Eight Books that Feature Wine in All Its Facets (and Flavor Notes)

When people hear about my novel Lush, about a group of wine experts who travel to the south of France to drink one of the oldest bottles of wine in the world, they often ask me “why sommeliers?” It’s a reasonable question. There aren’t a wealth of novels about them, these little mentioned intellectuals of the service industry, waxing a tale of terroir and tasting notes, giving speeches that are halfway between a history lesson and a love story; describing the color of a pinot grigio as if it were a woman’s hair.

You can see how they lend themselves to prose. However, the right question would be “why wine?”

I don’t drink anymore, but while writing this novel I drank buckets (literally boxes) of wine. During the pandemic, I became my own sommelier, pouring myself glasses and telling myself stories about all the things I was missing, the things wine can facilitate: lust, confidence, an evening with a quality of magic so great that there is an inherent capitalization in its later recollection.

Wine is many things, has many faces, though at its core it is a beautiful intoxicant, one that can make impossible situations a reality, can soften blows or cause them, can patch-up, or destroy. It’s a seductress, a shapeshifter: a drug in beautiful clothing, with a rich history that can help you forget what it is, as it helps you to forget who you are. It’s my absolute favorite drug.

Below are some books that I read for the purpose of writing Lush, and others are simply favorites with wine as a theme or delight within the pages.

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Peter Hellman, In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forager Extraordinaire

In this book Hellman investigates the real-life counterfeiting scandal that shook the wine world in the noughties. The fraudster Rudy Kurniawan was young, audacious and swindled people for millions. It’s a fun romp that explores the frankly ridiculous price tag that comes with a prestigious bottle of wine, and cemented my belief that the wine industry thrives on charm and perceived intimacy, rather than entirely the taste of wine itself.

It also influenced Lush in the way that Kurniawan was immediately othered due to being “the rare Asian among older white males.” I wonder if all those people would have been swindled if he hadn’t already been othered by them; if his race hadn’t made him, to them (like his “wealth” and his dealings) impossible to completely comprehend.

Jilly Cooper, Harriet

In this sultry book, young Harriet has a brief affair with the university playboy, leaving her heartbroken and pregnant. From his bed to the house she works in as a nanny after leaving university, Harriet uses alcohol in the classic way, perhaps one of the first reasons anyone drinks—to step into rooms that would otherwise leave us trembling on the threshold; to step into arms we wouldn’t otherwise trust to hold us.

It’s fun and silly and our protagonist makes a litany of mistakes, but it’s worth the read if you, like me, have once or twice bolstered yourself with wine to give yourself a confidence you didn’t truly feel, or if you simply like the occasional smutty novel.

Jack Kerouac, Tristessa

In this novella based on one of his own love affairs, Kerouac tries to beautify the addiction of morphine addict Tristessa. The narrator who we meet drunk in the cab with Tristessa drinks consistently throughout this short book, alcohol for him smoothing out the sharp edges of danger and making the snippets of her life seem lovely and worth sharing, despite the clear sting of addiction.

Marlowe Grandos, Happy Hour

 A stunning debut novel following a twenty-one year old called Ida spending a debaucherous summer in New York. The book is about something that will always fascinate me, as a self-described hedonist: how worthy the pursuit of pleasure can be.

The protagonist and her best friend drink too much at fabulous bars and sell what they can to afford the lifestyle, talk to who they can so they don’t need to be the ones footing the bill. It’s a wonderfully chic love letter to excess.

Bianca Bosker, Cork Dork

This was one of the first books that I read when writing Lush. If you know nothing about sommeliers, this book is the perfect place to start. Bianca Bosker is a wine newbie who throws herself palate-first into the wine industry. We learn about wine with her as she comes to comprehend tasting notes, wine etiquette and the strange and booze-soaked brains of the titular “cork dorks”—oenophiles who are obsessed with not only the taste of wine, but the ceremony of it.

It’s funny and fast-paced, sexy in the way that bottles and bottles of wine facilitate, but also shows snippets of the wine industries dark underbelly, the casual or not-so casual harassment, the danger of a group of people (no matter how wealthy or well-put together) indulging in what is essentially and literally, a drug.

Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

 This is one of the first books you may think of when you think about wine, in part thanks to that gorgeous cover, but it can’t be omitted. In Sweetbitter, a young woman moves to New York City to work as a waitress in a prestigious restaurant.

As with all people in tight quarters with a common goal, intimacies are established quickly and dismantled with equal swiftness. The restaurant environment is punishing and fast-paced, the men alluring and misogynistic, the women calculating and aware of themselves and their beauty or lack of.

The staff indulge in drugs and alcohol when off the clock (and sometimes on), and the way they wrap around each other mimics the way they weave around the restaurant floor, trying their best through clumsiness and hangovers to keep the patrons happy and hang on to their jobs.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, On Booze

This short book compiles a collection of Fitzgerald’s observations on alcohol through The Jazz Age. As the writer is the originator of one of my favorite sayings about alcohol—”first you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink and then the drink takes you,” I had to include at least one Fitzgerald, which wasn’t difficult as alcohol is a throughline of all of his stories.

It’s a quick read, some observations made in his notebooks and some short works pulled together, but it’s extremely fun.

Tabitha Lasley, Sea State 

After a break-up, Lasley quit her job at a magazine and moved to Aberdeen, determined to follow through with an old idea to write a book about men who worked on oil rigs. Not exactly about wine, but the book contains a delicious thread of drunkenness that makes it one of my long-time favorites.

Lasley is a woman alone, determined to document who men are when they are among only other men and danger. She drinks with them and fights with them and hears their stories of when they were their most fearsome selves—then lets them walk her home.

It shows alcohol as a tool for engagement and a crutch for unfulfilled lives, as well as being a truly stunning observation of class and identity.

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Lush by Rochelle Dowden-Lord is available via Bloomsbury.