| The Vine Garden: A Life-Changing Summer in the Gardens, Vineyards, and Chateaux of the Heart of France | 
 enlarge | Author: Alex Dingwall-main
Publisher: Ebury Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $8.34
You Save: $5.61 (40%)
New (22) Used (11) from $2.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 772488
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0091897580
Dewey Decimal Number: 914.40484
EAN: 9780091897581
ASIN: 0091897580
Publication Date: August 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
What happens when the Provencal dream turns into mundane reality? British garden designer Alex Dingwall-Main settled in Provence in the 1990s, but after nearly ten years, the magic of creating gardens in this magnificent landscape had vanished. What was once charming about rural life suddenly seemed maddening. So he set off on a quest to rediscover the gardens, vineyards, and wines at the very heart of France—a quest that would decide whether he would stay or go. Join him in this lush, inspiring journey—wine glass in hand.
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| Customer Reviews:
For Wine Connoiseurs Only? April 13, 2008
Take my review with a grain of salt because I know very little about gardening and less about wine.
Mr. Dingwall-Main designed gardens for estates in England. Apparently, he found designing English gardens suffocating and decided to transplant his career and family to the Provence area of France. I believe his first book, THE LUBERON GARDENS, tells the story of that move.
This book begins about seven years later when his life, gardening, and marriage are getting stale and/or complicated. A close friend and neighbor encourages Mr. Dingwall-Main to explore the vinyards and the hopefully, accompanying gardens throughout France and a couple in South Africa. It is suggested that he acquire sample bottles of wine on his trips for he and his friend to sample together later. This book is about those travels.
Mr. Dingwall-Main's writing style is a little stiff and self-centered, with just enough feeling and humor coming through to hold my interest. There's a little too much wine and not enough gardens to suit me, but wine lovers would disagree. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if there had been a little more written about his dissolving marriage and the problems he was obviously having in getting his new bachelor pad ready for habitation. I felt no more for this man than I would feel for a robot. Perhaps, if I had read his earlier book I would have felt more sympathy for him. I would recommend that anyone interested in this book read the other one first.
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