Many of the characters in these stories are sympathetic victims, and Dinkelspiel ties their travails to the events of their days with measured objectivity, avoiding melodrama or hyperbole, letting the stark relief of tragedy and misfortune provide the weight and attention they deserve. Nearly all the profiles she paints are limned with precision and pathos. It is also an unsentimental examination of the corruption, ambition, and violence that have plagued the state’s wine industry since its infancy. It is a tantalizing mix of California historical scholarship, true crime storytelling, and a personal quest to follow and understand the wines made by her ancestor Hellman, 175 bottles of which were destroyed by Anderson’s history-making arson. Subtitled “Greed, Murder, Obsession and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California,” Tangled Vines juggles effortlessly the birth of the state’s wine industry in and around Los Angeles in the 1840s, the role played in the 1870s by her great-great-grandfather, Isaias Hellman at Rancho Cucamonga, and, finally, the destruction of the massive Wines Central warehouse on Mare Island in 2005 by Sausalito businessman Mark Anderson. While the stories she tells are engrossing on their own, it is her steady journalistic tone, backed by prodigious and painstaking research, that gives this book its power and allure. Dinkelspiel has woven skillfully three distinct yet inextricable narratives into a book that will inform and fascinate readers for years to come.
Tangled Vines is that uncommon page-turner.
It is the rare volume that swallows its readers whole. Wine books, generally, are not known to be riveting reads. And do this early in the day because, once you pick up Tangled Vines, Frances Dinkelspiel’s stunning new look at the dark side of California wine, you won’t want to get up until you’ve devoured the entire book.
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