Two Clear, Concise Books on Wine

I was recently asked by a lady who recognized me in a liquor store to recommend appropriate reading material to guide her small wine-tasting group’s study of my favorite libation. Her husband is a doctor and the nice lady said she was a voracious reader. I was flattered that they needed any help from me.

Later that same day, I found myself in a store, overwhelmed by the number of portable electronic games, iPod wannabes and state-of-the-art-gadgetry which had been introduced since my last visit. It rendered me clueless and dumbfounded. On the drive home I was thinking about the labyrinth of high techi-ness and my confusion at the selection of so many products all essentially offering different versions of the same thing!

Then I visualized newbies to the world of wine in the middle of a wine store, surrounded by hundreds of varieties of the same grape types but with different labels in unfamiliar languages stored haphazardly on rows of shelves. We are not dissimilar, these wine seekers and I. We seek guidance. Clear, concise, no-frills explanations on topics which interest us yet leave us baffled in their complexity.

I returned home sympathetic to the lady’s needs and began book “surfing” for titles which would ease people gently into a wine tasting party and guide them to the appropriate tools for the job — glassware, types of wines, foods to serve and useful maps they could copy for their fellow wine novices.

The two books I decided were the most user friendly are Joanna Simon’s Discovering Wine (which you can now get in paperback from amazon.com for well under $10) and Kevin Zraly’s Windows On The World Wine Course (which you can also find at Amazon for under $10). These books are far more detailed than the Dummies series and they are written by passionate, yet compassionate, wine educators who understand how to uncork the mysteries of the grape in layman’s terms.

The best way to learn about wine, as I’ve said so many times before, is by drinking it. But that’s like telling someone to download iTunes before they’ve bought the iPod. First things first, and the first step is always the most difficult. Clear, concise, basic explanations always win the day.

Cheers!