Sophie Menin is a beautiful author and editor on many topics of interest. Our careers intersected during the Bottlenotes era, when she became one of our editors. Cut to present, Sophie has written and published the most beautiful coffee table book on wine I have seen, entitled, “A Year in the Vineyard” With over 180 stunning photographs, “A YEAR IN THE VINEYARD” by Sophie Menin and Bob Chaplin (Cultureshock, 2024) offers an immersive experience of the adage ‘wine is made in the vineyard’ as it traces the yearlong cycle of the vine, from bud burst to harvest to vine leaves capturing the energy of the late autumn sun.

 

I thought you would enjoy learning a little bit about Sophie’s “Why” for bringing decades of experience writing about wine to life in this way. The book was just shortlisted for Wine Book of the Year, by the international Gourmand Awards. I can’t recommend it enough for this year’s holiday gifts!

A: I have heard you describe “A Year in the Vineyard” as your capstone on wine. What does that mean to you? 

S: It means that after a decade of visiting vineyards the world over, interviewing winegrowers, and reporting stories on wine and the environment, there was a story I felt compelled to tell — one that immerses readers in the dirt-under-your-fingernails aspects of vineyard life and the hundreds of philosophical choices that inform fine winegrowing. Vineyards are not static landscapes. They are wondrous dynamic ecosystems wherein each season plays a pivotal role in crafting the character of a wine. The book’s narrative is spun through linked stories from 45 vineyards in 40 growing regions. It takes readers on a journey through the calendar year to experience how iconic wineries such as Gaja and Domaine Tempier are adapting to changing water conditions; the role of a drying room full of chamomile flowers, oak bark, and yarrow in biodynamic agriculture at Littorai Wines; why so many winegrowers now conceive of their vines as having a vascular system and prune to maximize the flow of the sap; why more than half the harvest crew at Chateau d’Yquem is well over sixty-years-old; and the thoughts behind the generational choices made at Cain Vineyard and Winery when replanting after the Glass Fire.  
 
A: What inspired you to take on the topic in an image-driven format? With a co-author?

S: Wines and vineyards engage all our senses. It was important to me to bring as much of this to the page as possible. I was fortunate to meet my co-author, Bob Chaplin, on a press trip to the Walla Walla Valley. Bob wrote about wine for the Hartford Courant at the time, but that was an avocation. He is an environmental artist with works in the British Museum, MoMA, and V&A and many other fine art institutions. His work explores nature over time and the question of cultivation vs. non-cultivation. We were asking similar philosophical questions and brought complementary skill sets to the collaboration. Together, we crafted each page of the book to blend visual and narrative storytelling.   
 
A: With this capstone behind you, what can we look forward to reading from you next?

S: Reporting this book and being a student of Iyengar Yoga for twenty years, I saw many parallels between the cultivation of a dynamic and healthy ecosystem in the vineyard and cultivating vitality in our own bodies. I am beginning to explore this in a longform essay titled, “My Body is a Vineyard.”
 
To buy A Year in the Vineyard, go to https://www.sophiemenin.com/store/p/a-year-in-the-vineyard.