The Road to Burgundy: The Unlikely Story of an American Making Wine and a New Life in France
Walker wasn’t just indifferent to wine, he actively disliked it. But the chance tasting of a light red wine while vacationing in Italy triggered an obsession. A few months later, he quit his finance job to work a wine-grape crush in his native Bay Area. Unwilling to climb the wine-job ladder, he went to Burgundy, France, to buy grapes and make wine. With charm, hustle, and too-good-to-be-true financial backing, he became the first non-Frenchman to make wine from some of the tiny land parcels that form the world’s most exalted vineyards. Walker’s energy and warmth lift this book, but he fails to anticipate inevitable demand for details on how he cast a spell over the French. How, in a matter of months, despite never having actually made wine, and speaking guidebook French, did he penetrate such a storied locale? Told from the perspective of Walker’s platitude-flinging early days, the opening chapters are discouraging. Walker learns much, but his sea-parting good luck and narrow focus on a subject as multidimensional as wine might leave readers skeptical. --Dane Carr