BOOK: "Untrodden Grapes," by Ralph Steadman (Harcourt, $35)
TARGET AUDIENCE: People who like some gonzo with their grape.
Although he was the illustrator for Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," Steadman's rants seem mellow compared with his late collaborator's. But then, Steadman is ingesting mainly wine. His trips to wine-producing regions of Spain, France, South Africa and other countries are a series of vineyard explorations, ramblings with vintners about how things go wrong (wine is "possibly the most temperamental liquid in the world save for nitroglycerin") -- even a session of stomping grapes.
You don't buy this book for its writing, however, but for its illustrations: his Audubon-on-peyote birds, for example, or the blissful winemaker soaked to the elbows with Cabernet Sauvignon juice. Steadman is the master of the well-placed splat, the artistic smudge, the serendipitously incontinent ink pen.
-- Jerry V. Haines
