Patrick Baude, Bloom Magazine‘s wine columnist for the first 5 years of the magazine, passed away in 2011. Patrick’s son William edited Patrick’s essays and compiled them into the book The Wit & Wisdom of Patrick Baude: Exploring the Good Life in Bloomington (American Palate, 2012). We have four copies of the book for the lucky winners of a random drawing. To enter the give-away, enter a comment below. Winners will be selected on Friday, March 15.

Here is our story from the February/March 2013 issue:

‘The Wit & Wisdom of Patrick Baude: Exploring the Good Life in Bloomington’

BY JEREMY SHERE

For nearly five years, from 2006 until his death in 2011, Indiana University law professor-turned-writer Patrick Baude graced the pages of this magazine with columns written in his elegant and accessible prose and well stocked with enlightened opinions about wine (and occasionally beer), leavened with equal parts humor and knowledge.

Now readers can revisit Baude’s writings in The Wit & Wisdom of Patrick Baude: Exploring the Good Life in Bloomington (American Palate, 2012), a collection of Baude’s essays compiled and edited by his son William.

“Reading through the essays and thinking about what sorts of photographs would best match the prose made me realize just how playful much of the writing is,” says William, 30, a fellow at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. “The columns are not just about wine but about living the good life.”

The collected essays, most of which first appeared in Bloom, showcase the breadth of Baude’s wide-ranging, wine-related interests, including the virtues of Austrian wines, the relative merits of wine vis-á-vis beer, reasons for starting a wine cellar, a guide to wine books, and “The Hermeneutics of Wine Criticism.” The book includes a foreword by Malcolm Abrams, Bloom editor and publisher, and tributes to Baude written by Bloom food editor (and IU political science professor) Christine Barbour and by Baude’s children.

For William, the book is a reminder of how much his father enjoyed writing about wine. “Dad was always very mindful of making sure everyone enjoyed what they were eating and drinking,” William recalls. “In his writing for Bloom, he liked to share that same passion for helping to satisfy people’s palates on a bigger scale.”

The book is also, for William, a personal memento. “It’s great to have a direct reminder and concrete example of what my dad did, so maybe one day my kids can read it and know what he was like. I’m glad to have done this for him; I think he would have been really touched to have the book out there.”