A commitment to the terroir: On June 30, University of California Press released Wines & Wineries of California’s Central Coast by William A. Ausmus (I ordered mine today) and the Los Angeles Times’ Corie Brown uses the occasion to offer an interesting look at the University of California Press’ move into wine books — they’ve published 23 in the last five years.

UC Press is gearing up its wine division just as commercial publishers are dropping back from the category, worried that competition for space on bookstore shelves is too intense.

The ebb and flow of the market is irrelevant to Blake Edgar, the UC Press acquisitions editor tapped five years ago to revive the wine category. The press has a mandate to publish books relevant to California and the western United States, and releasing new wine-related books is central to its mission. Regardless of the commercial potential, there are wine regions that have yet to be authoritatively documented and aspects of winemaking that demand fresh analysis because of new science.

Read more at the LAT.

A California history: In Desperate Passage, Ethan Rarick revisits the Donner Party, revealing new material and applying new science to the now legendary survival story. Reading it, Party of One author Dan Weintraub is transported from a “hot and smoky Independence Day weekend” to the frigid winter scene — to find the new definitive source on the “perilous journey West.” Read Weintraub’s review at the Modesto Bee.

Where have all the flowers gone? UC Riverside professor Robert Minnich tells us that, in the 1700s, Spanish explorers found California carpeted in flowers, and in his new book California’s Fading Wildflowers, he tells us how the Golden State lost its bloom over the last three centuries. Read more about it at the Press-Enterprise.