About this item
Inspired by Jules Verne's classic adventure tale, Mike Veseth takes his readers Around the World in Eighty Wines. The journey starts in London, Phileas Fogg's home base, and follows Fogg's itinerary to France and Italy before veering off in search of compelling wine stories in Syria, Georgia, and Lebanon. Every glass of wine tells a story, and so each of the eighty wines must tell an important tale. We head back across Northern Africa to Algeria, once the world's leading wine exporter, before hopping across the sea to Spain and Portugal. We follow Portuguese trade routes to Madeira and then South Africa with a short detour to taste Kenya's most famous Pinot Noir. Kenya? Pinot Noir? Really!The route loops around, visiting Bali, Thailand, and India before heading north to China to visit Shangri-La. Shangri-La? Does that even exist? It does, and there is wine there. Then it is off to Australia, with a detour in Tasmania, which is so cool that it is hot. The stars of the Southern Cross (and the lyrics of a familiar song) guide us to New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina. We ride a wine train in California and rendezvous with Planet Riesling in Seattle before getting into fast cars for a race across North America, collecting more wine as we go. Pause for lunch in Virginia to honor Thomas Jefferson, then it's time to jet back to London to tally our wines and see what we have learned. Why these particular places? What are the eighty wines and what do they reveal? And - spoiler alert! - what is the surprise plot twist that guarantees a happy ending for every wine lover? Come with us on a journey of discovery that will inspire, inform, and entertain anyone who loves travel, adventure, or wine.
About the Author
Mike Veseth (pronounced VEE-seth) is editor of The Wine Economist blog and author of more than a dozen books including best-selling Wine Wars: The Curse of the Blue Nun, the Miracle of Two Buck Chuck and the Revenge of the Terroirists (2011).About Wine WarsWine Wars is a tale of curses, miracles and revenge. It tells the story of the market forces that are redrawing the world wine map and the terroirists who oppose them. The book has received critical praise and was named (along with Benjamin Lewin's In Search of Pinot Noir) 2011 Wine Book of the Year by the team at JancisRobinson.com.Wine Wars also received the silver medal in ForeWord Review's 2011 Business & Economics Book of the Year awards and was selected Best American Wine History Book 2011 by Gourmand International. The book jacket won first prize in the commercial publisher division at the Washington Book Publishers Design Awards. Click here to read a selection of reviews. Click here to view the list of Wine Wars World Tour speaking events.Mike is currently working on his next book, Extreme Wine, which will be published in late 2013. A paperback edition of Wine Wars is scheduled for released in December 2012.About The Wine Economist blogWhat do you get when you cross the Wine Spectator, America's best-selling wine magazine, with the Economist, the world's leading business weekly? The answer is the widely read industry blog, The Wine Economist, which analyzes and interprets today's global wine markets.Academic BackgroundMike is the Robert G. Albertson Professor of International Political Economy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, where he has taught since 1975. He is an authority on the political economy of globalization and the global wine market. Mike has also taught at the American Institute on Political and Economic Systems (Prague, 2005, 2006) and at the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (Bologna, Italy, 1997). He was Academic Advisor to the award winning educational website for the PBS/WGBH series, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy (2002).Mike has received many honors and awards; most recently he was named Washington Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. His 2005 book, Globaloney, was named a Best Business Book of 2005 by Library Journal. Mike earned the B.A. degree in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Puget Sound (1972) and the M.S.(1974) and Ph.D. (1975) degrees in Economics from Purdue University.Selected PublicationsWine Wars: The Curse of the Blue Nun, the Miracle of Two Buck Chuck and the Revenge of the Terroirists. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011, 2012).Globaloney 2.0: The Crash of 2008 and the Future of Globalization. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).Globaloney: Unraveling the Myths of Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005),T
