaurant or if she went out on visits to numerous producers.
While there is an index, I find it surprisingly short. For example, I wanted to see the bottles of Charbono she had tasted. There is no index to the tasting notes. Thus there is no way to look it up via the index. The book looks like a cross between a coffee table wine book and a serious reference work. But it achieves neither status. Perhaps if you had a large collection of cult wines and wanted to have the book open to the section on the wine you were drinking to impress friends, it must have value. But for the vast majority of wine drinkers it is too much. For $95 a reader needs more (or in this case, less.) Perhaps someday the book will be available in an e-book format which would eliminate many of these flaws. But for now: Not recommended.