Reviewing Sullivan?s Study of America?s Wine :: essays research papers fc

For many years, vino dictionaries and encyclopedias have unknowingly been misleading consumers on the history of Americas wine, Zinfandel. In Zinfandel, A History of a Grape and Its Wine, Charles Sullivan, an accomplished viticulture researcher, challenges the popular belief that the grape was originally brought to America by a Hungarian immigrant. Sullivan explores the history of wine to bring forth intriguing facts that prove the popular belief to be wrong. With the help of University of Californias (UCs) Carole Meredith, a new idea is thoroughly explained describing the sure ancestry of Zinfandel.For those not familiar with the wine it is important to note that Zinfandel, according to Sullivan, was the first and most successful American wine. Typically, wines from France and Italy prove to be more surpassing in taste than the American counterparts. However, with Zinfandel this is not the case. Unlike aged and dry wines, the young, fruity flavor of the Zinfandel makes for a mor e enjoyable flavor that appeals to a great number of peoples tastes.Sullivan does an excellent job keeping the book enjoyable by providing readers with intriguing side notes. For example, here he tries to illustrate the natural passion that the Californians had for Zinfandel.So great was the Napa passion for this grape that one of the tiny railroad stations below St. Helena was renamed Zinfandel. By the 1880s Zinfandel track crossed the valley, and the steamer Zinfandel plied the bay waters between San Francisco and the wharves of Napa City. (Sullivan, 2003)This passage is a perfect example of why this book was enjoyable for me.However, there be times during the book where Sullivan becomes longwinded when it comes to explaining authorized points. Long paragraphs embedded with, at times, insignificant graphics and charts make the book a hard and slow read. Yet, my curiosity and passion to learn helped me overcome the craving to close the book.The desire I did have to close the book may have been attributed to the amount of wine lingo institute within the text. The excessive amount of references to other wine varieties made it extremely tiresome, as I had to repeatedly look up in dictionaries and encyclopedias the characteristics of a certain wine he was describing. I believe that a person more educated in the subject of wine would enjoy this book more than an nescient person like me. If a reader is not familiar with wine, the book can be quite discouraging at times.