The World in a Wineglass Review

Ray Isle has a way with words and wines.
He started as a fiction writer, destined for a life in academia, but stumbled upon wine during a stay in the Bay Area. “I fell both in love with wine and with the world of wine. And I was also rapidly falling out of love with academia,”* recalls Ray.

Though he left the world of fiction, what he learned proved invaluable, as is displayed in his new book The World in a Wineglass. “I wrote fiction for a long time and some of the sort of technical aspects of writing fiction, which is setting scenes and writing dialogue […] comes intuitively and it informs a lot of how I write nonfiction stories,” says Ray.

And as he combines story telling with his utter love of wine, I discovered a book that is gripping, entertaining, educational but also highly sensitive to a world of wine regularly misunderstood.

When talking about sustainability, the initial reaction is either one of embrace or rejection. In conversation with wine lovers, I often witnessed the divide between the worlds of industrial wines and the “others”. But it doesn’t need to be. This was one of Ray’s objectives: “It’s very odd that there’s a wall between those two worlds … So I wanted to kind of change where the wall was.”

Reading The World in a Wineglass, I kept on thinking about two defining words: love and subjectivity. It became obvious that Ray Isle’s love of wine shines through the pages. But more importantly, it’s his love for the people making the wines. “The aesthetic vision of the person made a big difference and sometimes more than we’re willing to accept in this kind of age of terroir.” That care for the environment, and the surrounding, does not mean a complete abandonment to the whims of nature. It’s a collaborative work. And, later, in the profiles, I got to better understand who the winemakers are, and their ethos. I had the chance to interview some profiled winemakers. And it was wonderful to get the same impression I had, talking to them, while reading Ray’s narrative. This is how compelling his writing is.

I also said it is a subjective book because it is the world of wine according to Ray Isle. It’s what matters to him. And the read is so much better for it. It’s as if he was guiding me into his world in a very caring way. First, he does not antagonize the two worlds of wine—we against them. On the contrary, Ray Isle brings a sense of appeasement. There is nothing wrong with your wine choice. “There are industrial produced wines that are perfectly fine to drink. And there’s nothing wrong with mass-produced wine, any more than there is with a mass-produced bottle of orange juice,” says Ray during our podcast. But he adds, “But it’s not the same thing to me.”

So the choice is up to you, the reader. But if you are interested to know more, then Ray takes you on an initial tour of what the world of sustainable wine is. He explains simply and clearly the difference between organic, biodynamic, regenerative, and natural wines.

After overviewing the lay of the land, he goes into the second part of the book, where he profiles some 263 wineries he has visited or met with the winemakers. He also mentions, as a reference, 616 more wineries to discover. The major regions are covered, as well as some lesser known ones like Slovenia, Georgia, and Lebanon. For each winery, Ray is able to give us a lasting impression of the winemaker and their wines in just a few paragraphs. It is striking how powerful his narratives are. At every page, it made me want to know more, and taste the wines.

Overall, The World in a Wineglass is the kind of book wine connoisseurs and non-experts will enjoy reading. Ray sums it well: “I didn’t grow up in a wine-drinking family, so I fell in love with wine unexpectedly. And I think I would have been happy to have this book.” As a non-expert, I can vouch for that, as I enjoyed so much reading Ray’s book. In conclusion, I can only encourage you to indulge yourself with a copy and dive into this fascinating world of artisanal wines.

*All the quotes from Ray Isle are from the podcast Food Broken Promises (https://tablefortwo.co/2023/11/14/the-world-in-a-wineglass-ray-isle-artisanal-wine/). Some light edits were made for clarity.