Exceptionally interesting "yearbook" in the Franconian Jahrbuch tradition, with a manuscript appendix and ex-libris Ex-libris Friedrich von Bassermann-Jordan (1872-1959), German wine estate owner, viticultural pioneer, and the most influential wine historian of his era, author of Geschichte des Weinbaus, which is the wine library of record for German viticultural history. At the heart of the book are wine and weather. Häulen records exceptional vintages alongside disastrous crop failures [...]

An early nineteenth-century Bohemian vineyard manual by Franz Anton Lintemer, a practical agricultural reformer writing for ordinary vine-growers rather than academic agronomists. The small book answers a local problem stated in the preface: Bohemian viticulture lagged behind, although, in Lintemer's phrase, "Die Urquelle alles Reichthums ist ohne allen Zweifel die Erde" (the primary source of all wealth is without doubt the earth). The book belongs to the Enlightenment culture of agrarian [...]

Schreiber’s Rhine handbook is far more than a picturesque travel guide. In this fully revised second edition, the author offers a meticulous itinerary along the Rhine from Schaffhausen to Holland and along the Moselle to Trier, enriched with historical notes, legends, spa culture and practical advice for the cultivated traveler of the Vormärz period. The section on the Rheinweine is of particular interest for the history of wine: in fact, here Schreiber records early nineteenth century [...]

First edition of Bronner's first published book, a remarkably focused monograph on Riesling by a Wiesloch apothecary who became a viticulturist after clearing and planting a plot of waste ground. The timing was urgent: the severe winter of 1829-30 devastated vineyards across Baden and the Rhineland, and the damage formed part of the immediate background to Bronner's intervention. He wrote from his own vines, testing methods at home and against what he observed in the Palatinate and [...]

Early nineteenth-century systematic account of Tokaj, written by Joseph Némety as an organizer of practical regional wine knowledge rather than as a celebrant of a famous name. At the time, wine districts were increasingly described through topography, archival record, and agricultural observation; Némety instead gives Hegyalja the form of a viticultural landscape, relating communes, soils, exposures, varieties, and cellar practice to the production of Tokayer Ausbruch. The wine already [...]

First and only German translation from the second French edition of Brun-Chappuis's practical manual of pre-phylloxera Swiss viticulture. Brun-Chappuis writes as a practicing vine-grower from Vivis, now Vevey, in Canton Vaud, drawing on experiments made in the Ryff valley on the shores of Lake Geneva. The book answers a mid-nineteenth-century moment in which vineyard knowledge moved through agricultural societies as well as through local practice, and field experience was being tested [...]

Second improved edition of a practical German vine manual written for the household and parish rather than the commercial vineyard. Schmidt brings together three traditions of nineteenth-century horticulture: the established German methods of Kolbe, the newer French espalier (trellis) system of Hardy at Versailles, and Jäger's geometrical forms of vine training. The result belongs to a gardening culture in which the vine could be trained against the walls and windows of the house [...]

Published in 1928 as the 4th installment in the series Schriftenfolge: Rheinlands Weine by the Propaganda-Verband Preußischer Weinbaugebiete in Bonn, this volume is a richly illustrated celebration of the wine regions along the Mosel, Saar, and Ruwer rivers. The local viticultural heritage is presented simultaneously as ancient tradition, living landscape, poetic experience, and German national treasure - a multi-layered cultural and marketing argument entirely characteristic of its era. [...]

Hocks and Moselles is part of Constable’s Wine Library, edited by André L. Simon, a key figure in 20th-century British wine writing. The series (covering Madeira, Sherry, Champagne, Claret, Burgundy, Port, Wine in the Kitchen, and Hocks and Moselles) was written by specialists “in language the layman can perfectly understand,” (quoting the Morning Post), aiming to create both an authoritative reference and a form of consumer education for a more discerning British public. This first [...]