Reviewed by LiDoña Wagner

It has probably never crossed your mind that Australian kangaroo fillets, Catholic priests, Yamhelas people, or the number of Latina women getting college degrees are related to Oregon winemaking. Yet, as you stroll through The Grail with Brian Doyle, editor of Portland Magazine, you will take in these and other historical anecdotes as easily as if you were relaxing beside the Columbia River sipping a glass of Pinot Noir from the Lange winery.

Doyle opens The Grail, sixty-nine essays on the annual cycle of winegrowing, with a four-hundred-word sentence that begins: “A glorious, gleaming, glittering October afternoon in the red clay hills of Dundee, Oregon, where hawks float by with writhing snakes in their beaks, and the deer fences are eight feet high and lined with barbed wire to keep out what grape growers call vineyard rats, and … the chief winemaker, the songwriter Don Lange, is cursing at the moles and gophers that have riddled the dirt between the rows of his vines, and … the intense younger winemaker, Don’s son Jesse, is driving a careening forklift truck …

Winemaking appears to be a family business and as it is fairly new to Oregon, perhaps it is inevitable that Doyle’s history of winemaking would be less dense when compared with that of Michael Sanders in Families of the Vine. After all, Sanders was telling the story of three multi-generational winemaking families in Southern France whereas the winery of Don and Wendy Lange has not yet been passed on to their son Jesse. No wonder Doyle keeps his descriptions of Lange family members light and whimsical whereas Sanders went to great lengths to develop the unique character of each French family.

Similar to Families of the Vine, Doyle uses the narrative arc of the vintner’s year to tell the winemaker’s story of hard work that ends with people eating and drinking and talking and laughing. But unlike Sanders, Doyle waxes poetic over the beauty of the terrain and complexity of each wine. He uses strings of related words to convey his enthusiasm for his subject, whether it’s meeting Jesse Lange for the first time or describing the strange equipment used by vintners, such as “the pusher downer” that doesn’t break.

Those who love wine, enjoy short juicy tidbits rather than long explanations, and wonder what has taken lumber’s place in Oregon’s land-based economy will find Doyle’s far-ranging essays and adjective-rich prose delightful and easily assimilated. It’s a great read for bus, train or plane rides since the longest essay takes six pages and most take only two. Or pour a glass of wine and unwind with The Grail in your patio lounge chair.