The Organic Wine Lover’s Revolutionary Reading List
Beware of the person of one book.
– Thomas Aquinas
If you came to this book list for suggestions of books about wine like “The Wine Bible” or “The Wine Atlas,” you will be disappointed.
I would argue, though, that at this point in history – nearly a quarter of the way into the 21st Century – this list of books is so much more relevant to understanding, appreciating, and contextualizing wine than any “wine book” could be.
If the terms “regenerative” or “organic” or “biodynamic” or even “sustainable” matter to you at all, then it is only a matter of time until you will find yourself trying to get traction on the slippery slope of the connection of wine to all things.
Wine has this power of capturing our attention in the glass, then leading us backwards to the ecology of the entire global ecosystem.
In a sense, the common theme of all the books on this organic wine book list is terroir. Reading or listening to the books on the list will take you on a journey into the literal and figurative soil from which wine grows. You will discover it is the same soil from which you grow.
Classics
One Straw Revolution, by Masanobu Fukuoka
“An object seen in isolation from the whole is not the real thing.”
1975
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.”
1962
The Unsettling of America, by Wendell Berry
“People who thus set their lives against destruction have necessarily confronted in themselves the absurdity that they have recognized in their society. They have first observed the tendency of modern organizations to perform in opposition to their stated purposes. They have seen governments that exploit and oppress the people they are sworn to serve and protect, medical procedures that produce ill health, schools that preserve ignorance, methods of transportation that, as Ivan Illich says, have 'created more distances than they... bridge.' And they have seen that these public absurdities are, and can be, no more than the aggregate result of private absurdities; the corruption of community has its source in the corruption of character. This realization has become the typical moral crisis of our time. Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.”
1977
A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
1949
Modern Classics
Restoration Agriculture, by Mark Shepard
“We must begin making long-term, permanent change in a world of short-term thinking. In a world impatient for a quick fix we must continue to make the long, steady progress needed toward a rich, green, abundant world, started by planting one tree at a time and repeated over and over around the world.”
Pastoral Song, by James Rebanks
“There were profoundly important questions about the potential effects of each new technology that it was nobody's job to ask or answer. There was no mechanism for farmers or ecologists to judge whether a technology or new farming practice was on balance a "good" thing or a "bad" thing, and we really didn't know when we had crossed the invisible threshold from one to the other.”
The Omnivores Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
“Imagine if we had a food system that actually produced wholesome food. Imagine if it produced that food in a way that restored the land. Imagine if we could eat every meal knowing these few simple things: What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what it really cost. If that was the reality, then every meal would have the potential to be a perfect meal. We would not need to go hunting for our connection to our food and the web of life that produces it. We would no longer need any reminding that we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and that what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world. I don’t want to have to forage every meal. Most people don’t want to learn to garden or hunt. But we can change the way we make and get our food so that it becomes food again—something that feeds our bodies and our souls. Imagine it: Every meal would connect us to the joy of living and the wonder of nature. Every meal would be like saying grace.”
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”
Tending The Wild, by M. Kat Anderson
“…One gains respect for nature by using it judiciously. By using a plant or an animal, interacting with it where it lives, and tying your well-being to its existence, you can be intimate with it and understand it.”
Finding The Mother Tree, Suzanne Simard
“But nothing lives on our planet without death and decay. From this springs new life, and from this birth will come new death. This spiral of living taught me to become a sower of seeds too, a planter of seedlings, a keeper of saplings, a part of the cycle. The forest itself is part of much larger cycles, the building of soil and migration of species and circulation of oceans. The source of clean air and pure water and good food. There is a necessary wisdom in the give-and-take of nature—its quiet agreements and search for balance.
There is an extraordinary generosity.
…The trees soon revealed startling secrets. I discovered that they are in a web of interdependence, linked by a system of underground channels, where they perceive and connect and relate with an ancient intricacy and wisdom that can no longer be denied.”
The Legacy of Luna, by Julia Butterfly Hill
“The question is not “Can you make a difference?” You already do make a difference. It’s just a matter of what kind of a difference you want to make, during your life on this planet.”
The Half Has Never Been Told, by Edward E. Baptist
“The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. Yet it is the truth.”
Growing A Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back To Life, by David Montgomery
“There’s a revolution brewing – a soil health revolution. Since the dawn of agriculture, society after society has faded into memory after degrading their soil. But we need not repeat this history on a global scale… Are you ready for an optimistic book about the environment?”
Mycorrhizal Planet, by Michael Phillips
“We are not at the end of a rope, as it’s so easy to think. Humanity can yet choose to turn direction. The moment has come to leap into action with glad hearts. The seeds are germinating. The fungi are willing. And we must be, too.”
Teaming With Microbes, Teaming With Fungi, by Jeff Lowenfels
“One of the most amazing things about mycorrhizal fungi is their ability to associate with more than one host plant at the same time—in other words, their networks can be shared among plants, even plants of different species. As a result of this feat, mycorrhizae can benefit entire forests, as the larger trees literally feed and protect the smaller trees through an interconnected mycelial network. And when one plant dies, many of its nutrients are returned to the network and flow toward other plants.”
The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram
“Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth — our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.”
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond
“In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.”
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow
“It is clear now that human societies before the advent of farming were not confined to small, egalitarian bands. On the contrary, the world of hunter-gatherers as it existed before the coming of agriculture was one of bold social experiments, resembling a carnival parade of political forms, far more than it does the drab abstractions of evolutionary theory. Agriculture, in turn, did not mean the inception of private property, nor did it mark an irreversible step towards inequality. In fact, many of the first farming communities were relatively free of ranks and hierarchies. And far from setting class differences in stone, a surprising number of the world’s earliest cities were organized on robustly egalitarian lines, with no need for authoritarian rulers, ambitious warrior-politicians, or even bossy administrators.”
Where to find these books?
If you can, please buy these books to support the work of these authors. If money is tight…
My friend, Craig Gore, once hung up on another friend of his when he discovered, during a phone call, that his friend didn’t have a library card.
I was never more proud to call Craig a friend than when I heard this story.
Wendy, the Boss Lady of Centralas Wine, is a librarian for the City of Los Angeles, and through her we have easy access to more books than I have life-time to read. We both love books, and our life is full of them.
Unfortunately, I’m a slow reader.
Generally, the only time I have to sit down and read is at the end of the day, when my energy is at its lowest. And books take me away from my racing mind and its concerns, which soothes me and relaxes me. Within a couple pages I drift off to sleep.
Imagine reading a 500 page book at a pace of a couple pages per day. I might get through two books per year at that rate.
But a couple years ago Wendy showed me the Overdrive and Libby apps that are used by the library, any library, to lend digital copies of books, as E-books and, if available, as audio books.
Audio books have changed my life. I’ve been able to consume (I won’t say “read”) books at a rapid clip. I can listen to books in the car, when doing repetitive farm work (pruning, harvesting, etc.), mundane chores like washing dishes and laundry, on walks or while exercising, etc. Audio books even allow you to listen at 1.25x, 1.5x or greater speed, so not only do I have more time to consume an audio book, but I can also listen quicker.
If you’re at all like me, do yourself a favor and download Overdrive or Libby (free apps) on your mobile device. All you need is a library card, and you can connect your local library account to the app and start downloading e-books and audio books.
You do have a library card, don’t you?
“You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”
- from Good Will Hunting