Product Description
The essential insider's guide to every major wine-growing region in the world, this book offers dozens of helpful Top 10 lists covering a broad range of topics, including Best-Value Producers, Greatest-Quality Wines, and Most Exciting or Unusual Finds. The book is a must for every wine serious enthusiast who wants to keep up with the constantly changing and ever-expanding world of wine. AUTHOR BIO: Tom Stevenson has been writing about wine for nearly thirty years and is the author of more than 20 books. He's been nominated Wine Writer of the Year on three occasions and received the coveted Wine Literary Award, America's lifetime achievement award for wine writing.Amazon.com Review
If you want to learn about wines of the world and advance your comprehension of wine production, grape varieties, appellations, and individual wineries, understand the factors (such as location, soil, climate, and methods of viticulture) that affect the taste and nose, and visit your wine shop with a list of quality wines to explore, Tom Stevenson is the man to read. Author of 12 books (including Champagne and The Millennium Champagne & Sparkling Wine Guide), three-time winner of the Wine Writer of the Year award, and columnist for Wine magazine, Stevenson has the gift of taking vast quantities of knowledge and experience and translating them into lucid, sparkling prose, easily graspable by the novice, yet still interesting and instructive to the connoisseur.
Arranged geographically, with nearly 100 maps, profiles on top producers, and valuable Author's Choice charts for each region, the Wine Encyclopedia covers the wines of Europe (from Great Britain and Switzerland to Southeast Europe, Greece, and the Levant), as well as wines from North and South Africa, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. In addition, there's a guide to wine and food (pairing fois gras with a Champagne or Sauterne, for example, and claret or Cabernet Sauvignon with beef), a guide to wine flavors (making sense of descriptors such as fig, gooseberry, violet, and hay), a list of good vintages, and a glossary of tasting and technical terms, distinguishing "cheesy" and "chewy" from "creamy" and "corked." Enhanced by beautiful pictures of vineyards, wine labels, and Stevenson himself demonstrating the art of wine tasting, from examining and nosing the wine to spitting it out, this a visually beautiful as well as an informative volume. As sumptuous as an elegant Tuscan Barolo, as rewarding as a Sarget de Gruaud-Larose from Bordeaux, as pleasing as a Ferreira port, the Sotheby Wine Encyclopedia is a remarkable tome of oenological erudition. --Stephanie Gold
Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia: Fourth Edition, Revised
Tags: Stephanie Gold, champagne sparkling wine, Tom Stevenson
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
This book is of general interest to the wine enthusiast. It is well presented and interesting to read. At the same time it functions as a reference guide. An excellent buy.
I purchased this book for my son, who is in the restaurant business and wants to become very knowledgable of wine. I’m sure this book would do the trick. It’s a Dorling Kindersley book and so is beautifully presented, and is an impressive tome (it’s big). However both the original copy that I ordered, and the replacement copy, were defective in the same way. In the original copy the back cover was separated from the text, and in the replacement copy both covers were separated. The Amazon rep said she would alert Amazon to the possibility that the whole “batch” may be damaged. The fifth star is missing because of the defect in the binding.
An excellent and consise reference book. Well indexed and organised. Goes in depth where neccesary.
This book is the ultimate, in wine appellation references. It covers law and grape varietals very well. The only place it lacks is any reference to the grapes grown for spirits. If you have only two books with which to study for the sommelier exam, this should be one. (the other is: Sales and Service for the Wine Profesional. by Brian Julyan)
This bood gave detailed notes about many of the wineries I was looking for an objective rating/score by an independent source.
I read it for hours and constantly refer back to it.
Great buy!
You must log in to post a comment.