ABOUT
THE BOOK

An irresistible story of love, wine and angels – the tale of man, his vineyard and angelic husbandry in nineteenth-century France. Burgundy, 1808. One night Sobran Jodeau, a young vintner, meets an angel in his vineyard: a physically gorgeous creature with huge wings that smell of snow, a sense of humour and an inquiring mind. Every year on the midsummer anniversary of the date, they meet again. Village life goes on, meanwhile, with its affairs and mysteries, marriages and murders, and the vintners keep improving – through the horror of the Napoleonic wars, and into the middle of the century, as science marches on, viticulture changes, and gliders fly like angels. This delectably unconventional novel, rooted in earthy reality and grippingly written, engages grand and glorious themes on an intimate, human scale.