Customer Reviews
This Book Deserves SIX Stars!!! - By: Imperial Topaz, 03 Jan 2006 
The best thing about this book is that it is written by two real wine experts, who remember well what it was like to be a "wine newbie."
Ed is a former teacher who became interested, in wine, & met Mary at an Italian wine tastingin New York City. Two years later, they married, & formally merged their wine cellars & wine libraries. Ed has co-authored six wine books, & is the sole author of Champagne for Dummies. He also writes for Wine Enthusiast Magazine & Decanter.
Mary entered the retail wine business right out of college, when she accepted a position with the Italian Trade Commission. Today she runs a wine school basedin New York City called International Wine Center, which mainly trains wine professionals. She is also a wine columnist for the NY Daily News. Mary is the first female Master of Wine (MW)in the United States, & one of only 19 MW'sin the country (with 240 worldwide).
Both Ed & Mary are Certified Wine Educators (CWE). Ed & Mary write wine columnsin Nation's Restaurant News, &in Beverage Media.
Having had many years of experience drinking wine (but without really knowing what I was doing), & having taken a wine course over the internet two times, I felt ready to investin a couple of wine books. Everyone one on the American Amazon site absolutely raved about this book. When I received the book, I found all the raving to be completely UNDERstated!
The book is divided into six sections, & is extremely clear, & user-friendly. Section One deals with wine & wine-making, tasting & wine vocabulary, grape varieties, & pricing. Section Two deals with navigating wine shops & restaurant lists, all about serving & using wine (with some surprisingly helpful tips I'd never heard of), & judging wine labels.
Section Three explains & has separate chapters each of France, Italy, & Elsewherein Europe. Another chapters discusses wine of Australia, New Zealand, Chile, & South Africa. there is a another large chapter on American Wines, covering California well,in addition to covering Oregon Washington, New York State, as well as a brief mention of both Ontario & British Columbia. A final chapterin Part Three deals with fortified wines--their history, & varieties--Sherry, Marsala, Port, Madeira, & Sauternes.
Section Four discusses wine information sources--publications, classes, tastings, auctions, catalogs, & on-line ordering. Next is explained how to write tasting notes, how to marry wine with food, & how to decide what kind of wine person you are--serious, small, or non-collector, & suggested wine strategies good for each type of wine person to follow. Also covered is how to investin wine.
Section Five deals with most of the common wine questions, such as if wine is fattening, what vintage to buy, new & old oaks, who is a wine expert, if imported wines are better, if a wine has to be expensive to be good, & when to drink various wines. Part Six consists of various useful appendixes.
I learned SO much useful information from reading this book. If there were a higher rating than five stars, this book should have it. It is one of the best books I've readin the past couple of years.
I would also recommend another book to supplement this book, called The Wine Guy, by Andy Besch. It covers completely different aspects of wine purchasing, tasting, comparing, & finding out what YOU enjoy yourself.
Very useful - By: Daft Fi, 09 Jun 2004 
Accessible, easy to read, & well laid out. This will be very useful as a general reference, to those who want to get a bit of background about what they're buying, & to provide interesting facts about everything from the wine-making process to investingin wine to proper storage. There are good descriptions of wines & wine-makers world-wide. My only gripe would be that there wasn't more space devoted to matching particular wines to food.
excellent introduction to wine - By: , 06 Dec 1998 This is an excellent, well-written introduction to the world of wine.
an outstanding book on wine - By: , 24 Sep 1998 This is a concise, easy to read book on wine that is fairly thorough & extremely practical. It makes wine very accessible & enjoyable to all.
