The Wines of the Northern Rhone Book

Thin. Based largely on speculation, this book would have made a much better historical novel than biography. Little actual information is known about Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, so Mazzeo filled in based upon the known history of France (and the rest of Europe) in the 1800s. The details about the history of the wine industry made up most of the solid information and were interesting, but the book was supposed to be about more than that--Ponsardin and the rise of Veuve Clicquot. Additionally, for coming in at less than 200 pages, there is a lot of repetitive information throughout, and the notes are odd--there are millions of them but no footnotes or endnotes to reference readers to the correct information.