For over thirty years photographer Charles O'Rear has been fascinated with wine and the process that transforms ordinary grapes into a world-class wine. To understand the making of two of the most renowned varietals, the bold red Cabernet and the softer white Chardonnay, O'Rear travelled 100,000 miles, visited four continents, talked with hundreds of winemakers, and captured thousands of unprecedented images.
Featuring over 125 colour photographs, 'Chardonnay' provides an intimate tour of the wine's production, its character and the places of its origin. O'Rear discovered the feminine character of Chardonnay, a wine able to express its personality in as many ways as the stronger and more dominant masculine flavours of Cabernet. His journey took him from France, where the wine began, to the fields of California, where it has burgeoned into one of the world's favourite and most versatile wines.
In many ways, this book is like the profiled wine itself: full of character, lush beauty, subtlety, and surprise. And when readers turn the last page, there lingers an elusive romance that will lure them back for more.
