A fascinating and original book well worth reading from beginning to end

Andrew Jefford reviews Italy in a Wine Glass: The Taste of History by Marc Millon.

Here’s a rarity: a wine book that rewards reading from beginning to end. I gulped it down, and I finished wanting more.

Marc Millon is a writer, journalist, educator, podcast host, and tour guide, based in Devon, England. Italy is his specialty (though not an exclusive one—he and his wife Kim have published books on the French and European wine scene, too). Italy in a Wine Glass, the fruit of a West Country Covid lockdown, is both fascinating and original.

Italy’s wine scene is, I think, incomprehensible in the primary sense of the word; it’s so vast, so complex, so multithreaded, and so intricately layered as to defeat understanding. The world has no other national wine culture to match this one for geographical ubiquity, or for diversity in terms of biotope, vine genetics, and local culture. Wine is always there, staining and scenting the painstakingly assembled national fabric—from sharp, shadowed Valle d’Aosta, to glimmering Pantelleria. Set foot in Italy, and whatever we think we know about Italian wine quickly finds its limits. Our knowledge expires; there’s always more; surprises lie around every corner. Any book attempting to be comprehensive—about denominazioni, about grape varieties, about terroir, about producers—is thus almost doomed to end in the thickets, as a gristly work of reference. Works of reference may appeal and prove useful, of course, but no one but the obsessed will find relish on every page.