WineWise

August 4, 2014
The 2009 edition of WineWise earned both a James Beard Foundation Award and the Georges Duboeuf Award for Best Wine Book of the Year. Now its three authors, all longtime wine professors at the Culinary Institute of America, return with a revised and updated work that accessibly lays out the vast terrain of vino. Brevity is the soul of keeping a reader's attention, and a lot of ground is covered here by breaking out the material into hundreds of short entries grouped across 17 chapters. Chapter one provides a brief compendium of elements that enter into the enjoyment of wine and includes an insightful look at the reasons that a bottle that costs under $30 to produce can end up costing 20 times that amount. Then it is on to roundups of the major white grapes and the major red grapes, their flavor profiles and vineyard regions. Chapters span the globe, cataloguing wines from well established growing areas across the U.S., South America, Australia, South Africa, and Europe, as well as up-and-coming vineyards in Canada and Greece, with visual aids that include maps and scores of wine labels. Back-of-book gems include best practices for at-home wine tastings, a list of value wines, and full permission to enjoy wine from a box, with a proclamation that most are "sound, everyday-drinking wines, and some are quite good."

August 1, 2014

To the growing list of excellent guides for everyday consumers of wine, add this revised edition of an award-winning title produced through the Culinary Institute of America. The authors' (both professors at the Wine Inst. of America) goal is for the reader not simply to enjoy wine but to become a savvy consumer. The advice is sensible, addressing topics such as understanding appellations on wine labels, familiarization with key vintners, and indicators that a restaurant's wine program is on the customer's side. For example, the authors suggest seeking wines from lesser-known variants and geographic sources, and reinforce this with a focus on such wines throughout the book. Replete with illustrations of labels from notable wines, the work offers scenic glimpses of vineyards as well as maps detailing production regions. The writing, though detailed, conveys that the authors have a particular passion for value married with quality. Longtime oenophiles will enjoy this title, but readers with less familiarity will especially benefit from it. VERDICT This easy-to-read and immensely helpful volume is recommended for any library with readers interested in wine.--Peter Hepburn, Coll. of the Canyons Lib., Santa Clarita, CA

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