A Cultivated Life: A Year in a California Vineyard

A chronicle of wine-making as well as a plug for Iron Horse Vineyards, her family's winery in Sonoma Valley, Calif., this first-person account of the wine-growing year also traces Sterling on her business rounds. We follow her as the vineyard's marketing director, dressed to the nines, traveling across the country and abroad, talking to consumers, offering tastings and creating or assisting at events designed to promote Iron Horse wines, which have been served at White House dinners. Sterling presents a seductive picture of the pleasures (and hardships) of making and marketing wine, and recalls her family's years in Paris, where they lived before buying the California vineyard in 1976. While much attention is paid here to her family's elegant hospitality, the book is also a layperson's guide to the intricacies of wine-making from planting the rootstock through nurturing the vines, harvesting the grapes and marketing the Fume Blanc, Chardonnay, Cabernet and sparkling wines. (Sept.)