Ray Isle: <i>The World in a Wineglass: The Insider's Guide to Artisanal, Sustainable, Extraordinary Wines to Drink Now</i> Scribner, 2023, 706 pp., ISBN: 978-1982182786, $50.00

What if one could really taste the world in a wineglass?In over 700 pages of description and discovery, Ray Isle, Executive Wine Editor at Food & Wine, teases the reader of his new book to believe that identifying a place on Earth through a taste of wine is indeed possible."One sip of a great wine, " Isle says, "will tell you what kind of grapes went into it, where they were grown, even what the weather was like that year" (p. 1).After four introductory chapters laying the foundation for his reader, Isle offers a virtual exploration of the globe, traveling through Europe, across North America, and to the Southern Hemisphere.In each of these geographies, Isle examines countries, regions, and hundreds of wineries, where he argues that where a wine is produced and who makes it can provide essential insight into distinctive practices from that area of the world (terroir), which determines its taste-hence the title of the book.Isle prefaces chapter 1, "There's a World in Your Wineglass, " with a quote from Colette's Prisons et Paradis (1932): "The vine makes the true savor of the earth intelligible to man. It senses, then expresses, in its clusters of fruit the secrets of the soil" (p. 1).This prepares the reader for the tone and tenor of the book, while allowing a platform for Isle to quickly and clearly proffer support for the main theme of his argument: wine is both art and agriculture."At its best, " states Isle, "wine is an artisanal creation that edges toward, and possibly sometimes achieves, art. At its heart, wine is also an agricultural product" (p.1).And, as an agricultural product, Isle notes the shift in public perception in terms of the benefits of conventional farming resulting in a "transformation of 'organic' from a word implying poorly made to one implying an avoidance of chemicals [which] has recently pushed winegrowers even further along this path" (p. 7).Isle explains that he is looking for the wine he drinks to answer three questions: "Where does it come from?Who made it?How did they grow their grapes and make their wine?"(p.11).Chapter 2, "Sustainability, Organics, Biodynamics, Regenerative Agriculture, and More" seeks to address these questions across six topic areas: sustainability, organic viticulture and winemaking, biodynamics, regenerative agriculture, about natural wine,