Brunswick, Maine ? After spending two years in the vineyards and wine barns of southwestern France, author Michael S. Sanders believes that Americans could learn a thing or two from the European approach to wine.

No wine snob – he rarely brings home a bottle that costs more than $15 – Sanders believes that wine should be one of life’s simple pleasures, a complement to food rather than a trendy and costly libation awash in complexity and pretense.

“There is this big wall that seems to have gone up here, and we treat wine as being something for the elite. It has all this baggage with it that unfortunately makes people afraid to drink it,” Sanders said.

In Europe, by contrast, wine is simply a beverage to be consumed with lunch or dinner, the author said, and much of it is sold in refillable plastic containers instead of bottles.

Perhaps, he said, if people knew more about the winemaking process and the passion of those involved in it, then the mystery and pomposity would disappear.

“What we’ve lost is that connection of the wine to the earth and to the people who make it. We don’t know anything about how wine is made,” Sanders said. “There’s such care and passion that goes into every aspect of it.”

Author Michael Sanders stands by a few of his favorite wines at Tess Market in Brunswick, Maine. Sanders latest book, Families

That time-honored process is the focus of Sanders’ latest book, “Families of the Vine,” which chronicles the seasonal cycles of three families with vineyards no more than 10 miles apart who have turned grapes into wine for at least four generations.

The setting is Cahors, a secondary winemaking region whose product is overshadowed by the exalted vintages from the chateaux of Bordeaux, a mere two-hour drive away. Winemaking in Cahors, one of France’s oldest winemaking regions, dates back 2000 years to Roman times.

Its signature wine is tannic and ruby red, in some cases so dark that it became known as “the black wine of Cahors.” The region, which finally secured its designation as an appellation controlee in 1971, is the only appellation in which the malbec grape is dominant.

Among the cast of characters are Yves and Martine Jouffreau, a tradition-bound couple wedded to the venerable methods of their predecessors. They eschew the presence of oaky flavor and produce a thicker, more rustic wine that benefits from lengthy aging in the bottle.

Author Michael Sanders' new book, Families

Philippe Bernede, a winemaker prone to experimentation to produce a softer wine more attuned to the demands of the international market, takes a different tack.

The third producer, Jean-Luc Baldes, steers a middle course, even as he pursues his desire to make “un grand vin,” a “great wine” that can over time hold its own with the celebrated Bordeaux and Burgundies.

Shifting among the three vineyards, Sanders follows his subjects through the ups and downs of the winemaking year. In 2003, when his account begins, the hopes of spring gradually fall victim to a summer drought and heat wave that spelled disaster for the grape crop.

The book goes back in time to describe the hectic harvest of 2002, followed by the fermentation and maceration of the grapes to produce the wine that is then left to age in oak barrels or stainless steel tanks. The cycle ends with the quiet period of winter when the vines’ dormancy provides a pause that is essential to produce good fruit the next fall.

A barrel maker in Bordeaux and the sommelier in an acclaimed restaurant in Cahors contribute their voices to paint a broader picture of the industry.

Sanders brings to his examination of wine the same powers of observation that he used to painstakingly re-create the construction of a Navy destroyer in a book about Bath Iron Works and to describe the revival of a tiny French village after the opening of its chef-owned restaurant.

“Families of the Vine” is the second volume in Sanders’ trilogy about the texture of life in the villages along the Lot, a declining agricultural region defined by its river which feeds into the Garrone.