As wine producers increasingly turn to science to make their wines more consistent and profitable, there is considerable and continuous international exchange of scientific information, ideas, and techniques. This brand new book is the only in-depth reference to detail the processes, developments, and factors affecting the science of winemaking. Jamie Goode, a highly recognized expert on the subject, skillfully opens up the complex subject of wine science to explore the background of the various processes involved and the range of issues surrounding their uses and applications.

The book is divided into three sections covering the vineyard, the winery, and the human interaction with wine. Within each section are chapters that explain in detail the practical applications of science in winemaking around the world, as well as identifying the key considerations, such as viticultural practices, organics and ecology, and lifestyle influences.

Goode also reports on the vital progress that has been made in the last decade. Written in a uniquely accessible style, the book also features over 100 illustrations and photographs to help make even the most complex topics clear, straightforward, and easy to understand. This revolutionary book offers key reference for winemakers, viticulture and oenology students, and anyone with an interest in science or agriculture.

How to buy the book

• Mercaptans and other sulfur compounds in wine
  Volatile sulfur compounds and 'reduction' are hot topics at the moment. Jamie Goode does some explaining
• GM yeasts: the next battleground
  ML01, a genetically modified strain of wine yeast, has been released commercially in the USA. Good or bad?
• Naturalness in wine
  It's possible to make a wine without adding anything, but virtually no one makes wine this way, for good reasons. Jamie Goode asks, how much manipulation is acceptable?
• Is there an art to wine science?
• Tannins
  An in depth look at these important wine compounds 
• The New Zealand Screwcap Initiative
  In New Zealand, the shift to screwcaps has taken place with startling speed: from a standing start in 2000, now 70% of this country's wines are sealed this way. 
• Mechanisms of terroir
  As more new world producers start to take an interest in terroir, scientists are turning their attention to defining it and explaining how it affects a wine. Jamie Goode investigates. 
• Reductionism: how useful is this for understanding wine?
  The driving philosophy behind many scientific advances has been reductionism - the idea that a system is best understood by taking it apart and studying the components. But is this approach limited for helping us understand wine?

Tim Atkin in The Observer
observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1663837,00.html
Wine Science by Jamie Goode (£30, Mitchell Beazley) ***** (One of only two books in Tim’s line-up to get five stars)
'This isn't the cheapest wine book on the shelves, and its paucity of illustrations gives it a rather forbidding, academic look. But to a scientific ignoramus like me it's the most useful book of the year, packed with fascinating, well-researched information about everything from genetically modified vines to wine allergies, cork taint to micro-oxygenation. Goode is a rarity - a scientist who knows how to explain his subject in an approachable way.'

Andrew Jefford in The Evening Standard
'Jamie Goode’s Wine Science (Mitchell Beazley, £30) is less diverting but more technically detailed. Goode has a PhD in plant biology complemented by an invaluable training as a science editor, and has no rival at all among wine writers in terms of his grasp of the science underlying wine production. He puts it over in terms even I can understand, so you will have no trouble at all. The results, surprisingly, can be juicy as a good Juliénas.'

Eric Asimov in the New York Times
‘Finally, while wine producers love to portray themselves as humble artisans, winemaking these days is a complicated process that cannot always be understood intuitively. Fortunately, Jamie Goode's new book, The Science of Wine: From Vine to Glass (University of California Press, $35, available next month, explains some of the terms that critics toss around, like reverse osmosis and cane-pruning, while asking (and trying to answer) common-sense questions, like how much manipulation is acceptable in winemaking and whether a wine can taste like minerals. These could be dull topics, but Mr. Goode manages to make them lively and provocative’

Joanna Simon in The Sunday Times
Wine: Tips for tipplers
Joanna Simon raises a glass to some authoritative tomes, a witty stocking-filler and a memoir from Hugh Johnson in her selection of the year’s best books on drink.

WINE SCIENCE: The Application of Science in Winemaking by Jamie Goode 
Mitchell Beazley £30 
Should he ever need to, Hugh Johnson could use this book to support his view that tasting notes citing all sorts of fruits end up being meaningless. Studies show that even experienced tasters can’t detect more than four odours in a mixture. Fortunately, as a wine writer himself Goode cannot afford to be too hard on us scribes: we write tasting notes because “it’s the best we can manage, so it will have to do”. Quite so. This scholarly yet accessible work is an invaluable source for the technicalities of vineyard, winery and tasting.

Anthony Rose in the Independent
Raise a glass to the future of wine
By Anthony Rose 
‘Since time immemorial the natural bloom on the grape kick-started fermentation and lo, with a bit of intervention to stop it souring into vinegar, we had wine. Today, as white-coated boffins bring problems of oxidation, volatile acidity, reduction and cork taint within their sights, science is moving into the realms of science-fiction. The Portuguese have developed robot treaders to replace human beings. In France, where genetically modified crops are derided by protesters as Frankenfoods, experiments have been authorised for GM vines to halt the spread of the fanleaf virus that attacks vine roots. A biotechnologist at Stellenbosch University claims GM wines might prevent hangovers. In the cellar, sulphur dioxide (to neutralise bacteria), filtering and cooling technology are part and parcel of the modern winemaker's bag of tricks. If a wine is over-alcoholic because of a new vine clone or yeast strain, technology can ride to the rescue in the form of alcohol-reducing methods such as reverse osmosis or spinning cone technology. Jamie Goode's recently published, stimulating and highly approachable Wine Science (£30, Mitchell Beazley) will explain all.’

Jamie Goode has a PhD in plant biology and has worked as a scientific editor for over twelve years. In 2000, he established the consumer-oriented wine website www.wineanorak.com which is one of the world’s most visited wine sites and was nominated for the Ivory Label award for audio visual work in the 2004 Le Prix du Champagne Lanson.

He is a member of the UK Circle of Wine Writers, and is wine columnist with The Sunday Express and The Western Mail as well as a regular contributor to Harpers, Wine International, The World of Fine Wine, Wines and Vines and Hong Kong Tatler.