Book review: Izabela Kamińska Wild yeast – stories about wine
Website: https://www.izabelakaminska.com/index.php/en/wild-yeasts/
Izabela Kamińska is a well-travelled Polish wine journalist, now living in Portugal. I’ve met her on the road before, so it was a lovely surprise to find this gem of a book, originally published in Polish in 2023 but now with an English translation.
It’s a book with 17 stories, ranging from the Mission Grape, to how manga saved Bordeaux, to how wine tasted thousands of years ago, to wine on television and in cinema, to the perfectly imperfect wine. These are stories well told, and there’s a great deal of thought and creativity that has gone into this book.
The book is also beautifully illustrated and laid out, and the translation reads excellently in English. In a world where there is now a profusion of wine books, most of which follow a tried, tested and rather dull formula, I’m delighted to see this beautifully curious, intellectual, and fun exploration of so many of the interesting aspects of wine.
And the good news is that, if you like this book, Izabela tells me that there’s another one on the way soon.
