On the Fourth Day of Christmas, My True Love Sent to Me: Four Wine Books

If you’re just starting out on your wine journey, this could really help!

Santa Barbara resident and retired lawyer Arthur George’s new book, The Mythology of Wine came out in November 2020, just in time for holiday gift giving.  With details from wine-related myths in ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, as well as in early Christian Europe, Arthur says his book shows “how these stories ultimately influenced today’s wine culture and our religions and culture at large. It is fun, not long or technical, easy to read, has lots of illustrations, and is not expensive (ebook $9.99, paperback $14.99).”

When I reached out to learn more about his book, he directed me to this quote: “Of all our beverages today, only wine has sacramental status,” he writes on page 1.  “This is a legacy of wine’s sacred status in the ancient world,” shared Arthur with me. “To the ancient mind, wine was divine and transcendent, and thus for humans was a means of transcendence, a connection to the divine.”

About Jesus, Arthur says, “He called himself ‘the true vine,’ he was the best winemaker who made superior wine, his blood was wine, and in Christian art the cross was portrayed both as a grapevine and a wine press, making his crucifixion a grape crush, after which he was enthroned in heaven, which was pictured as a vineyard.”

“This explains the front cover of my book,” he says of the image at the top of this post, “it alludes to the various biblical and artistic connections between Jesus Christ and wine and grapes.”

In response to my question about why he wrote the book, Arthur says, “First, it combines two major interests of mine. I’m a mythologist, and write books and blog about mythology. But I’m also a longtime wine enthusiast who has built up a good knowledge about it over the years, and more recently became a viticulturalist and winemaker (now on my 5th vintage), which really deepened by knowledge of the subject and allows me to appreciate and evaluate wines better. That in turn led me further into wine mythology and history.

“Second, being a cultural historian, I also saw that most wine enthusiasts, as well as certified wine professionals, don’t know much about how wine was the subject of so many myths in the cultures of the ancient world, and how they in turn ultimately influenced today’s wine culture and culture in general. There is a gap in wine education as currently practiced; it just doesn’t address the subject. I wrote the book in part to fill that gap.

“And third, for most people this is a novel subject, and is both interesting and fun to talk about. The new things that the book talks about can make for good conversations at dinner and at cocktail parties. For this purpose, I wanted to make the book not too long or technical, and easy to read. It has to be the kind of book that can be sold at wine tasting rooms, so visitors can take that home with them along with the wines.”

Honestly, this the kind of book I’d like to have written. Like Arthur, I have an interest in Depth Psychology; I even have a Masters in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, and I wrote a paper about the phenomenology of wine tasting. I look forward to getting and reading this book and interviewing him myself — hopefully over a glass or two of wine, possibly at Clos Des Amis or at his home vineyard.  Read more about the topic of the mythology of wine on his blog.

A Life in Wine is the autobiography of Stephen Spurrier, the man who created what became known as the Judgement of Paris in 1976, and who is portrayed by Alan Rickman in the 2009 film  BottleShock. 

With the re-release of Stephen Spurrier’s autobiography A Life In Wine in 2020, and with COVID closures, Spurrier has been on the ZOOM circuit with two recent tastings and interviews, one featuring English sparkling wine with San Francisco Wine School and the second with Burgundy with Napa Valley Wine Academy — and you can order his book this way too. During the Burgundy one which I listened in on, he talked about the film and meeting up with Alan Rickman after he portrayed Spurrier. The two had met previously and enjoyed wine together in Tuscany, and Rickman said he worked to bring Spurrier’s humanity to the character that was on the page.

In A Life in Wine by Steven Spurrier shows why he’s one of the wine trade’s most important figures having taken the role of wine merchant, buyer, wine educator and lecturer; he has written books, wine courses and over 300 columns for Decanter magazine. This updated and revamped edition includes two new chapters. If you’re just curious about the Judgement of Paris, check out George Tabor’s 2006 book.

For more on these four wine books and others, check out this post on Wine Predator.