Traveling the wine country at home

It would be wrong to call "Wineries of Wisconsin and Minnesota" a vanity project. But Patricia Monaghan did have a bit of an ulterior motive when she took on the project.

It seems that Monaghan and her husband, Michael McDermott, had decided to turn some of their 22 acres of "bad, rocky, hilly land" near Madison, Wis., into a vineyard. "So having started with putting all our money into trellises and grape vines, we thought 'what better to do than to visit these places and talk to these people.'"

So they traversed the two states, traveling 6,000 miles ("we had to get new tires along the way") to visit 55 wineries that are profiled in the book. On their travels, they found beautiful countryside, more than a little history and a lot better wine than she had anticipated, particularly of the non-grape variety.