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Overview
It is heartwarming for an American expatriate who has lived in France for over thirty years to read a book which absolutely shines with love and appreciation for France. Tanner has discovered the most elusive yet lasting pleasure: a second home in a "foreign land".There are gentle tidbits of history in his story. He stands in a thousand year old cathedral and reflects on kings and bullet holes. He had an eye for landscape; his first sight of the famous hill of Corton Charlemagne moves him deeply. He has a diarist’s sense of detail especially when describing the sumptuous meals he shares with his wife and friends in France’s gastronomic and viticultural capitals.
The major part of Vintage France occurs in Burgundy, an aristocratic yet fundamentally rural region that produces many of the world’s best wines. It is here that Tanner hangs up his hat and becomes close to several families. He harvests grapes, visits vineyards and cellars, and weaves himself into the daily life of Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who have fully adopted this gregarious stranger.
Required reading not only for first time visitors to France, but for all those who are gentle adventurers.
—Becky Wasserman Hone
Synopsis
Set against the panorama of some of the world's greatest vineyards, restaurants and attractions, Vintage France splendidly presents the regions' grandeur, emphasizing the details and nuances of the lives intertwined with each. Vintage France chronicles the author's encounters with French history, cuisine, culture and people during his travels through Champagne, Alsace, Burgundy, the Loire, Bordeaux, Lyon and Paris, anecdotally detailing events and characters from various French villages and regions, while poking good-natured fun at Tanner's own foibles during his journeys.
Vintage France takes the reader along for the journey, introducing the sights, sounds, fragrances and flavors of France in delectable detail with wine as a common theme, whether meeting a world famous winemaker, exploring a wine village, attending a wine festival, lending a hand with the wine harvest or describing the impact of a single, incredible bottle of Le Montrachet shared with French friends. Each chapter of Vintage France is a testimonial, through the author's own eyes, to the incredible warmth and generosity of the French people that he and his wife encountered as they traveled through the country's wine regions, and also contains innumerable helpful hints for anyone planning a trip to France.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Tanner's account of his free-spirited travels through France's wine regions reads like a diary. There's a certain candor to it that draws you into the poorly marked rural roads of the French countryside and smoky Burgundian cafes. Tanner tends to gush like a boy in love, but that's understandable. "Vintage France" isn't so much a critical work as it is the story of a Midwesterner who dove into France with an appreciation of fine wine and an open mind and found, much to his surprise, the warm embrace of genuine friendship.