First, a disclaimer: I know and like Roy Cloud, the author of To Burgundy and Back Again (Lyons Press, $16.95), so was not an unbiased reader of this book. If I didn’t know him, though, I’m sure that I would have enjoyed it just as much. So now a recommendation: Buy and read this small, unassuming book. It comes from the heart, and is a true delight.
Roy Cloud is a Washington DC-based importer of mostly artisanal French wines, and his book describes his initial trip in 1997 to Burgundy, Alsace, the Loire and Rhône Valleys in search of producers to represent. In this respect, it resembles Kermit Lynch’s Adventures on the Wine Route and Neal Rosenthal’s Reflections of a Wine Merchant, though without any of the philosophizing of the former or the pretense of the latter. He’s telling a story in it, not dictating what you should (or should not) drink.
As an importer, Roy certainly has preferences. He’s a fan of wines that reflect both a specific place and an individual’s passion, and much of his book details his discovery of some of those places and some of those passions. Ultimately, though, wine is not what he’s writing about. Instead, his family is at the heart of this book–particularly his relationships with his older brother, Joe, and with his father.
Joe went along on that first trip to France because he spoke French while Roy didn’t. He wasn’t just translating, though. Their father had suffered a bad fall when bicycling on vacation five months earlier, and lay in a comma in a Virginia hospital during their twelve day sojourn. The brothers’ time together provided them with an occasion to take stock.
Not wanting to give anything away, I’ll leave it to you to read the book to find out the specifics of what they discovered. It’s nothing earth-shattering, and To Burgundy and Back Again ends on a gentle, tranquil note. But ultimately the wines Roy decided to import share something not only with the vintners that made them but also with his family. All have integrity–as does this book, which pays homage to the human relationships that make wine worth sharing and, more to the point, life worth living.
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