From IDW comes Thomas F. Zahler’s Time and Vine, in trade. It’s a time-traveling romantic historical story, set in wine country.
Zahler handles the story and art in this title, with colors by Luigi Anderson. And what an epic story; we meet Megan Howe at a winery, where she is partying with a group of colleagues. Well, THEY are partying, she is just drinking. Enter Jack Cadell, the owner. Despite their obvious age difference, they hit off, two friendly people amidst the party.
It turns out the Jack has magic wine in his cellar! Who knew?? When you drink it, you travel back in time to the year that the wine was corked. In some cases, that means hundreds of years.
The story gets more complicated once we understand the situation of Megan and Jack; both are having family issues. They hope that traveling back in time will allow them to sort things out. But there are only so many bottles of certain year vintages remaining, so things are getting tense.
There’s a pleasant blend (blend, lol) of family drama and historical anecdotes on wine production in this story to keep it interesting to the average reader (like me). It sometimes dwells too much on the historical side of various years, at the expense of genuine suspense and drama. I hope that the ‘Hallmark Channel’ tone of the story doesn’t limit the interest in it, though, because the characters are well written, and they have definitely embarked on heart-tugging missions.
In addition to the story, the trade includes some behind the scenes information on how and why Zahler wrote this book; descriptions of a few notable wineries he visited, some concept art, and label art from bottles of (fictional) Aeternum Winery.
IDW Time and Vine trade, $24.99 for 188 pages of content, not rated.
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