Wine
A Natural History of Wine
This book demonstrates the immensity and importance of the Smithsonian Libraries' natural history collections by using wine as a subject that highlights the intersectionality of the sciences.
The Theory and Practice of Brewing
The owner of a brewery and several public houses in Hampstead, then a suburb of London, author Michael Combrune wrote this book as an expanded version of an earlier work, incorporating his experiments on malts and fermentation, among other aspects of the brewing and wine-making trades. Scientifically minded, he pioneered the thermometer as a crucial diagnostic tool for these processes. The Libraries' copy was acquired in a major purchase of trade literature from the Franklin Institute in 1986.
The Grapes of New York
U. P. Hedrick was a horticulturist at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, New York in 1905 when he began writing the first of many monographs of fruit cultivars that could be grown in New York State. The Grapes of New York is the first of his many works. The Smithsonian Libraries' Botany and Horticulture Library holds all of his works in print. The works were classic references on the fruit cultivars of the period. These volumes are much sought after by pomologists and fruit enthusiasts for their detailed descriptions and beautiful artwork.
A Handbook of Cancels on United States Federal Wine Tax Stamps
Compiled by a Harvard Ph.D. and a retired Air Force Colonel (both avid stamp collectors), this handbook contains lists of cancels used on wine tax stamps. A cancel is short for cancellation. The French word for it is obliteration. It is a postal marking applied to a stamp or envelope to deface it to show it has already been used. Because cancels come in all shapes and sizes, they have created a frenzied following among philatelists. Cancellations can actually increase or decrease the value of a stamp collection.
"Series of 1941" Wine Revenue Stamps of the United States of America
Signed by the author, this thin 40-paged booklet is full of tables, charts, and black and white images depicting wine stamps. Stamp collecting is frequently referred to as "the king of hobbies and the hobby of kings." Men and women worldwide strive to achieve a complete set of stamps. There is a stamp for every type of interest. This book is about wine revenue stamps. Wine revenue stamps were used to pay tax duties on proprietary goods such as alchohol and tobacco. These revenues helped fund the war effort during WWII.
