Katherine Cole: Sparkling Wine Anytime: The Best Bottles to Pop for Every Occasion Abrams Image, New York, 2021, 288 pp., ISBN 978-1419747557 (hardback), $24.99.

Abstract

I like books for grown-ups that are not only a pleasure to read and learn from but also have color pictures and a larger sans serif font. Here is one. In her fifth book, Katherine Cole, the Portland, Oregon-based wine writer, author, and James Beard award-winning podcaster, asserts, “Sparkling wine’s greatest asset may be its image, but sparkling wine’s biggest liability is...its image. That image has been, until recently, one of danger and glamour, exclusivity and impossibility” (p. 5). Her response is this bright, multi-hued, amply illustrated, reader-friendly volume that strives for inclusiveness while not dumbing down the material. “I have tried to keep the technical terminology to a minimum. But there are some words and phrases that just come up a lot in regard to sparkling wine” (p. 11), she concedes. Cole’s exploration opens with an introduction, followed by nine chapters and a glossary. An online buying guide, a bibliography, and a four-page two-column index cap off the work. “Life, Bubbly, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” as the introduction is titled, contains an overview of the world of sparkling wine, suggested, “Occasions and Food Matches,” which concludes with “Oh, forget all that and drink sparkling wine, anytime, with anything” (p. 8), and a legend that equates the number of dollar signs with a range of prices, all as insets. Cole acknowledges her lack of omniscience and her way of getting around it: “I know I have blind spots. That’s why I asked a group of the experts I admire most...to spill on some of their favorites in each chapter” (p. 10). This approach is one of the strengths of her exposition. Chapter 1, “Instructions for Achieving Effervescence,” starts with: “You are not required to read this chapter” (p. 13). Well, maybe if you are just focused on finding new sources of well-priced sparkling wine. But you would be missing as good an explanation as I have read of the path grapes take from vineyard to flute and the various types of bubbly wines there are. “Frothing Plot Points in History,” the second chapter, intersperses a recipe for Champagne Cocktail, champagne expert Peter Liem’s recommendation of two prestige cuvées, a rant against canned bubbles, and instructions on sabering a bottle, with brief vignettes about sparkling wine from the earliest records to the end of WWII. Among the latter is the story of the invention of the champagne bottle in England and the real reason for its punt.