When we were planning our vineyard we needed all the help we could get. From Vines To Wines was one book kept by the bedside for constant reference during the planning and planting stage. (The other book was "Vineyard Simple." The illustrated guide to pruning is exceptionally well done. Now that we've made it through year 1, I find myself going back to the book time and again. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in planting a vineyard. Craig Justice, Webmaster of Winemaker's Journal and Founder, Blue Merle Vineyard & Winery

I gave this to my father and he was so excited because it focused a lot on building a good trellis with good illustrations and also good for prunning.
These are two things that lack in other books that i have bought him (and that I am starting to be interested in, too).
Of course the book covers all aspects of the grape and wine making process, but the trellising and prunning in more detail was very welcome.
Recommended on all aspects.

This is indespensible for home winemakers. Period.

If you are a person engaged in wine studies, this is an essential first look into serious technical winemaking aspects. Before delving into more serious technical manuals such as "Understanding Wine Technology" and "The Science of Wines from Grape to Glass".

Pros: wonderfully written in laymans terms
Cons: drawings sometimes difficult to distinguish

We wanted a resource for the wine process from growth to the glass.
Everything you need is in here.

This book tells you everything about growing grapes and producing fine wine. It even deals with the choice of grape-varieties suited for your climate. It is almost perfect. I think many Europeans will read this book, and it would have been perfect if it included the Meditteranean countries in the tables of climate-zones and selection of suitable varieties. It is very difficult to find this (about Europe) on the internet. But a great and very useful book.

I purchased this book for my 12 yr.old grandson. We have found the illustrations and explainations to be very clear and easy to follow. The book also has extensive useful information to help the beginner as he grows in knowledge,

This is a very informative book, I can not wait to start my own wine grape vine.

This book will help you get from Vines to Wines, just as the title states. You can also focus on just the areas that you are interested in. I've make excellent red wine with this book. The pages are all curled up and the book is bent and used, and the wine is very good. My other titles sit nicely on the shelf, unused. Thanks, Jeff, for walking me through what my Great Grandfather is no longer here to do.

Marina Kushner
Author
The Truth About Caffeine: How Companies That Promote It Deceive Us and What We Can Do about It

The book was delivered in a timely manner, well packaged. Would buy from this seller again.

This book is clearly written and easy to read. In addition to the educational aspects, the author effortlessly recounts his own home winemaking experience and shares his passion for it. I found the tables and calculations extremely helpful. A lot of attention is paid to describing the technology and chemistry of the homemade wine. However, the author puts even more emphasis on choosing and correctly growing the right grape at the right place and calls it "your single most important decision". That's why the first chapters on the grape varieties and basic viticulture techniques are especially helpful for beginning grape growers. I truly enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it!

I have read a lot about this book so I had to have it. I recently bought a small vineyard in Slovakia and I have tons of local books about winemaking. I am a real newbie and after I read these books I had an idea how to make wine, but that was not enough. I always had tons of questions, which I did not know who to ask. Well Jeff Cox answers them. When he describes the wine making process he does that very precisselly that a newbie like me would underestand it. I am looking forward to use his tips this autumn.

This book is not just a one-time read. It will become your reference for all things grape. I bought the book about two years ago in hopes of starting my own vineyard. There's so much information and it's so complete that you really don't have to know much about wine or the growing process. If you have an interest, it's all here from siting of your grape vineyard, to planting, to pruning, to fermenting and cellaring, to enjoying the finished product. Read through the chapters and you'll feel like an expert. I took a long-distance learning course on wine growing from UC Davis (THEE school for wine growing) that cost more than $1,000. I enjoyed it, but learned more reading Jeff's book. You won't be disappointed.

My dream is to have a vineyard somewhere and grow my own grapes and make my own wine. It's a romantic thing, nurtured by too many movies and books on Tuscany. But hey, I live in a country that is a city - Singapore.

My home state is Washington, the largest US wine producer after California. When I return there I see new wineries and taste the fruit of my home state and my passions are once again ignited!

Jeff Cox's book tells me everything I'd need to know to grow healthy grapes and produce rich wines with them. Someday I hope to have the land on a Southern-facing slope to grow my own. Until then, I read this book and live the dream.

I have acreage in california that I want to use for growing and making wine (I also live there, it's not a commercial venture). I have been doing research on what to grow, what to plan for etc. and this book has been, by far, the most helpful resource so far. Cox covers all aspects from site selection, planting, training, harvesting, and the wine making process itself.

This book won't answer every question you have, but it answers far more than most. Highly recommended!

I like this book for my winemaking and think it has been very useful over the years. The author does a nice job of explaining the entire process of making wine here from starting with a bare plot of ground to picking the grape varieties to grow, spacing the plants, pruning, harvesting, crushing, fermenting, and finally bottling.

He also makes the point that winemaking is as much of an art as it is a science, there is more than one way to do most things and he explains some of them in this book.

I happen to use some different methods to growing the grapes than he recommends in this book though due to the climate I live in, such as using shoot thinning which he advises against. He leans more towards cluster thinning and I can't come to the task of removing grape blooms when that is the whole point in grape growing. Instead I remove the new shoots with no grape blooms and leave only those shoots that have them. I have found this to be the best way to get full crops in my climate, however with heavy bloomers his method may be more appropriate.

Also he advises to fertilize and I don't do that either as it leads to rank growth and more severe pruning later on, but as I said those are minor points I do differently.

The chapters on fermenting the grapes and producing wine are excellent as well, I would only say that my experience shows he tends to go too light on adding preservatives and I have found it is better to use a little more than he suggests as the wine tends to go cloudy with too little.

He also explains the importance of sugar content and acid and how they are related in the grape juice, also in testing before fermentation and how this is key to producing consistent fine wines. I completely agree here and that is the hard part as he mentions, one year is usually better or worse than the next, and keeping notes is important so if that year is the best you try to copy the methods again. The weather is different though so that changes things again, but as he says the key is to do your best and this book helps do that!

Finally for those that only want to make fruit wines this book would be helpful for the section on fermenting and bottling alone as I have made excellent fruit wines [mostly plum] using these methods. Just keep good notes on weights of fruit to the amount of water you add, also final sugar content, acid level and even the wine yeast you use.

I would also suggest anyone going the route of growing grapes from scratch to start with making fruit wines the first couple years as the vines mature [it can take two to three seasons to get enough grapes in some climates to make wine] so you have already made wine before pressing your first grapes. Also you may find the fruit wine as good or better in some cases.

So overall this is a great book for ideas, I recommend it highly!

This is a great book for someone considering growing grapes. It puts it all in plain english and makes it easy to understand.

After years of making our own wine and finally living in a world class grape growing region we wanted to try out hand at growing grapes. This book provided excellent information for the entire process. We've followed the advice in this book and have had good result with our grapes for two years.

Expertly written by Jeff Cox (an accomplished gardener and senior editor of "Global Vintage Quarterly"), and now in an updated and expanded fourth edition, From Vines To Wines: The Complete Guide To Growing Grapes And Making Your Own Wine is a complete, cover-to-cover, "user friendly" resource for home winemakers. Featuring everything from selecting ideal vines, to growing and harvesting grapes, the wine-making process from fermentation to labeling and cellaring, From Vines To Wines is a solid, practical, wonderfully accessible resource with diagrams, down-to-earth language, offering everything the reader needs to know to grow and make their own vintages.

Complete, easy to read. We refer back to this book often and it's helped take us from home grapegrower to commercial winery.

This is a well compiled, easy to read treatise on the subjects of viticulture and eneology. Focused on the layperson, it is very easy reading whilst glossing over none of the facts.

The book covers growing grapes suitable for wine, focused specifically on the North American region. It doesn't labor over the different types of grapes and their most suitable areas but it does give some information. It covers the history on wine making grapes and some of their historical regions. Moreover, it gives details on trellising and pruning techniques.

Further, the book describes the process of winemaking. The authors easy going an informative style provides for a pleasant read.

The author provides the reader with incite into his own experiences and even suggests alternatives to the common approach.

I could recommend this book, not only to a perspective grape grower or wine maker, but to those that would like to learn more about wine, its history and how to taste it (all of which are between these covers).

When I bought this book, I have to say that I never really had any intention of making wine. While I truly enjoy visiting regional wineries and have quite a full wine rack, I would have thought that it would be just too hard to do. I got this book just to have a better appreciation of the process, but now I think I might try this...some day.

You can't beat the price, very reasonable for what you get. It is very detailed and thorough, but not so techincial that it is confusing or overwhelming. Also, I was pleased to see that the author took into account that there are other places to grow wine other than California. I live in Virginia and there are some great local wineries, and the same can be said of New York's Finger Lakes where I went to college.

The book covers location, varieties, what varieties grow where, process, and problems. Very comprehensive overall.