Book reviews 2017 – New World

The Wines of Canada 
Rod Phillips 
Published by Infinite Ideas 
ISBN 9781908984982 
£30, $40, CA$52 

There are probably few people as well placed as Rod Phillips to write this book. Historian (specialising in the history of food and alcohol), wine writer and having lived in Canada for over 50 years, he’s got the inside and outside track of, and I quote, ‘a very big country with a very small wine industry’.

It may be small, but it’s not simple. It’s also relatively unknown to the outside world except for those lucky...