Posts Tagged ‘Book Review’

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!

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.    

Do you want to know when California became a force to be reckoned with in the wine world?  It was May 24, 1976.  The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History houses two bottles of California wine: A 1973 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon and a 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay.  These two wines are on display because they showed France and the rest of the world that California wines could be just as good – or in some cases better than France’s best Cabernet Sauvignons and Chardonnays.

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.

I picked up “The Essential Wine Book” at my local library partly because I enjoy the style and enthusiasm that Oz Clarke shares with his readers through his own personal wine experiences, but also because this was the first edition (1988) of “The Essential Wine Book”.  I was curious to see whether or not the information in this first edition was still relevant and to see how it compared to Mr. Clarke’s annual “Pocket Wine Guide” that began in 1997.  I use the “Pocket Wine Guide” as a reference guide each year.

In my opinion, even though this book is somewhat dated, a lot of the information is still relevant and the tips to enjoying wine are still viable.  Reading this book showed me just how many more places around the globe are producing wines for consumers since this book’s first release.  Oz Clarke’s “The Essential Wine Book” is a well written flagship that will spark your wine curiosity to take a look at his current work and his user-friendly “Pocket Wine Guide”.

In my opinion, in the world of wine writers there are three names to look for: Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, and Oz Clarke.  What separates Mr. Clarke from these other great wine writers is his ability to inject more of his own experiences and personal opinions rather than boring you with a 1000 page wine encyclopedia.

He gives the reader enough wine geek knowledge to be informed and dangerous when making a wine selection, but ultimately he wants to encourage you to get some friends together and actually taste them and have a few laughs in the process.

“Wine has given me more fun, made me more friends, furnished me with more laughs than anything else in life.” – Oz Clarke

I’ll raise a glass to that!  Cheers!