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Learn to COOK - A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma
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List Price: $16.00
Our Price: $14.40
Your Save: $ 1.60 ( 10% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Broadway
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 917
EAN: 9780767907040
ISBN: 0767907043
Label: Broadway
Manufacturer: Broadway
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2004-05-11
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: 2004-05-11
Studio: Broadway
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Editorial Reviews:
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When Alan Deutschman came to the California wine country as the lucky house guest of very rich friends, he was surprised to find a civil war being fought between the Napa Valley, which epitomized elitism, prestige, and wealthy excess, and the neighboring Sonoma Valley, a ragtag bohemian enclave so stubbornly backward that rambunctious chickens wandered freely through town. A Tale of Two Valleys captures these stranger-than-fiction locales with the wit of a Tom Wolfe novel and uncorks the hilarious absurdities of life among the wine world’s glitterati. The cast of characters brims with eccentrics, egomaniacs, and a mysterious man in black who crashed the elegant Napa Valley Wine Auction before proceeding to pay a half million dollars for a single bottle. What develops is nothing less than the struggle for the soul of one of America’s last bits of paradise. A dishy glimpse behind the scenes of the wine world, A Tale of Two Valleys makes for intoxicating reading.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Feels like a run-on magazine article
Comment: Echoing what others have written, this is an extremely light account of the Sonoma and Napa wine regions. Unclear plot line (is there one?) and very little depth on any of the subjects that could have made it interesting (how about at least letting us know how the Screaming Eagle tasted?). If you are looking for a short, light hearted read with some reasonably interesting tidbits on Sonoma and Napa, this is an ok read. If you're looking for an ejoyable read with depth and history, this isn't it - your time would be much better spent reading House of Mondavi.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sour Grapes
Comment: Chock full of interesting characters and insightful observations, A Tale of Two Valleys is an entertaining read that ultimately disappoints for lack of a plot or central character. Deutschman stumbled on the subject matter to produce a West Coast version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but he seems to lack the creative instincts. He tells us too much and too little about himself, as if he can't decide how much of a presence he should have in his story. That said, his tidbits on the French Laundry ("an excerise in literary and aesthetic showmanship"), the Russian River Valley ("summer camp for the Castro District"), Lake Tahoe's Incline Village as a tax haven ("Incline Village is to Californians what Monaco is to Europeans") and where to hang out if you want to meet Sonoma's locals (the Irish pub and the Farmer's Market) are some of the many little gems that make the book worthwhile. Deutschman has a good eye and a good ear. I hope the next time he asks himself WWTWD - What Would Tom Wolfe Do? - and does it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A fast-food book about a gourmet subject.
Comment: Alan Deutschman's "A Tale of Two Valleys" is a quick, reasonably entertaining read, but as someone who loves the Napa and Sonoma Valleys and visits them a couple times a year, I was hoping for more. Some reviewers have taken Deutschman to task for factual errors; it's plain he misspelled the name of California wine industry pioneer Agoston Haraszthy (though that might have been an editing or printing error), and he may well have totally mischaracterized Haraszthy's life, and other things in the book as well. In any case, I had a different problem with "A Tale of Two Valleys": Deutschman tells the story in the first person, thus making himself a character in the book. That in itself is not a sin--so did John Berendt in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"--but, unlike Berendt, it's painfully obvious Deutschman remains on the outside of Napa and Sonoma, looking in. To be blunt, whereas Berendt is a storyteller and an empath, Deutschman is a reporter and a solipsist. He introduces a bewildering number of characters in his tale of political and financial infighting in the Wine Country, but he doesn't come close to making any of them memorable, with the single exception of Maria "Ditty" Vella, a cheese broker from an old-line Sonoma family and an outspoken advocate of slow food, slow growth and respect for the environment. There's no equivalent here to Jim Williams, Danny Hansford or Lady Chablis; I weep for the loss of what Berendt could have made of genuine characters like Bob Cannard Sr., the chicken historian of Sonoma, and Ken Brown, the New York cabbie turned Sonoma hippie activist. Deutschman is obviously enthusiastic about all the wonderful wines he drinks and gourmet meals he eats, but--except for one dinner with established winemaking families, planned expressly to keep out the parvenus--he doesn't give us much of a feel for them. The stories of the parallel battles over the futures of Napa and Sonoma are intrinsically interesting, and Deutschman tells them cleanly, swiftly, professionally. But it's too bad that this potentially gourmet tale is the literary equivalent of a bag of Cheetos--tasty, quickly consumed, and quickly forgotten.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Trembling in Mendocino
Comment: The hotel library's policy of "take a book, leave a book" possessed me of a copy of Deutschman's "A Tale of Two Valleys" which served well to prepare me for a behind the scene's exploration of Northern California wine country. Here was the real story exposing the artifice of wine country glamour and the vanity of its seekers. Where will Alan's critical gaze land next, upon the vapid ecotopia and sublime madness of Mendocino? Let them be afraid, let them be very afraid. Loved it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Better than expected and surprisingly familiar
Comment: Two things struck me about the book. First, the eccentric characters were not unlike those that one runs into routinely in a venue I'm more familiar with--small town deep south. Though flavored of California, of wine country, and of blue-state sensibilities, dress any one of the Sonomans in a blue sports coat and khakis and stick a bourbon-and-coke in his hand and you have yourself an everyday southerner of some stripe. Rich, poor, pretentious, humble, genuine, phony, romantic, hateful, kind, any of these just so long as slightly eccentric-cum-affected. Secondly, I noted a similarity in the characters' efforts to find transcendent meaning by pursuing pastimes with literal religious fervor. Wine, wine making, environmentalism, green space preservation, leisure--all find their place as the god of some Sonoman who otherwise found deity deceased in college and liked it that way, or so he thought. In parallel, take a less than rare southerner and find him worshiping on the gridiron any given Saturday or gleaning metaphysical truth from a blues man in a juke joint and you'll see the reverse image of your friendly Sonoman. I thought the book was well written and, intentionally or no, painted a clear picture of postmodern man's failure to find meaning. No idol satisfies, no passion fulfills, and A Tale of Two Valleys depicts that nicely.
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