The Corkscrew | Why anyone interested in wine needs Karen MacNeil's Wine Bible

On my wine book shelf there are a few essential tomes: Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson's The World Atlas of Wine; Jasper Morris' Inside Burgundy; Rajat Parr's Secrets of the Sommeliers; and Evan Goldstein's Perfect Pairings and Daring Pairings, to name a few.

Another must-have book is Karen MacNeil's Wine Bible. First published in 2001, it is recommended reading at every wine education programme in the United States and at the Court of Master Sommeliers. Fourteen years after publication, it is still relevant to anyone interested in wine. Every time I read it, I find a new snippet of wisdom.

I was fortunate enough to meet MacNeil at a master class she conducted on California wines; we tasted three wines of each grape - chardonnay, pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel. Although I had tasted some of the varieties previously, her introductions - with detailed, interesting notes about their history and place of origin - gave us a real sense of the struggles Californian winemakers had gone through in the first half of the 20th century.

Between January 1920 and December 1933, Prohibition practically obliterated wine production in the US. Home winemaking, however, was allowed - citizens were permitted to make up to 200 gallons per year of "non-intoxicating cider and fruit juices", for which there was no legal definition.

Furthermore, wineries were allowed to ship grapes and grape concentrate that was compressed into brick form and came with the warning: "Do not place this brick in a one gallon crock, add sugar and water, cover, and let stand for seven days, or else an illegal alcoholic beverage will result."

Ernest and Julio Gallo, of E & J Gallo, started their winery right after Prohibition ended, during the Great Depression. But they had one problem - neither of them knew how to make wine. They also had no equipment and little money.