The Wines of Germany

by Frank Schoonmaker

Overview

The wines of the Mosel and the Rhine have achieved a well-deserved popularity over the years; yet to the average consumer their confusing multiplicity of names and the elaborate gradations of their classification and quality present a problem. It is not always easy to tell the commonplace from the good or the good from the remarkable.

In Wines of Germany, which was first published in 1956 and became recognized as a classic, Frank Schoonmaker’s friendly, impartial and comprehensive style provides all the information that the wine-lover needs. District by district, village by village, he leads the reader through “this most beautiful of all wine countries…rich in history and anecdote, in legend and salty proverbs, in tradition and, most important to the connoisseur—in good wine.”

This is an expert’s book, but written in layman’s language: it is readable, authoritative, concise and complete.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789122275
Publisher:	Muriwai Books
Publication date:	09/03/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	149
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Frank Musselman Schoonmaker (August 20, 1905 - January 11, 1976) was an American travel guide writer, wine writer and wine merchant. He was recognized, both in the U.S. and in Europe, as one of the world’s great wine experts. He made two trips annually through the vineyard districts of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, visits California at least twice, and tasted, on an average, some 4,000 different wines year. More than any other single person, he was responsible for the adoption and widespread use of Varietal Names and informative back labels on American wines: the first vin rosé to be produced in commercial quantities in the U.S. was made under his direct personal supervision.

While writing travel books in Europe in the late 1920s, Schoonmaker became interested in wine, at first purely as a hobby: with the coming of the Repeal of Prohibition, he was asked by the late Harold Ross to write a series of major articles for The New Yorker—these were expanded into “The Complete Wine Book,” published in 1934 in New York and, with an introduction by P. Morton Shand, in 1935 in London. Soon thereafter Schoonmaker founded his own wine importing company and except for three years’ service overseas in O.S.S. during the War, he was thereafter connected with the wine industry. He wrote on wine and food for Gourmet Magazine, House and Garden, The Atlantic Monthly, Holiday, and many more, and (in French) for several of the leading wine magazines of France. Chapters have appeared over his signature in the books of H. Warner Allen and André Simon. He was the first executive secretary of The Wine and Food Society in America and was the only American member of the French Wine Academy. When not traveling, he lived in New York in winter and on the Spanish Costa Brava in summer, while directing his own importing business, serving as a consultant to Almaden Vineyards, and working on further volumes of his Wine Library.