“Do expensive wines taste better than cheap wines?”

According to the results of a rigorous study conducted by Robin Goldstein & Alexis Herschkowitsch, the authors of The Wine Trials 2010, the answer was a resounding – NO.  The majority of wine drinkers that participated in the Wine Trials’ blind tastings actually preferred the taste of wines costing between $6 and $15 over those costing $50 or more.  

Yep, sounds kind of funny and made up.  However, in a series of blind tastings conducted around the country, with more than 6,000 glasses of wine poured from brown bagged bottles, and three book pages full of willing and ready tasters up for the challenge – the cheap stuff came out on top!

Before the authors unveil there killer values, the first 58 pages of The Wine Trials 2010 is dedicated to providing readers with all the necessary “nuts and bolts” that went into the actual experiment.  Within these pages, it also explores the psychological side of why we all have the tendency to associate cost with a particular level of quality – The Placebo Effect, as it’s called.  In this particular scenario, “A more expensive wine must taste better than a cheaper one”.  Before turning the spotlight on the wines themselves, the authors also weigh in on the industry and the folks that write about it.  Without giving away any juicy details, you’ll see why at least one of these industry movers would have much rather gone unmentioned in this book.  Finally, the authors get on with the show and take you for a ride with the 150 value wines that they say beat out the pricier stuff.  To this point, my only real beef with The Wine Trials 2010 is that the authors fail to reveal the identity of all of the expensive wines that bit the dust against their Top 150 values. The only high dollar wines that are mentioned in the book are Dom Pérignon, Beringer, Cakebread, Veuve Clicquot and a Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru from Louis Latour.  Which leads me to assume that these wines were only mentioned because they were the most recognizable high-end wine names?

Overall, I found The Wine Trials 2010 to be a great read!  It’s like getting two books for the price of one:  The Wine Trials Story and a guide with 150 wines under $15.  Several, if not many, of the value wines recommended in it are truly outstanding and certainly worth trying.  Pick up a copy, keep it in your car glove box and pull it out each time you go wine shopping.  At the very least, it’ll give you some very affordable picks that you might have otherwise passed on merely because of the price tag.  

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Are You A “Vayniac” Yet?

Gary V., as he is affectionately called, is currently the undisputed champion in the wine blogosphere arena and shows no signs of slowing down.  Legions of wine lovers flock to his site daily to watch him unleash the “thunder” as he calls it.  Viewers are attracted to his entertaining, unique and often times outrageous comments that are a far cry from the old and stuffy traditional wine chatterboxes.  His approach to wine is simple:  He takes out the “foo-foo” Masterpiece Theatre bullshit explanations and uses words that the “Average Wine Joe” can understand.  In other words, he’s fresh, engaging and makes drinking wine fun, exciting, and social – the way it was meant to be.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines, follows the same perfect recipe as his Wine Library TV podcast.  He offers readers 101 wine recommendations in a down–to-earth, funny, and easy to understand level.  Through all his years in the wine business, he’s never lost sight of the fact that wine is supposed to be fun and adventurous.

Still, 101 Wines does have a few questionable deterrents, such as the book feeling sort of like a Gary V. sales brochure.   Mr. Vaynerchuk can do more in this case than just tantalize your palate with these wonderful wines that he highlights in his book – he can also conveniently sell them to you on his website because he’s also a licensed wine merchant.  Another thing that bothered me about this book was the fact that so many of these terrific sounding wines are not going to be available in most places because a high percentage of his recommendations produced so few cases.  I mean, they sound very enticing, but how can this book be used as a wine buying guide for everyone, when everyone is just not going to have any luck finding them in their neck of the woods?

All in all, 101 Wines: Guaranteed To Inspire, Delight, And Bring Thunder To Your World, certainly achieves what the title intended in my opinion, with the exception of offering more selections that the general public can actually get their hands on at a price level that most people can swallow.

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Let me start off by saying that I’m a big fan of Ms. Robinson’s work.  I personally think that she has a great wine tasting palate and an incredible knack of explaining wine basics in a non-pretentious manner that is easy to understand.  In my opinion her book, “Great Wine Made Simple: Straight Talk from a Master Sommelier” is a masterpiece.

However, in her annual “Wine Buying Guide for Everyone” pocket book, Ms. Robinson tends to be on her best behavior and watches all of her P’s and Q’s when commenting about each particular wine that she rates.  I only wish that I could be as polite as Ms. Robinson when trying to describe a really bad tasting wine!

What makes this annual buying guide great is that it focuses only on commonly found wines, unlike other wine buying publications that showcase so many obscure or hard to find wines that people like you and me will never have the opportunity to taste.

Ms. Robinson’s “Wine Buying Guide for Everyone” is a perfect title for this annual paperback book.  It’s a very user-friendly wine guide to wines that are found on almost every wine retailer’s shelves.  This pocket-sized guide lists and rates over 400 accessible wines commonly found on wine lists and at retail stores throughout the United States.  This paperback is packed with quick-reference tools including different “Best Of” lists and her personal “Top Picks” to name just a couple.  Ms. Robinson also does a fine job of assembling a wine and food pairing suggestions section as well.

Ultimately, what makes this guide, and much of Ms. Robinson’s work, so darn good is that she is in tune with what ordinary consumers want to know about wine.  She spends most of her time telling you what a particular wine tastes like rather than putting you to sleep with the stuff that the Average Joe could care less about.

The “Wine Buying Guide for Everyone” pocket book is a great practical, everyday wine tool that focuses on wines that you can actually find 9 times out of 10 just about anywhere in the United States.  My only beef with it is that Ms. Robinson tries way too hard to be a nice girl and exercises extreme caution not to say that a particular wine tastes so bad that she would be embarrassed to serve it to her dog.  An injection of some real grit and rawness would really make this annual buying guide exceptional!

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I picked up this tasty looking morsel at my local public library.  The only thing that I forgot to do before checking it out was to skim through it.  Because even though Cheese: Selecting, Tasting, and Serving the World’s Finest was translated in English, it’s 100% French. 

I was drawn to this book for two primary reasons.  The first is pretty obvious – I like cheese.  The second, was the delicious looking cover of some brie-type cheeses and a loaf of crunchy rye bread, just begging to be eaten.  As I was contemplating stopping at the store and trying to mimic what was being displayed on this book’s cover, I should have been busy flipping through it.  When I got home and started flipping through the pages, I immediately noticed that this book was a guide to primarily French cheeses…more specifically, all of the wonderful cheeses that are made in or around Burgundy, France.  There is, however, some brief mention given to cheeses made outside of France, but it’s really only meant to demonstrate the vast production differences between France and the other cheese producing countries in Europe.  France is by far the number one cheese producer in the world.  If you’re looking for any honorable mention to be given to Velveeta or any US-grade cheeses, you’re not going to find it here.  Mr. Jaubert is a French journalist who works for a variety of different French cooking magazines, and this book is meant more as a European course in fine cheeses.

Nonetheless, I did find this book fascinating.  Before picking it up, I had no clue that so many different cheeses were being made in Burgundy.  It also introduced me to a lot of cheeses that I had personally never heard of.   Cheese: Selecting, Tasting, and Serving the World’s Finest does showcase over 365 varieties of European made cheeses, along with suggestions and tips on how to pair them with different wines and serving them to guests.  But, if you live in the United States like me, you’ll probably never have an opportunity to taste most of these different cheeses unless you’re planning a trip to France, or another destination in Europe.  I did, however, learn two tidbits and one new word. 

Tidbit 1: There are three kinds of milk;

Tidbit 2: There are eight major cheese families;

My new vocabulary word, Fromage:  “Cheese-man”, to you and I.

And that, my cheese-head friends, was pretty cool and interesting, even though most of this book just went over my head.    

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Do you want to know when California became a force to be reckoned with in the wine world? 

The book Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine is the true story of the now legendary Paris Tasting of 1976, where a panel of nine top French wine experts in a blind tasting shocked the wine industry by choosing what was then unknown California wines over some of the best that France had to offer.  This monumental moment in wine history was the catalyst that sparked the coming of age for California as a global powerhouse but it also opened up the door for serious winemaking ventures in places such as Argentina, Australia, Chile, South Africa and New Zealand.  This small victory for California winemakers proved to the world that great wine could be produced outside of France’s borders with hard work, dedication, and a love of wine.

Judgment of Paris is a brilliantly written book that recounts the details of the historical 1976 blind tasting that took place at the InterContinental Hotel in Paris, France.  The author, Mr. George Taber, certainly knows this topic very well since he was actually there to witness it.  At the time of the wine tasting, Mr. Taber was a journalist for Time Magazine and the only writer to actually witness and cover this stunning upset that made history.

If you enjoy drinking California wines or ever wondered how California went from being recognized as a cheap jug winemaker to a respected American pioneer of world-class wines, I would recommend that you read this book.

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