Today, you’re probably busy/simply stopping by this website to find out if a wine tastes good. But if I can steer you toward two provocative wine publications (of sorts) this week, I’ve done my job.

First, if you haven’t bought/read Andrew Caillard’s Australian wine history odyssey, The Australian Ark, you need to get on it. Caillard has spent decades researching it and dug so deep and wide that you can’t help but be amazed at the three, six-hundred-odd-page editions. It’s a wine history lesson, so definitely dry reading, but with so many untold stories, all punctuated with a trove of photos, drawings, and paintings dating back to the dawn of the Australian colony in 1788…

The Ark was recently crowned with the President’s Medal at the OIV awards, too, which is a tidy global acknowledgement for a local book. Even yours truly even has a (very) minor mention in the book.

I don’t normally do plugs for books (or anything else) and have zero financial gains for recommending it. But I like this epic book and want to see it out there on more bookshelves (even if it needs a whole block on my shelf)

Buy the Ark (here).

Secondly, and we’re really getting into the business end of the wine industry here, but Felicity Carter’s Drinks Insider podcast is also excellent. In particular, the interview with controversial scientist and medical researcher Tim Stockwell is a fascinating insight into how easily the famed J-curve (which suggests that moderate drinking has positive health effects) can be brought down by dogged research. It’s a long episode, so prepare yourself, but also a reminder that there is a quiet war going on, with a band of neo-temperance-organisation-backed medical researchers keen to demonise alcohol (which Stockwell tacitly disagrees with, even though his attitude is pretty obvious when you dig into his associations).

It’s a war that, ultimately, poses an existential threat to your glass of wine. Yes, alcohol is effectively a poison, and yes, there is a quintessential alcohol risk factor that must be acknowledged (especially around how bad anything beyond moderate drinking is for your health). But the slanted attack (you can read some of the criticism of Stockwell’s research here) on what is good and bad about a glass of wine is a scary thing.

Felicity’s podcast is here, and the Stockwell episode is here.