The other day I was going through our little library at home and came across a book which I loved reading a couple of years ago. Elisabeth Knox’s “The Vintners Luck” published in 1998.
The novel is set around a vintner, his family life and his vineyard. Imagine Burgundy in 1808, the bulk of the Napoleonic years still to come when a young vintner meets for the first time an angel in his father’s vineyard.
The angel accompanies Sobran Jodeau, the Burgundian vintner, all his life until he dies in 1863. Every vintage has a special name. For instance in 1808 Sobran meets the angel for the first time and the vinatge is called “vin bourru”, meaning “new wine” and the year before he passes away (1862) is called “vin de dieux”, wine of gods or sweet botrytised wine, whereas the last year is titled “vinifie” which is “made into wine”. And thats the end of a long, exiting, complicated, at time treacherous, but overall joyful life full of various vintages, some with disastrous consequences, others producing the best Burgundian wine ever.
I will not tell you more, you need to find out yourself. What I like in this book that all comes to an end, as in real life but at the same time everything is like in a dream and the border of reality and dreamland is sometimes overlapping with exhilarating results.
The cover of “The Vintener’s Luck” by Elisabeth Knox
The Man from Mosel River 