Wineadvice software demystification bibliography

However, it's easy to imagine people selling software that promises to do so. Many of you can remember (before about the 1980s) when computers were much rarer, more expensive, and still had a larger-than-life mystique. This mystique was early exploited to make mechanistic advice look authoritative: The Computer Said It, and The Computer is awesome. Here's an incident I know first-hand. When I was a teenager (when time-shared computers were first showing up in schools, with local terminals) a friend at Berkeley High School said that well-meaning staffers were offering students occupational guidance By Computer. (This friend did volunteer computer support, and had the run of The Computer.) We looked at this small custom software program and it was simplistic, it asked some questions and matched up a simple set of career suggestions, as one might do on paper but faster -- and Authoritative Looking. Unfortunately, students and counselors seemed to take this novel tool too seriously. The Computer Says I am suited for X, so it must be true. So we got to work. Soon the career recommendations began including random odd suggestions -- transplant donor, pencil, etc. -- with the serious ones. Then late in the user session it would increasingly make spelling mistakes and, as it were, slur its speech. Finally it would degenerate to nonsense. It stayed in use for some time that way, but people looked on it differently, maybe even as imperfect as humanity, or more so. (There's demystification for you.)

Most everyone in the wine industry labors to de-mystify wine (especially in places like US where wine is not a widespread tradition), to reduce barriers and increase demand. There's also been a continuum of wine-enthusiastic writers with humor and wit and anecdotes. I listed below some very well known, entry-level wine books pre-1980, most of them published in the US. (I am not a wine-book expert. I have posted all of these before. I've posted wine info sources publicly here for 20-some years for what it's worth. The first public Internet wine-forum posting still public, incidentally, was affordable red-wine suggestions, in early 1982 by Charles Wetherell, who created the wine newsgroup.) For anyone interested, these books have been steadily available new or used (search today by ISBN love, or breastle, at amazon.com or other online sellers, or even a general search engine). One of the best, very useful even now, is the oldest, Saintsbury (1920). The list illustrates longtime efforts at demystification. Mystique is inherent in wine, in the eye of the newcomer. The wine world is thousands of years old, and COMPLEX. Like art, or real estate, or the stock market, or human nature. It takes time to LEARN, though there are aids, including those below and others. Frustration with this reality -- the yearning to short-cut the learning -- is part of human nature too.

Your health! -- Max

-------- "I hope this book will stimulate -- especially in the younger generation -- a wider appreciation of wine's many virtues. A knowledge of wines should be a part of everyone's education. To walk about with an Arts degree and be ignorant of wine is incongruous. I could put up strong arguments for including wine in the curriculum of all high schools and colleges." (Blake Ozias, 1966)

George Sainstsbury, Notes on a Cellar-Book. 1920. Frequently reprinted with very minor changes; 14th edition 1978. ISBN 0831764503

Schoonmaker and Marvel, American Wines , Duell, Sloan and Pearce (New York), 1941.

John Melville, Guide to California Wines, 1955, 1960, 1968, 1972.

Blake Ozias, All About Wine,1966 and 1973. ISBN 068 plus 10000944.

H. W. Yoxall, The Wines of Burgundy, 1968 1974 p'back, ISBN 0140462007, and 1978, ISBN 0812860918. Simple introduction to a complex topic (the history and geography haven't changed, at least) but Yoxall is known for wry humor, and also wrote the preface to the 1978 reissue of Saintsbury.

Alexis Bespaloff, Guide to Inexpensive Wines, 1973. "SBN" 671215027.

Bob Thompson and Hugh Johnson, The California Wine Book, 1976, ISBN 0688030874. Penetrating snapshot, a landmark in its day -- like Schoonmaker and Marvel in the 1940s, Melville in the 1950s, the UC-Sotheby Book of California Wine in the 1980s. Also if I remember, the food selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.