So why does finding and choosing one you like seem so stressful?Now, becoming a happier, more confident wine drinker is easy. The first step is to forget all the useless, needlessly complicated stuff the "experts" have been telling you. In The New Wine Rules, acclaimed wine writer Jon Bonne explains everything you need to know in simple, beautifully illustrated, easy-to-digest tidbits. And the news is good! For example: A wine's price rarely reflects its quality. You can drink rose any time of year. Don't save a great bottle for anything more than a rainy day.

    But in the past two decades, revolutionaries have stormed its traditional bastions, making their mark—and their fortunes—modernizing the production and marketing of wine. Noble Rot introduces us to the figures who epitomize the changes sweeping Bordeaux—the noble family behind Château d'Yquem; a stonemason turned winemaker whose wine, made in a garage, sells for $100 a bottle; the Maryland-based critic Robert Parker, whose opinion routinely makes or breaks a wine; the New World operations that have used branding to undercut Bordeaux's supremacy—and delves into the mysteries of the legendary classification of 1855.

    As wine director for the Mina Group, Parr presides over the lists at some of the country’s top restaurants. In Secrets of the Sommeliers, Parr and journalist Jordan Mackay present a fascinating portrait of the world’s top wine professionals and their trade. The authors interviewed the elite of the sommelier community, and their colleagues’ insights, recommendations, and entertaining stories are woven throughout, along with Parr’s own takes on his profession and favorite winemakers and wines. Along the way, the authors give an immersion course in tasting and serving wine; share strategies for securing hard-to-find bottles at a good price and identifying value sweetspots among the many regions; and teach readers how to make inspired food pairings.Winner - 2011 James Beard Cookbook Award - Beverage Category

    

    The book has won every major wine book award including the Glenfiddich and Julia Child/IACP awards, and Robinson hasa received writer and woman of the year accolades for its editor on both sides of the Atlantic.Combining meticulously-researched fact with refreshing opinion and wit, The Oxford Companion to Wine offers almost 4,000 entries on every wine-related topic imaginable, from regions and grape varieties to the owners, connoisseurs, growers, and tasters in wine through the ages; from viticulture and oenology to the history of wine. Tracing the consumption and production from the ancient world to the present day, the Companion is a remarkable resource for gaining further appreciation for a beverage whose popularity has only increased with time.Now exhaustively updated, this third edition incorporates the very latest international research to present over 400 new entries on topics ranging from globalization and the politics of wine to brands, precision viticulture, and co-fermentation. Hundreds of other entries have also undergone major revisions, including yeast, barrel alternatives, climate change, and virtually all wine regions. Useful lists and statistics are appended, including controlled appellations and their permitted grape varieties, as well as wine production and consumption by country.Illustrated with maps of every important wine region in the world, useful charts and diagrams, and stunning color photography, this Companion is unlike any other wine book, offering an understanding of wine in its many wider contexts - notably historical, cultural, geographic, and scientific - and serving as a truly companionable point of reference into which any wine-lover can dip, browse, and linger.

    Avoiding the traditional and confusingly vague wine language of “bouquet” and “nose,” and instead discussing wine in commonsense terms, the book launched Andrea’s career as a wine authority without pretense.Now, thoroughly revised, Great Wine Made Simple lives up to its title by making selecting and enjoying wine truly simple. With Andrea Immer Robinson as your guide, you will never again have to fear pricey bottles that don’t deliver, snobby wine waiters, foreign terminology, or encyclopedic restaurant wine lists. You’ll be able to buy or order wine with confidence--and get just the wine you want--by learning how the “Big Six” basic styles (which comprise 80 percent of today’s top selling wines) taste and how to read any wine label. Ten new flavor maps show what tastes you can expect from climates around the world.Andrea Immer Robinson genuinely knows more about wine than most wine lovers could ever hope to learn. But she doesn’t believe that you have to join a stuffy, exclusive wine-tasting set, or study a lot, to become a savvy wine buyer. Unlike other wine guides, Great Wine Made Simple makes it easy to master the ins and outs of choosing a wine that you and your guests will love—on any budget.In her down-to-earth style, Andrea guides you through follow-along-at-home wine tastings that are easy, fun, and affordable, and even suggests a milk tasting for understanding variations in wine-body style. Building on this foundation, she covers the rest of the wine landscape with her inimitable style, candor, and humor, from classic regions to new tastes, plus a bevy of practical issues like wine gear and proper storage. A refreshing blend of in-depth knowledge and accessibility, Great Wine Made Simple is a welcome resource for those who are intrigued by wine but don’t know where to start.

    But what few people seem
to know is where to start when it comes to learning the basics. How to Drink Wine solves that problem. The path to drinking wine with confidence begins with this very informative, very relatable, very entertaining book, thanks to award-winning sommelier and restaurateur Grant Reynolds and acclaimed writer and founder of The Infatuation, Chris Stang. By reading How to Drink Wine, you will: • Acquire some foundational terminology. Cuvée, maceration, sul tes . . . what does it all mean? 
• Learn of the twenty-nine wines you need to know—and about important producers. 
• Find answers to questions you might be embarrassed to ask, like exactly how is rosé made? 
• Start to pair wines with your life instead of your plate. 
• Be able to navigate a wine list and/or store. You probably already know what you like to drink. This book will help you better understand why. And as a result, your knowledge, curiosity, and wine collection will expand. So will your number of friends.

    The executive editor of Food & Wine magazine takes her good friend and complete wine idiot, Rolling Stone magazine film critic Peter Travers, on an often hilarious and always informative whirlwind tour of the world of wine.

    Kramer explores connoisseurship through the practical devices of “thinking wine” and “drinking wine,” making for an engrossing journey through one of life’s great pleasures. Wine’s complexities are often glossed over in favor of sound bites tailored to the novice. Kramer embraces and celebrates these complexities. The superbly written text covers the basics, from food and wine pairings to setting up a wine cellar.

    However rich and complex the subject of wine may be, he insists it is also hugely rewarding and great fun. Curry's informative and entertaining program begins with a description of work in vineyard and cellar. It outlines the many choices faced-by grape-grower and winemaker, resulting in the variety of different styles of wine produced. It continues with wine's journey from winery to gullet, with advice on cellaring, buying, serving, food-matching and tasting. It then moves on to thumbnail sketches of the grape varieties most commonly used, their natural habitats and related styles of wine. And it continues with a lengthy section devoted to all major wine regions, in the Old World and the New. Written and recorded especially for Naxos AudioBooks, and enhanced by the music of Beethoven, De Falla, Godard, Gershwin, Granados, Mascagni, Offenbach, Paterson, Piazzolla, Rossini, Strauss and Verdi, A Guide to Wine is the perfect gift for wine aficionados and those with just a passing interest in the subject alike!

    How to choose the right one? Award-winning wine critic Alice Feiring presents an all-new way to look at the world of wine. While grape variety is important, a lot can be learned about wine by looking at the source: the ground in which it grows. A surprising amount of information about a wine’s flavor and composition can be gleaned from a region’s soil, and this guide makes it simple to find the wines you’ll love.Featuring a foreword by Master Sommelier Pascaline Lepeltier, who contributed her vast knowledge throughout the book, The Dirty Guide to Wine organizes wines not by grape, not by region, not by New or Old World, but by soil. If you enjoy a Chardonnay from Burgundy, you might find the same winning qualities in a deep, red Rioja. Feiring also provides a clarifying account of the traditions and techniques of wine-tasting, demystifying the practice and introducing a whole new way to enjoy wine to sommeliers and novice drinkers alike.

    No one wants to waste his or her precious dollars on an unenjoyable bottle, and with Parker's advice in hand, no one ever will. Employing his famous 100-point rating system, Parker rates more than 8,000 wines from all the major wine-producing regions in the world -- including newly expanded sections on the popular wines of California and Italy. Each wine producer is evaluated separately, and Parker's independence allows him to be completely honest in his opinions. In addition, the book includes other essential information, such as how to buy and store wine, how to spot a badly stored and abused bottle, and how to find the best wine values for under $10.

    What constitutes beauty in wine, and how do we appreciate it? What role does wine play in a soulful, sensual life? Can wines of place survive in a world of globalized styles and 100-point scoring systems? In his highly approachable style, Theise describes how wine can be a portal to aesthetic, emotional, even mystical experience—and he frankly asserts that these experiences are most likely to be inspired by wines from artisan producers. Along the way, Theise tells us a little about how he got where he is today, explores the meaning of wine in the lives of vintners he has known, and praises particular grape varieties. Reading between the Wines is a passionate tribute to wine—and to what it can say to us once we learn to listen.

    And this new edition contains an additional 16 wonderful pages, including a featured supplement about the olfactory system and how it deepens our enjoyment of wine. Written in a question-and-answer format, the section is coauthored with Wendy Dubit, an expert on the subject. Plus, this unequaled volume retains all the invaluable information, fabulous illustrations, and gorgeous styling of the 20th anniversary edition. Wine lovers will still thrill to Zraly’s inimitable, irreverent style. As always, he answers every question about wine; offers the most up-to-date recommendations; provides advice on buying wine in stores and on the Internet; takes you on a country-by-country, region-by-region ratings tour of the latest vintages; and starts you on your way to becoming a wine connoisseur. Abundant full-color labels and maps complete the enticing picture. More current, more informative, more concise and precise than ever, this remains the wine guide against which all others are judged.

    In January 2010, Aubert de Villaine, the famed proprietor of the Domaine de la Romance-Conti, the tiny, storied vineyard that produces the most expensive, exquisite wines in the world, received an anonymous note threatening the destruction of his priceless vines by poison-a crime that in the world of high-end wine is akin to murder-unless he paid a one million euro ransom. Villaine believed it to be a sick joke, but that proved a fatal miscalculation and the crime shocked this fabled region of France. The sinister story that Vanity Fair journalist Maximillian Potter uncovered would lead to a sting operation by some of France's top detectives, the primary suspect's suicide, and a dramatic investigation. This botanical crime threatened to destroy the fiercely traditional culture surrounding the world's greatest wine.Shadows in the Vineyard takes us deep into a captivating world full of fascinating characters, small-town French politics, an unforgettable narrative, and a local culture defined by the twinned veins of excess and vitality and the deep reverent attention to the land that runs through it.