I could not get through this book. After a while, it was just repetitive and frankly I missed the point.

The recollection of his childhood in Southern Italy as well as the trials of moving to Albany, was for me, the most engaging part. Once Sergio gets into traveling for wine in Italy, I found it pedantic and somewhat incredulous. As if Daniel Thomases was unaware that wine producers would open special bottles for him at Vinitaly. While Sergio at one point eschews all modern producers, the next moment, we visit with Scavino, one of the original modernists in Piedmont.

Sorry, this book did nothing for me...

As Italian wine lover I expected this book to be just interesting but it is far more than that. It's very nicely written it's very interesting and it's even moving. An absolute must for anyone interested in Italian Wine (and Italian food & way of life for that matter). There are great portraits of the elder winemakers in the most important wine regions, there are nice stories about meetings with friends and family and the food and wine that go with those. And there is some - in my opinion very justified - criticism about the not so good influence of the American market on European wine. The best book Italian wine I know.

As Italian wine lover I expected this book to be just intersting but it is far jkore than that. It's very nicely written it's very interesting and it's even moving. An absolute must for anyone interested in Italian Wine (and Italian food & way of life for that matter). There are great portraits of the elder winemakers in the most important wine regions, there are nice stories about meetings with friends and family and the food and wine that go with those. And there is some - in my opinion very justified - criticism about the not so good influence of the American market on European wine.

PASSION ON THE VINE is a deeply moving, eloquent and personal expression of his love for the essence of Italian wine and its inextricable, sensual and sacred relationship with the land, its people, its culture and of course it's food. As an accomplished cook, my most surprising discovery on my first trip to Italy (Tuscany) was not the quality of the food - I've had comparable quality in LA - but how the experience of food was imbued with wine and the company of friends at table. Nothing was "segmented", nothing was rushed or regarded as "food as fuel" as in the US. It that moment, my understanding of Italian food at a soul level incarnated. And that was my experience reading Sergio's book: this is a very challenging, profound and intimate concept to communicate and he did it masterfully.

Although I don't have even a single corpuscle of Italian blood in me, my wife is 100%. Her grandparents on both sides were immigrants who came to Newark from the town of Avellino, which is about 45 minutes east of Naples, and if known at all in America, it's probably as the alleged hometown of Tony Soprano. Naples, of course, is far more famous for crime, but it's also the ancestral home of Sergio Esposito, author of Passion on the Vine, and it provides the springboard for his worldview and life's work.

So I know a little about life in a Southern Italian family, at least through osmosis. It would also probably constitute full disclosure to add that I have an amateur's abiding interest in Italian wine, as evidenced by a number of Amazon reviews I've written on books that deal with this specific subject.


Throw in the fact that I've been to Esposito's Italian Wine Merchant store in Manhattan a number of times, and you'll probably understand why I had certain preconceptions about this book before I ever opened it. In hindsight, I probably would have been better served if I had read it blind (pardon the atrocious mixed metaphor), and like a blind wine tasting, known nothing about it before I tried it. I was kind of hoping for a book that celebrated the true and the beautiful in Italian wine, but also the accessible, in the sense that you shouldn't need to take out a home equity loan before you buy, as would be the case if you were chasing '05 first growth Bordeaux. You certainly can find good, authentic QPR (quality/price ratio) wines in Esposito's store. Unfortunately, you won't find them in the book, but I'll return to this theme later.

Passion on the Vine really isn't a traditional wine expert's memoir (here I lump together the works of intrepid importers like Kermit Lynch and writer/educators like Gerald Asher), because the story of Esposito's Neapolitan family is deeply woven into the narrative. It's a relatively engaging immigrants' tale, and the personalities of his parents, uncles and aunts especially come to life and remind me sharply of my wife's many relatives who still live in Avellino. But if your goal in reading this book is full immersion in the contemporary Italian wine scene, you may be disappointed by the family details that spill across the pages at the expense of more stories about wine. Or maybe you'll love them. You'll also probably find more details about the food he's eaten than the wines he's consumed, but that goes with the territorio.

Accordingly, I'm not going to recount the "portrait of the wine merchant as a young man" story since that's not of real interest to me. For me, the first half of the book seemed to drag on and occasionally frustrated me. There are a few strange things I noted, like how his transplanted family appears to have suddenly gone from near abject poverty in Albany to relative affluence in Scottsdale without explanation, and occasional incomprehensible statements, like when he describes one of his early mentors as a true "scientist," since no one can reproduce his experiments. I also can't for the life of me figure out why he would effectively call the initial investors in The Italian Wine Merchant a bunch of clueless Wall Street boobs who couldn't understand how a store could only sell Italian wines, but then gave him the money anyway. At times the book reminded me of the scene in Animal House when Bluto says "...was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" Otter whispers to Boon, "Germans?" And Boon replies, "Don't stop him, he's rolling."

Esposito seems to believe he alone invented the idea that a store dedicated to Italian wine could succeed in the US, although he didn't get around to opening the store until 1998. I recall shopping in a wonderful Italian food and wine store in Chicago in the early `80's called Convito Italiano, at a time when Esposito was still in knickers. The profiled producers (see next paragraph) were mostly all well established when Victor Hazan wrote his wonderful guide simply called Italian Wine, published in 1982.

When we finally get to Italy on business, the chapters are mostly arranged around visits to iconic, world-renowned properties (Bartolo Mascarello, Biondi Santi, Soldera, Josko Gravner), each singled out I presume for their respect for the land and what I might term modern traditionalism, where the best of the past is effectively preserved and enhanced by application of non-interventionist technical advances. Like I said before, these are fiendishly expensive wines that all sell for $100 a bottle or more, so don't come looking for bargains here. But Esposito has a real gift for letting the winemakers tell their own stories. The chapter on biodynamics, for example, unfolds as a Socratic dialog between a Serbian winemaker and the author's wife. It is unquestionably the best and most entertaining introduction to the how's and why's of biodynamics I've encountered, and should be required reading for anyone who wants a primer on biodynamic theory and practice. The wines you read about here are mostly true vini di meditazione, so much so in fact that when visiting legendary Barolo producer Bartolo Mascarello, the winemaker sits mute for an hour smelling the wine and smiling to himself. Except for the fact that's he's confined to a wheelchair, all that's missing is the lotus position.

Esposito isn't afraid to reveal his personal foibles to the reader. He's impatient, petulant, self-absorbed, and even downright mean at times, particularly when he openly baits the effeminate son of one of his wine producers with a string of female names like Coco Chanel and Ursula Andress. Is he a homophobe? Well, that's passion of a different kind.

I recognize this review is getting a little off topic, not unlike the way my initial expectations wandered from where they started. Read this book as a cultural history based on Italian family, food and wine in that order and you'll probably love it. Despite my grape gripes, I enjoyed a lot of it, and I don't think anyone could have summed it up better than Gianfranco Soldera, quoted after another prodigious Italian meal recounted by the author: "La storia, la famiglia, il cibo, il vino. Questa e la vita dell'uomo. History, family, food, wine. This is the life of man." A bottle of the wine they drank that afternoon, the '99 Casse Basse Soldera Brunello, isn't available at the Italian Wine Merchant, but you can get the '01 on pre-arrival for a little less than three hundred smackers a bottle if you inquire now.

Although I don't have even a single corpuscle of Italian blood in me, my wife is 100%. Her grandparents on both sides were immigrants who came to Newark from the town of Avellino, which is about 45 minutes east of Naples, and if known at all in America, it's probably as the alleged hometown of Tony Soprano. Naples, of course, is far more famous for crime, but it's also the ancestral home of Sergio Esposito, author of Passion on the Vine, and it provides the springboard for his worldview and life's work.

So I know a little about life in a Southern Italian family, at least through osmosis. It would also probably constitute full disclosure to add that I have an amateur's abiding interest in Italian wine, as evidenced by a number of Amazon reviews I've written on books that deal with this specific subject.


Throw in the fact that I've been to Esposito's Italian Wine Merchant store in Manhattan a number of times, and you'll probably understand why I had certain preconceptions about this book before I ever opened it. In hindsight, I probably would have been better served if I had read it blind (pardon the atrocious mixed metaphor), and like a blind wine tasting, known nothing about it before I tried it. I was kind of hoping for a book that celebrated the true and the beautiful in Italian wine, but also the accessible, in the sense that you shouldn't need to take out a home equity loan before you buy, as would be the case if you were chasing '05 first growth Bordeaux. You certainly can find good, authentic QPR (quality/price ratio) wines in Esposito's store. Unfortunately, you won't find them in the book, but I'll return to this theme later.

Passion on the Vine really isn't a traditional wine expert's memoir (here I lump together the works of intrepid importers like Kermit Lynch and writer/educators like Gerald Asher), because the story of Esposito's Neapolitan family is deeply woven into the narrative. It's a relatively engaging immigrants' tale, and the personalities of his parents, uncles and aunts especially come to life and remind me sharply of my wife's many relatives who still live in Avellino. But if your goal in reading this book is full immersion in the contemporary Italian wine scene, you may be disappointed by the family details that spill across the pages at the expense of more stories about wine. Or maybe you'll love them. You'll also probably find more details about the food he's eaten than the wines he's consumed, but that goes with the territorio.

Accordingly, I'm not going to recount the "portrait of the wine merchant as a young man" story since that's not of real interest to me. For me, the first half of the book seemed to drag on and occasionally frustrated me. There are a few strange things I noted, like how his transplanted family appears to have suddenly gone from near abject poverty in Albany to relative affluence in Scottsdale without explanation, and occasional incomprehensible statements, like when he describes one of his early mentors as a true "scientist," since no one can reproduce his experiments. I also can't for the life of me figure out why he would effectively call the initial investors in The Italian Wine Merchant a bunch of clueless Wall Street boobs who couldn't understand how a store could only sell Italian wines, but then gave him the money anyway. At times the book reminded me of the scene in Animal House when Bluto says "...was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" Otter whispers to Boon, "Germans?" And Boon replies, "Don't stop him, he's rolling."

Esposito seems to believe he alone invented the idea that a store dedicated to Italian wine could succeed in the US, although he didn't get around to opening the store until 1998. I recall shopping in a wonderful Italian food and wine store in Chicago in the early `80's called Convito Italiano, at a time when Esposito was still in knickers. The profiled producers (see next paragraph) were mostly all well established when Victor Hazan wrote his wonderful guide simply called Italian Wine, published in 1982.

When we finally get to Italy on business, the chapters are mostly arranged around visits to iconic, world-renowned properties (Bartolo Mascarello, Biondi Santi, Soldera, Josko Gravner), each singled out I presume for their respect for the land and what I might term modern traditionalism, where the best of the past is effectively preserved and enhanced by application of non-interventionist technical advances. Like I said before, these are fiendishly expensive wines that all sell for $100 a bottle or more, so don't come looking for bargains here. But Esposito has a real gift for letting the winemakers tell their own stories. The chapter on biodynamics, for example, unfolds as a Socratic dialog between a Serbian winemaker and the author's wife. It is unquestionably the best and most entertaining introduction to the how's and why's of biodynamics I've encountered, and should be required reading for anyone who wants a primer on biodynamic theory and practice. The wines you read about here are mostly true vini di meditazione, so much so in fact that when visiting legendary Barolo producer Bartolo Mascarello, the winemaker sits mute for an hour smelling the wine and smiling to himself. Except for the fact that's he's confined to a wheelchair, all that's missing is the lotus position.

Esposito isn't afraid to reveal his personal foibles to the reader. He's impatient, petulant, self-absorbed, and even downright mean at times, particularly when he openly baits the effeminate son of one of his wine producers with a string of female names like Coco Chanel and Ursula Andress. Is he a homophobe? Well, that's passion of a different kind.

I recognize this review is getting a little off topic, not unlike the way my initial expectations wandered from where they started. Read this book as a cultural history based on Italian family, food and wine in that order and you'll probably love it. Despite my grape gripes, I enjoyed a lot of it, and I don't think anyone could have summed it up better than Gianfranco Soldera, quoted after another prodigious Italian meal recounted by the author: "La storia, la famiglia, il cibo, il vino. Questa e la vita dell'uomo. History, family, food, wine. This is the life of man." A bottle of the wine they drank that afternoon, the '99 Casse Basse Soldera Brunello, isn't available at the Italian Wine Merchant right now, but you can get the '01 on pre-arrival for [...] a bottle if you inquire now.

Esposito write with a real zest for wine and the food that accompanies it.He provides the reader with a large amount of historical information about the origin and development of the Italian wine industry. However he gives the reader little insight in how he got to where he is and how he made his business a success - if in fact it is. Finally one has to ask the question - how does he survive so much food and drink in a day only to get up and start all over? Yeah, yeah I am Italian American and I couldn't come close to what he says he does.

Sergio Esposito, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich started Italian Wine Merchants in 1999, a retail shop that represents fine Italian wines. There are many interesting wines on offer, the staff is knowledgeable and helpful, and the weekly and monthly emails provide a wonderful education on Italian wines and wine in general.

The emails are written by Esposito, and this wonderful book is a perfect example of Esposito's warm and educational style of writing. He starts his memoir with a description of his idyllic childhood in the slums of Naples: he remembers that "women lowered baskets from their balconies to buy the fish straight from the sea and grapes straight from the vine."

When he was a child, his family moved from Naples to Albany, New York. Esposito writes movingly about the transition: The pasta they ate in Italy had been laid in the middle of the street, "so that the unique combination of Mediterranean and mountain winds would dry it in just the right way, to produce the perfect texture when it was boiled." His first pasta in Albany was "mushy ...like glue in my throat."

Esposito's uncle shared his California red wine with his nephew starting a love affair with Italian wine. Esposito describes his travels as a student and as a wine merchant with great enthusiasm. Wine geeks will love passages like these, this one about Friulian winemaker Josko Gravner:

"Gravner is a proponent in the use of open-top wood vats, extended maceration on the grape skins, no added yeasts, no sulphur dioxide, and no temperature control--purely natural winemaking. This is Josko's current position, and he employs both amphorae and large oak barrels to make his three wines; Collio Breg, Ribolla Gialla, and Rosso Gravner. The grapes for these wines come from his 18 hectares of vineyards in Gorizia (Oslavia) that straddle the Italian-Slovenian border. It is here that he exercises his current approach to wine: 'I am convinced that wine is a product of Nature, not of Man, whose role therefore is to accompany its maturation process while avoiding any artificial intervention.'"

Any reader with the least interest in Italy will love his descriptions of the food and vintages he consumes on his adventures. For example, in one Roman restaurant, a white wine "smelled of apricots, white flowers, dried honey, nuts ... [I] got the sensation that I was being seduced in a Pompeii brothel before the volcano erupted."

Bill Buford is glowing in his praise: "Without qualification, the best book about Italian wine today, if only because Sergio Esposito understands that its mysterious greatness is in its poetry--the earth, its diurnal magic, the ghosts of great-grandfathers. A beautiful, boldly sentimental memoir."

As a long time reader of Esposito's prose, I couldn't agree more. Wine, of course, food, family, travel, more -- an absolute delight.


Robert C. Ross 2008

I loved this book. Wine, food, gossip, history - who could ask for more. Page 128 has a story of a wedding that will have you rolling on the floor with glee. The only drawback is trying to find a bottle of Vestini Campagnano Pallagrello Bianco - which Mr. Esposito describes as, '..being seduced in a Pompeii brothel before the volcano erupted.'

This is a FANTASTIC read!!! Anyone that loves good food, good wine, good friends and/or travel must buy this book! I have forced myself to go slow and savor but much like with a great glass of wine that is very hard to do! Everyone on my gift giving list is getting a copy. One of the best books I have read in a very long time to be sure.

If you have any interest in wine, food, travel, culture, history, family, and people as I do, then I recommend you read this book - I enjoyed all of it. Basically, it's a memoir of the author's move from Italy to the U.S. as a boy, and how his interest and love of wine and food inspired him to learn more about wine, open an Italian wine store in New York, and through his travels, continue his wine education.

He describes his travels throughout Italy in quest of the finest wines produced in that country (and the world) and understanding what motivates and inspires the people who make them. Along the way the reader gets taken for the ride through the beautiful wine making regions of Italy, and introduced to some of the iconic figures (some a bit eccentric) of Italian wine making. The author describes in detail his meetings, conversations, and tastings with these producers, and we get an inside perspective of how some of these icons have passionately and steadfastly respected history, terroir, and nature in crafting memorable wines they believe in. You'll visit their wineries, meet their families and partake in meals the author shared with the wine makers. Together they discuss the importance of food and wine pairing, and how, when done well, enhance each other and represent one of the essential aspects of an enjoyable and elevated quality of life.

I imagined myself as a secret participant of the winery cantina visits and mealtime conversations he describes in the book. As a person who appreciates good wine and food, they were absolutely riveting for me as it enabled me to learn more by getting a peek inside the minds of these great wine makers.

When you open this book and begin to read, it is much like a bottle of fine wine that develops and evolves over time. It has varying layers of characteristics that enhance your enjoyment, promote thinking, and will stay with you even as you drink the last drop or read the last page.

Sergio Esposito is a terrific and engaging writer-it is impossible to put this book down! Filled with humorous anecdotes from his numerous trips to Italy,"Passion on the Vine" will become a must read for all lovers of Italian wine, food and culture.

While I have come to appreciate Sergio's vast wine knowledge by way of his weekly e-Letters (through Italian Wine Merchants), I was intrigued when I heard about Passion on the Vine. Honest, engaging, personable and humorous, it brought me to a new level of understanding about the patience required to appreciate wine, from its production to its later enjoyment (or at least analysis). A passage that has stayed with me is Sergio's interactions with the late, Bartolo Mascarello, a traditional winemaker from the Piedmont region, known for his Barolos. Sergio relays the events with such respect and fond admiration, as the two take in a half-opened bottle of 1978 Barolo. Waiting for the elder's cues for an approval to taste, Sergio is left waiting far longer than he initially anticipated. However, it is over the duration of this exchange (that is so eloquently narrated and moving) that you are, like Sergio in that moment, anticipating Bartolo's gracious admission for a taste. It is also in this moment that you witness Sergio's growth. Powerful stuff.

Forgetting the obvious attraction of learning about Italy and an insiders perspective on magnificent wine, Sergio Esposito tells a story like no other. Pick this book up and you will never again put it down.

Passion on the Vine is a wonderful, enjoyable book to read! Sergio Esposito is a marvelous storyteller and his book is an enjoyable journey through his remarkable life. I highly recommend it!