Libation is a book to read in the afternoon while swinging in a hammock and sipping a cool drink. The style of writing is poetic and story-like. It's an autobiographical window into the author's encounters with drinks and the memories and stories they provoke. It's an education on spirits, liqueurs, and a couple of cocktails, in particular: rosolio (rose liqueur), vodka, lemoncello, Campari, alkermes, absinthe, sazerac, and Irish wisky. And it's a diary of a first-time home winemaker and grape-grower in Vermont. All this in intertwined with stories from Italy, Paris, Ireland, New Orleans, and Vermont.

If you're looking for all the facts on spirits, then try The Complete Book of Spirits: A Guide to Their History, Production, and Enjoyment. This book isn't about these spirits, liqueurs, and wines; it's an encounter with them. As such, it's one woman's perspective (with a lot of good research thrown in).

I enjoyed the book for what it is, and I don't fault it for what it's not. I came away with a greater appreciation of the beverages the author wrote about. More than that, I came away with a curiosity and desire to observe more closely and find out more about what I'm drinking so that I too can experience more deeply the mystery and wonder of these magical liquids.

Summary:
--------
I was really looking forward to reading this book -- how could you not like an interesting travelogue about Italy, Italian food, wine, spirits and the wonderful Italian culture! The author's prose style is rambling and sort of disorganized; I found it hard to stay interested in reading the book due to the prose style. The editor really should have reigned in the author, Deirdre Heekin. Dierdre writes very well when she is focused on a topic -- great description. But, she does not know how to tell a story very well...a few more versions would really help tighten up the book.

The stories about the trials and tribulations of setting up a bakery in a small town are interesting. The Italian stories are lovely but needing to pull back on some of the detail in favor of story-telling at many points. The bouncing around between Vermont and various parts of Italy did not work so well for me.

Content:
--------
The information is wonderful and the descriptions brought me right back to various parts of Italy when I have traveled there. If nothing else, the content should make you want to go there and experience it for yourself (which I highly recommend -- the Italians really know how to live life).

Summary:
--------
The book did bring me back to my travel experiences in Italy which are nearly all tied to food and drink as the Italians do it so well! I am grateful for the author for that. The organization shows that better editing was needed; it would really improve the book.

In this set of linked essays, Deirdre Henkin describes scenes from her life in Italy, her life as a restauranteur, and her quest to understand and create things that smell good (wine, spirits, and perfumes - though to be fair she doesn't create perfumes). She has an enviable life in Italy which she clearly loves. She is passionate and well-informed about food and wine.

But the essays just did not jell. Perhaps it was the lack of humor and lack of that slightly offsides perspective that makes memoirs interesting. Ms. Henkin is pretty solemn - and, to be fair, she knows how enviable her life is. She is not smug, and perhaps that is an achievement in itself. But it's more of a personal achievement than one that rewards a reader.

If you want to know more about how to make certain wines and spirits, read this book. If you want to read every oenological memoir on earth, include this one. But there are far more interesting books that cover similar ground and get further below the surface.

Libation is not for everybody. Ms. Heekan is an excellent writer in style and substance. But she is not a professional writer like, say Tracy Kidder or John PcPhee whom you learn to read regardless of subject. She is just far too good a writer to ever want anybody ghosting her work. So you need to have some hook to this book. Luckily Libation offers several; if you hit even one, good enough. I stopped counting for myself at four: Italy, Vermont, Wine, cultural/gastronomic history with a little science and a garnish of top-notch recipes.

If you are interested in viniculture, this book is definitely for you. If Vermont conjures up more than tourist imagery and gets into bone and soil, this book is calling you. Her preface alone is one of the strongest passages of prose of this kind I have seen in a long time. Her terroir is deeply Southern. She might could have been in the same furrow as O'Connor or Welty, but she turned to the land of Edith Wharton and Emily Dickinson by way of Benvenuto Cellini and Pellegrino Artusi.

But Ms. Heekin has a different profession, with a need to write forcefully and cleanly about it. She is writing for everybody whose life she has touched in her bakery years or in her current osteria, for all of us with similar interests. But I think she is writing for those to be born in a century or three because of her love of voices past.

She has discussions of process, of working, of soil. Some will complain she is too technical about topography and soil composition. But if you are serious about growing, you need to be seriously learning such things; she is merely retracing her steps for us to see. It is not her plot (*groan*) I care about; it is her process.

Ms. Heekin has a nice section on making rosolio from rose petals and grain alcohol. Quite useful, this. I did not know the medicinal properties of herbs are preserved in wine or other alcohol. Now my appreciation of aqua vitae has ripened.

She imparts her information as a travelogue of her studies and trials. She takes us unhurried to see all the sights along the way, unafraid of stopping a while, lingering on thoughts, or a memory, a landscape. Do not come here if you are on the march. But she is no dilettante. It is the little things that tell. She knows the true Manhattan is made with rye and not bourbon. She teaches Campari, not just tossing off some third hand recipes. And Sazerac!

This is a book I will return to many times. It will outlive us all. I already have her other book on order. Salute

"Libation, A Bitter Alchemy" is a delicious book to savor and loose yourself while letting Ms. Heekin take you to places you have never been and perhaps will never go both travel and taste-wise in your lifetime.

Deidre Heekin has a way with words and she describes her passions of wine, food, traveling, life in Vermont, traveling to Italy and a host of other rich tales in essay form in this book. She is preaching to the choir for me because I grew up in New Orleans a place her family also hails from where passion for all things food and drink resides in her DNA.

Ms. Heekin has a way of making everything she writes about even her shopping trips in Italy to little out of the way apothecary's interesting and educational. She leaves no stone unturned when educating her reader but she does it with such flair that you feel transported to Italy with her on those expeditions, into the vineyard to learn about grapes and wine making, into the kitchen of her restaurant to make a dessert (recipe included) or to meet wine making Nuns at a cloistered convent! She is a true alchemist combining her passions and her life into something tangible while educating herself and others along the way.

I think it's fair to say, if you are fan of "Under the Tuscan Sun" or any of Michael Pollans books you will enjoy "Libation, A Bitter Alchemy" as well.

Sometimes a book is not only good, but its timing is perfect; it may come along when you've been reading other books with which the new tome perfectly integrates and serves as a necessary complement. Such is the case for me with "Libation". I've been on a "foodie" kick in my reading, having read all three of Michael Ruhlman's books chronicling his stint at the Culinary Institute of America for culinary arts training and his subsequent exploration of the rise of celebrity chefs, plus Martha Rose Shulman's book "Culinary Boot Camp: Five Days of Basic Training at The Culinary Institute of America". All are excellent and give a thorough view of the demanding nature of the business and the technical expertise that is instilled and demanded of professional chefs.

"Libation" is the perfect accompaniment to these books.

While the previously mentioned titles are all about the mechanics of superb food preparation and expert techniques, "Libation" is a celebration of the sensuous aspects of food and beverage. While the other books keep us in the heat of the kitchen, "Libation" takes us to the sun-warmed heat of Italy in search of elusive tastes and scents. The frenetic pace of the kitchen characterizes the other titles, whereas "Libation" is a pastoral interlude, best read in a lazy hammock on a slow summer day.

The tidbits of history and fact interspersed in Heekin's account of her searches and travels for obscure and forgotten libations add to the enjoyment. I found myself spending hours online looking up additional information in response to chapters I'd read.

Recipes are interspersed throughout the book, always in keeping with the topic of the chapter in which they are found; most are for, as one would guess, libations of various forms, but there is one recipe for an alkerne-soaked egg white cake with medieval origins.

If you can't wrangle a trip to Italy this summer or a meal at a gourmet restaurant, reading "Libation" is a satisfying substitute; it would also be a wonderful gift for the aspiring chef or gourmand.

I loved this book. Diedre writes this book in such an evocative manner that I want to go to Italy and experience the gastronomic delights, the wine, the liquers and other hidden jewels she and her husband found there.

When she spoke about a liquer I wanted to seek it out and try it. When she spoke about her first efforts making wine I wanted to try it myself.

I haven't done any of the things she spoke of nor have I traveled to Italy but sometimes I stop and think about her life and her travels and wish that I might experience what she found. Perhaps some day I will but until then I can re-read this book and enjoy what she experienced vicariously.

What is Libation? An alcoholic drink; and the act of drinking as a sacrifice or ritual. This is a book just as much about wine as it is about spirits, distillation and cocktails as well as dovetailing into a substantial discussion of terrier and Italian travels.

Deirdre Heekin's writing is beautiful and poetic, full of imagery. The passionate stories make one want to pick up an aperitifs when reading to enjoy the spirit of the story - such as the handmade rose petal liquor. The detractions, while minor, are that the stories themselves are rather contemporary and mundane, the book is in no way a page turner so one must appreciate the main theme fully to become immersed. I would not say that each story is detached enough to allow for enjoyable immersion by just reading one chapter here and there randomly - there is a linear progression - yet there is the element of repetition and laying out previously covered background information that seems to think the author or editor was mixed in how they thought the book would be approached.

[...]

Just married and visiting Italy, Deirdre Heekin and her husband, Caleb Barber are swept away by the culture and food. Moving back to the U.S. a year later, they wanted to create a place where the lifestyle of Italy could be explored and displayed.

A bakery in Vermont, Pane E Salute, was born. The bakery began to "change its shape, and before we understood that the bakery really wanted to become a restaurant, we began ordering wine from local purveyors so that we had something to wash down the simple lunches we had begun to offer."

Thus was born Osteria Pane E Salute.

Libation is about this journey, about Heekin's exploration of wine and spirits and its evolution into a quest for revitilization.

And so, in a seemingly futile place for making spirits and wine, Vermont, Deirdre Heekin tells in her book of that journey. The telling of this fascinating journey is verbose and well, boring. Her writing about the soil, totally not interesting to me and yet a writer ought to be able to make even dirt appealing. The details about the wines and spirits could have been pretty fascinating but end up more like a boring professor, great content but a poor delivery.

It is really too bad because the idea for this book is a good one.

In this collection of linked essays, Deirdre Heekin describes her growing appreciation for wine and the land from which it comes. Her musings range from her travels to the small winemaking villages in Italy to her life at home in Vermont where she and her husband own and manage an Italian restaurant that uses locally grown ingredients. In her own words, Heekin describes Libation as a book "about soil, vines, fruit, history, scent, taste, chemistry, and memory."

The breadth of the topics covered--from high-end perfumery in Paris to a casual family meal in Tuscany--ensures something to interest just about any reader. The lack of a central focus, however, renders Libation a bit disjointed. Heekin is knowledgeable and passionate about the subjects she discusses. Her writing is mostly charming but occasionally overloaded with technical detail. Winemakers and restaurateurs will appreciate the rigorous treatment, but armchair tourists will be left wanting more whimsy and less technique.

This is a charming, if uneven, book of linked essays on food, earth, drink, memories, Italy, the restaurant business, history, even love. . .it feels as if Heekin has let us in on her personal diary. This is not a book to be read in a linear fashion.

I found myself enchanted at times, bored at others. I did not need the long definitions of the rocks on Heekin's Vermont property. But no matter, I skipped them, and became transfixed by her description of making rose liqueur. Caught up in her enthusiasm, I wanted to try it, too.

I have already recommended this book to a friend who has a small plot of land and loves to cook with what's at hand, another who collects perfume, and one who likes memoirs. This book holds small delights; it feels right to open it and dip in, find what one likes, and savor.