UC Davis Wine Library Exhibit Featured This Weekend at International Book Fair

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Illustrations of wine and literature on black background
The Wine, a miniature accordion illustrated and bound by Suzanne Thomas Weinert, 2008. Edition of 150. This is one of the many objects from the UC Davis Library on exhibit this weekend. (Courtesy/the UC Davis Library/Archives and Special Collections)

The UC Davis Library’s wine collection will play a starring role in the 54th California International Antiquarian Book Fair in Oakland, Friday through Sunday, Feb. 11-13, with a special exhibit on wine and viticulture presented by Archives and Special Collections. The exhibit will be the largest public showcase of items from the wine library to date, featuring an eight-case display of books, manuscripts, and ephemera, curated by Kevin Miller, head of Archives and Special Collections.

UC Davis community members can get free tickets (limited numbers) if they sign in to the website listed. (See sidebar) Students get in free with campus identification. The event is at the Oakland Convention Center & Oakland Marriott City Center, 1001 Broadway, Oakland.

Get Tickets

For tickets, go here. Students enter free with a current student ID. A limited number of free passes are available for other members of the UC Davis community.

Register with access code DavisCABookFair (first come, first served, while they last).

Attendees will have the opportunity to view items ranging from ampelographies (the identification and classification of grapevines), to wine labels, wine maps, and photographs and documents from the Wine Institute Records on the American Wine Industry. The exhibit will also include selected objects from UC Davis wine collections, such as the boots of famed viticulturist and the late UC Davis professor emeritus Harold Olmo and a bust of the “dean of California winemaking”, the late André Tchelistcheff

In addition to the special exhibit, Archives and Special Collections librarians will be presenting at the fair. Distinguished Wine and Food Science Bibliographer Axel Borg and Instruction and Outreach Librarian Christine Cheng will co-present on the origins of the UC Davis wine library, highlight items in the special exhibit and discuss the use of the collections in instruction. Warren Winiarski Fellow Jullianne Ballou will give a lecture on the library’s Wine Writers Collection (curated materials from recent wine writing acquisitions are currently on exhibit at Peter J. Shields Library). 

The California International Antiquarian Book Fair is recognized as one of the largest and most prestigious antiquarian book fairs in the world, and features the collections and rare treasures of booksellers from around the globe, including manuscripts, modern first editions, children’s books, ephemera, maps and photographs, and antiquarian books on myriad topics. 

Read Jullianne Ballou's original article here.

Below are some of the pieces featured at the exhibit.

Old book with antiquarian appearance and imaage
Above, The frontispiece of this volume of Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma’s treatise on chocolate, Chocolata inda: opusculum de qualitate & naturâ chocolatae, features a Native American representing the New World giving a gift of chocolate to Neptune, god of the sea, who represents the Old World. Ledesma’s work was first published in Madrid, in Spanish, under the title Curioso tratado de la naturaleza y calidad del chocolate (Curious Treatise on the Nature and Properties of Chocolate) in 1631. (Courtesy, UC Davis Library/Archives and Special Collections) 

Learn more. 

Vintage black-and-white photograph with woman and giant wine glass.
This image from the Wine Institute photography collection demonstrates the institute's international outreach as well as the Wine Queen phenomenon. (Courtesy, UC Davis Library/Archives and Special Collections). 

Learn more about the UC Davis Library’s Wine Institute Records on the American Wine Industry.

Media Resources

Media Contact:

  • Jessica Nusbaum, Shields Library, 530-752-4145, jlnusbaum@ucdavis.edu
  • Karen Nikos-Rose, UC Davis Media Relations, 530-219-5472, kmnikos@ucdavis.edu

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