Making Wine History

One of my favorite things about being on vacation is having more time than usual to read. I read quite a lot on my week off recently, one of the books being The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It by Tilar J. Mazzeo. I read it on the plane and found it to be a very interesting story about a woman with a strong business sense for her time who works hard to earn a living in 19th century France after her husband suddenly passed away. She was lucky to be encouraged by both her father and father-in-law as she worked to make champagne accessible to the middle class.

Upon our arrival at our hotel in the Rhine Valley we were offered a glass of champagne during check-in, which only made me appreciate the Widow Clicquot even more, right? (Our hotel is also a winery, so everything they serve there is their own.) A couple days later at the Rheingauer Weinmuseum Bromserburg in Rudesheim, we learned a little about the region's 1,000-year wine producing history, and part of that centered around the sparkling wine produced in the Rhine Valley.

Upon returning to the States, I did investigate Clicquot's famous champagne. At $40 a bottle it's out of my price range, but it was fun to learn about all the effort she put into her work.

Cheers!

A German Reading List

In celebration of our fifth wedding anniversary, my husband and I recently traveled to the Rhine Valley and Berlin. Of course I was on the lookout for interesting books to bring back with me, and I succeeded in finding a few and have some recommendations from others. In honor of this recent trip to Germany, I've compiled a list of German reading material. I'm looking forward to blogging about some of these books going forward. And, I'm open to more suggestions if you have them.

Read
The Reader by Bernard Schlink*
Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada* (I'm reading this right now. Cannot put it down.)
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak*
The Violin of Auschwitz by Maria Angels Angalda* (OK, so this takes place in Poland, Germany's next door neighbor. It relates and it was a great read, so I included it.)
Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends who Resisted Hitler by Anne Nelson
Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War by Daniel F. Harrington
A Good American by Alex George
The Beauty of Transgression: A Berlin Memoir by Danielle De Picciotto

The Good German* by Joseph Kanon (Don't watch the movie. It's terrible even with George Clooney.)
The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
A Woman in Berlin by an anonymous author
The Berlin Wall: 13 August 1961 - 9 November 1989 by Frederick Taylor
Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz: Queen Victoria's Eldest Daughter and the German Emperor by John Van der Kiste
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 by Christopher Clark
After the Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood and the Life that Came Next by Jana Hensel
Hiding Edith: A True Story by Kathy Kacer
Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 by Maria Vassittchikov
The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck

Watch
The Lives of Others
Run Lola Run

Listen
Berlin Stories - Anna Winger's NPR radio series on life in Berlin(These are ready to go on my iPod.)

**Indicates that I've read and enjoyed these books already. No * means it came recommended to me by someone else, or I bought the book in Germany and will soon be reading it.