Wine Books - Page 2

Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book 2009: 32nd Edition (Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book)

Hugh Johnson

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: MITCH Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $10.17

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Buying Guides
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Wine & Winemaking

Editorial Review:

Hugh Johnson is the world’s pre-eminent writer on wine; he’s won legions of fans with his keen ability to make this sometimes complex topic wonderfully lucid. Every year his popular pocket guide is a global bestseller, reaching number one in the market. For 2009, this classic gets a complete revision. Maintaining the same authoritative tone and clarity of presentation that have always characterized his work, Johnson now includes a special 16-page, full-color article on food and wine as well as new introductions and feature boxes for every country. In addition, the guide boasts up-to-date news on more than 6,000 wines, growers, and regions from world experts, with invaluable vintage information, and special indications of which wines Johnson has especially enjoyed over the past 12 months. Plus, this is a great key reference for wine-investors and collectors, with four levels of vintage information detailing which wines to drink now and which to cellar. It’s the perfect companion and format for the travelling wine enthusiast.
Hugh Johnson and his galaxy of expert contributors have refreshed the text more than ever to ensure that this book remains the definitive annual guide to wine.

Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: 2008 Edition (Windows on the World Complete Wine Course)

Kevin Zraly

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Sterling Amazon Marketplace: 44 new & used starting at $10.72

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Reference
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Buying Guides

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Windows on the World Complete Wine Course is simply the bestselling wine book in North America—it’s a classic. The 2007 edition alone has sold over 100,000 copies and reorders continue to pour in. Along with the expanded text that has made last year’s update so successful, the 2008 revision will include a special 16-page supplement on “How to Taste Wine,” taken directly from Kevin’s world-famous class. This new material will include more than 100 wines that Zraly selects for his students to taste, along with the tasting sheet they use for their evaluations. Organized by region, from simple to complex, his list begins with white wines from France, the U.S., and Germany; moves on to the red wines of Burgundy and the Rhône, Bordeaux, the U.S., Italy, Australia, Argentina, and Chile; and concludes with champagnes and ports. By following Kevin’s order, readers will experience the best wines and the wide diversity of taste, style, region, and country. It’s not only a comprehensive and bargain-priced hands-on wine education, but a superb catalog from which to start a wine cellar or find a bottle appropriate to any occasion. In addition, the label for each of the 101 wines is shown, along with commentary on how to read it, suggestions for alternative wines, and specific instructions on how to set up a tasting using Kevin’s techniques. This is the first time Kevin’s actual list has ever been offered in book form and it alone is worth the cover price of Windows on the World Complete Wine Course.
Of course, as always, this unequaled volume retains all the invaluable information, fabulous illustrations, and gorgeous styling of the previous editions—all presented in Zraly’s inimitable, irreverent style. This is the wine guide against which all others are judged.

The Way to Make Wine: How to Craft Superb Table Wines at Home

Sheridan Warrick

Amazon Price: $14.93 List Price: $21.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of California Press Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $13.90

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Wine & Winemaking
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Written by a vintner and science editor with twenty-five years experience, The Way to Make Wine is the most readable and reliable handbook among the many winemaking guides. In engaging conversational prose, Sheridan Warrick shows that making your own wine is not only easy, but also fun. Geared to everyday wine lovers who want to drink well, save money, and impress their friends, this book reveals everything needed to make delicious wines--both reds and whites--from start to finish.
Warrick demystifies winemaking by explaining the nuts and bolts and demonstrating that if readers can replace a faucet washer or cook a pasta sauce, they can make food-friendly wines that cost less than the bottles they're now opening. He enables amateur vintners to equip a home winery, procure top-quality grapes, run a flawless fermentation, and enjoy their wine--its nose, its body, and finish--with renewed awareness and appreciation. At the same time, the author points experienced home vintners to new skills, describing top wineries' techniques. Rich with insiders' know-how, this book also divulges the many advances that have been made in the past few decades and makes clear that, with enologists' innovations, home winemaking is easier than ever. With straightforward illustrations of key steps, this book offers one-stop shopping for anyone who's ever dreamed of making table wines at home.
* two step-by-step sections: one for beginners, one for experienced home vintners
* sidebars offer quick tips and key elements of winemaking lore
* includes the only clear and comprehensive guide to minimizing the use of sulfites in wine
* section on suppliers and labs provides a wealth of information on sources of fine wine grapes

Wine For Dummies (For Dummies (Cooking))

Ed McCarthy, Mary Ewing-Mulligan

Amazon Price: $14.95 List Price: $21.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: For Dummies Amazon Marketplace: 61 new & used starting at $9.39

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Buying Guides
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Wine & Winemaking

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 62 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Wine for Dummies, Mary Ewing-Mulligan teams up with hubby and fellow wine educator Ed McCarthy to guide us on an exhaustive, entertaining trip around the enological--that's right, enological--world. Though clearly experts themselves (Ewing-Mulligan is one of a handful of Americans holding the rare title Master of Wine), the authors assure us that even the most basic knowledge will undermine the very notion of wine pretension. It's as simple as this: "This wine is named for a grape variety. This wine is named for a geographical region. When they make this kind of wine, it goes into this kind of bottle." And so on.

By providing the context in which to begin exploring wine, Wine for Dummies can easily become the send-off for a lifelong education. McCarthy and Mulligan deflate many of the wine snob's attitudes; they assure us that most wine sold today is "good wine," and that any further distinctions made about wine are ultimately subjective. The practical, jovial mentoring the authors provide encourages readers to chart their own course toward drinking great wine (although the authors naturally recommend dozens of their own favorites along the way). In later chapters, McCarthy and Mulligan delve into more serious topics such as investing in and cellaring wine. Even these discussions seem appropriate, given that you'll probably find the allure of wine growing as its mystery subsides to the force of this superb introductory text. --Todd Gehman

The Oxford Companion to Wine, 3rd Edition

Amazon Price: $40.95 List Price: $65.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Oxford University Press, USA Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $33.61

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Reference
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Wine & Winemaking

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 51 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

With more than 3,000 entries on every aspect of wine from vine pests to specific grapes, this hefty tome has something for both the seasoned connoisseur and novice alike. Edited by one of today's premier wine columnists, the work covers all aspects of wine, travelling back in time to early Greece to examine wine's role in Dionysian revels, then returning to today's wine centers to explore all aspects of wine appreciation. A full third of the book is dedicated to specific wines and wine-producing regions. All those technical terms you've heard and puzzled over at tastings are clearly explained, making this the perfect reference for newcomers to the world of oenology.

For the true connoisseur, The Oxford Companion offers detailed information on the history of the vintner's art, as well as a plethora of details on everything from climate effects on vine disease to the function of the second malolactic fermentation. If you buy only one wine book, this should be it.

The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty

Julia Flynn Siler

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Gotham Amazon Marketplace: 58 new & used starting at $4.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Professionals & Academics -> Business
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Biography & History -> Company Profiles

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 60 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Real "Falcon Crest" 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

THis is a great book about the early fine wine industry in California. The TV show "Falcon Crest" pales when compared to the real life story of the Mondavis. This book was a best-seller for a reason. Read it an enjoy.

Family dynamics for all to see 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

An interesting in-depth review of a famous family, from success to downfall. This book navigates the ascendacy of this dynasty to the top of the California wine industry, hindered by the breakdown of personal relations and the final fiasco of the business. Sad, but fascinating.

Editorial Review:

The New York Times bestseller, now in paperback: a scandal-plagued story of the immigrant family that built—and then lost—a global wine empire Set in California’s lush Napa Valley and spanning four generations of a talented and visionary family, The House of Mondavi is a tale of genius, sibling rivalry, and betrayal. From 1906, when Italian immigrant Cesare Mondavi passed through Ellis Island, to the Robert Mondavi Corp.’s twenty-first-century battle over a billion-dollar fortune, award-winning journalist Julia Flynn Siler brings to life both the place and the people in this riveting family drama. A meticulously reported narrative based on more than five hundred hours of interviews, The House of Mondavi is a modern classic.

The Wine Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Oenological Knowledge

David Kamp, David Lynch

Amazon Price: $10.36 List Price: $12.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Broadway Amazon Marketplace: 14 new & used starting at $7.84

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Buying Guides
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General

Editorial Review:

A nicely structured, lightly acidic addition to the handy Snob’s Dictionary series, decoding the baffling world of winespeak from A to Z.

Wine Snob. The very phrase seems redundant, doesn't it? When faced with this snobbiest of snobberies, the civilian wine enthusiast needs the help of savvy translators like David Kamp and David Lynch. Their Wine Snob’s Dictionary delivers witty explication of both old-school oeno-obsessions (What's claret? Who's Michael Broadbent?) and such new-wave terms as "malolactic fermentation" and "fruit bomb." Among the other things Kamp and Lynch demystify:

Finish: the Snob code-term for "aftertaste." (Robert Parker includes the stopwatch-measured length of a wine's finish in his ratings.)

Meritage: an American wine classification that rhymes with "heritage," and should NEVER be pronounced "meri-TAHJ."

Terroir: that elusive quality of vineyard soil that has sommeliers talking of "gunflint," "leather," and "candied fruits"

Featuring ripe, luscious, full-bodied illustrations by Snob's Dictionary stalwart Ross MacDonald, The Wine Snob’s Dictionary is as heady and sparkling as a vintage Taittinger, only much less expensive... and much more giggle-inducing. Cheers!

Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: 2009 Edition (Windows on the World Complete Wine Course)

Kevin Zraly

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Sterling Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $15.97

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Wine & Winemaking
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General

Editorial Review:

Windows on the World Complete Wine Course is simply the bestselling wine book in North America—it’s a classic. In addition to retaining the expanded 60-page section on “101 Wines You Should Know,” from last year, the 2009 revision will include 16 pages of quizzes (two at the end of every chapter) to test readers on how much they’ve learned—just as if they were in Kevin’s class. Those who use the book as an actual course will find this enormously helpful, and a great challenge for testing their knowledge of wine fundamentals. Of course, all wine lists and labels, vintage charts, and trend reports will receive a complete update, too.
As always, Zraly organizes his wines by region, from simple to complex, beginning with white wines from France, the U.S., and Germany; he moves on to the red wines of Burgundy and the Rhône, Bordeaux, the U.S., Italy, Australia, Argentina, and Chile; and concludes with champagnes and ports. By following Kevin’s order, readers will experience the best wines and the wide diversity of taste, style, region, and country. It’s not only a comprehensive and bargain-priced hands-on wine education, but a superb catalog from which to start a wine cellar or find a bottle appropriate for any occasion at any price.
This unequaled volume retains all the invaluable information, fabulous illustration, and gorgeous styling of the previous editions—presented in Zraly’s inimitable, irreverent style. It’s clearly the wine guide against which all others are judged.

Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine

George M. Taber

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Scribner Amazon Marketplace: 37 new & used starting at $3.74

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Wine & Winemaking
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Gastronomy -> History

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

"I Was There" Book About The Wine World's Tasting Heard 'Round the World 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

After far too many ghastly vintages from 1963 - 1974, and with the quality of backward French winemaking going unchallenged, the victory of New World California wines over their prestigious French counterparts in 1976 was, in hindsight, no surprise. Yet it was as great a shock to the French wine world as the collapse of the Maginot Line was to the French military establishment in May 1940. Unlike Andre Maginot, who never lived to see the tragic consequences of his and France's folly, French wine's top champions faced choosing between unbearable humiliation or dismissing the results as an aberration.

"Time" journalist George Taber, who had the wine scoop of the century and to his credit knew what to do with it, here returns to his moment in the sun, developing the storyline into a full book. He chronicles the persons who were at the tasting and who were most impacted by the results. Taber reveals their ongoing struggle absorbing the unthinkable, whether for the winning Californians, who at the time made up the new wave within their own industry and were given a grand opportunity; or in the case in France, where no such young wine Turks had credibility, and the fall out from the tasting was an unacknowledged PR nightmare. Unable to accept the cultural implications, many French refused to countenance the results - indeed at the actual tasting one desperate taster tried rewriting votes! To this day there exist Europeans who adamantly look down their - often Gallic - noses at wine from outside Europe. Yet increasingly, along with the tired fruit of those aging Bordeaux wines, such chauvinism more and more fades from respectable wine debate. Winemaking has moved a long way from the crude days of Napoleonic Minister of the Interior Chaptal's policy of using the French sugar beet crop for 'improving' the country's wines.

This book's major focus is humans, not the wines; Taber discusses the repercussions of the tasting far more than the actual event, though the curious secondary stories leading up to the tasting receive the sort of attention usually saved for more serious historical moments. The larger themes - of not resting on your laurels, and the facades that can be the reality of institutional image - emerge with an inexorable - and some might say, overdue - inevitability.

Perhaps it was fated these two birthplaces of democracy, France and America, should be the players in this most democratic-driven event: a blind tasting. (Lady Justice - by contrast - keeps one eye open just to avoid such unacceptabe results, and since the tasting any number of European wine advocates have sympathized and even embraced such a fallback.) Not surprising, too, that the more capitalist country and can-do Americans should triumph over the less egalitarian 'old world' of the more rigid and stratified hierachical universe of French wine estates, with their aristocratic trappings.

Complacency and arrogance are poor resources to contest with - and the French wine world got their ears boxed for just such attitudes. Instead of pulling out all the stops and setting bottles of '59 Lafite or perhaps a '61 Latour-a-Pomerol against the California cabs, or demanding the tasting include pinot noir, which conveniently was omitted because California didn't produce quality pinot noir, the French were snookered into permitting others a say in 'setting the table'. Prejudice and ignorance, kissing cousins of the small-minded and snobbish, got their comeuppance, and the French were hoisted by their own petard. Which in plain language means they foolishly set off the equivalent of a wooden wine crate bursting with gunpowder under their own carefully inscribed world of carefully controlled classes and prices. Generally unfamiliar with blind tasting's pecularities, where fruit and alcohol can trump more subtle qualities, the French tasters naively presumed an expertise they did not possess in comparing varietal wines from differing regions. They were blindsided. Almost none of the tasters had any idea which was domestic wine and which California wine. (Oddly enough, when the tasting was retried ten years later in America, the American tasters could not separate the wines by country.)

Recently the tasting was redone. Once again the French showed they haven't learned very much. French chardonnays, which from great vintages and the best sites can age and develop, were dropped. Once again pinot noir was absent. Chateau Haut-Brion refused to participate, but could not stop the tasting from buying examples of its wine in the marketplace. (Those evil entrepeneurs!) The original losing Bordeaux were trotted out again on the ignorant myth, long disproved by modern enology, that somehow wines with no great fruit when young would suddenly find some after twenty years of aging! The better made and fruitier California wines swept to total victory, sweeping the top placements. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

History was at work here. Yet this sort of challenge was not new for the California winemakers; for many decades avant-garde California wine makers, ambitious to compete with the very best, had been holding such tastings at home, measuring their Chardonnays against Puligny-Montrachets, Chassagne-Montrachets and Meursaults; while judging their best Cabernets against Pauillacs, St.Juliens, and Margaux. In the early seventies the influential English wine writer Harry Waugh, with an impeccable understanding of European wine, published a series of highly impressed tasting notes on these new esoteric California wines he had tasted in travels to California. A small handful of California's newest enologists were experimenting with a variety of new processes, especially in maintaining a wine's fruit. Now obscured, but then still potent icons for young winemakers, were extraordinary wines made by a few legendary wine-makers, such as Andre Tchelistcheff and the extraordinary Martin Ray. (You can read about Ray's colorful career in: Vineyards in the Sky: The Life of Legendary Vintner Martin Ray Those of us who tasted the best wines made by Tcheslistcheff and Ray were perfectly aware of just how good the best California wines could be.

Thus the potential for great wine in California was largely proven long before the '76 tasting - what needed to change was a scaling up so that more great wine could be produced, and this in fact was already well under way. By the the time the French were sitting around dishing the Paris Tasting results California was already bottling the watershed Cabernet vintage of 1974.

Talent's book makes stimulating reading for more than just wine snobs - what's in play here are larger issues, common throughout all levels of society.

Editorial Review:

The Paris Tasting of 1976 will forever be remembered as the landmark event that transformed the wine industry. At this legendary contest -- a blind tasting -- a panel of top French wine experts shocked the industry by choosing unknown California wines over France's best.

George M. Taber, the only reporter present, recounts this seminal contest and its far-reaching effects, focusing on three gifted unknowns behind the winning wines: a college lecturer, a real estate lawyer, and a Yugoslavian immigrant. With unique access to the main players and a contagious passion for his subject, Taber renders this historic event and its tremendous aftershocks -- repositioning the industry and sparking a golden age for viticulture across the globe. With an eclectic cast of characters and magnificent settings, Judgment of Paris is an illuminating tale and a story of the entrepreneurial spirit of the new world conquering the old.

The Wines of Burgundy: Revised Edition

Clive Coates M.W.

Amazon Price: $37.80 List Price: $60.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of California Press Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $37.78

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Spirits
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Wine -> Wine & Winemaking
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

This is the best.... 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is the very best book on wines from this reagon that I have ever read.

If you are interested on wines from Burgundy - just get it. It is well worth the money.

A good example is that there is a very detailed section on wines from Chablis. Chablis is perhaps a small part of Burgundy and yet this book treats these wines in great detail... if it does this good a job on Chablis then imagine what a job is does on Cote d'or for example.

Editorial Review:

Ten years after the publication of the highly acclaimed, award-winning Côte D'Or: A Celebration of the Great Wines of Burgundy, the "Bible of Burgundy," Clive Coates now offers this thoroughly revised and updated sequel. This long-awaited work details all the major vintages from 2006 back to 1959 and includes thousands of recent tasting notes of the top wines. All-new chapters on Chablis and Côte Chalonnaise replace the previous volume's domaine profiles. Coates, a Master of Wine who has spent much of the last thirty years in Burgundy, considers it to be the most exciting, complex, and intractable wine region in the world, and the one most likely to yield fine wines of elegance and finesse. This book is an indispensable guide for amateur and professional alike by one of the world's leading wine experts, writing with his habitual expertise, lucidity, and unequaled firsthand knowledge.