Oz Clarke's New Encyclopedia of Wine - Hardcover

Clarke, Oz

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8 ratings by Goodreads

9780151005659: Oz Clarke's New Encyclopedia of Wine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151005656 ISBN 13: 9780151005659

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999

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One of the world's greatest wine writers has given us a completely revised and updated edition of his authoritative and vastly informative bestselling A-Z guide to the world of wine. Bursting with information, the New Encylopedia of Wine includes 1,588 entries covering the world's leading wines, wine regions, wine producers, and grapes, and is sumptuously illustrated with more than 600 color photographs, maps, wine labels, and other illustrations. As easy to use for the beginner as it is informative for the expert, the New Encylopedia is organized alphabetically rather than by region, allowing the wine lover to find any wine, region, producer, or grape with ease. Other sections include introductions to the major wine-producing countries of the world; practical advice on storing and serving wine, including classic wine matches; and a glossary of wine-making techniques and terms-all covered in straightforward, simple language.

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Review:

The prolific Oz Clarke, winner of both the Julia Child and James Beard awards for wine writing, takes readers on a structured and stylish whirlwind tour of the world's wine-producing regions in Oz Clarke's New Encyclopedia of Wine, a 416-page tome full of glossy, full-color pages packed to their sturdy binding with photos, maps, and opinionated enological overview.

Early chapters summarize the making of red, white, sparkling, and fortified wines; give tips on keeping, serving, and tasting wine; and vividly detail the traits of some of the globe's grape-growing geography. Clarke's prose is full of tasty turns of phrase: tannic Merlots are full of "gum-drying toughness," oak-aged Sauvignon Blanc is a "half-way house" between Chardonnay and French Sauvignon, and lightly aged Riesling smells like "petrol." But a couple of his pronouncements are just plain infuriating: calling the political Classification of 1855--drawn up by the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce and based on the prices the wines fetched then and still extant in this day of vineyard consolidation and ownership by insurance companies and makers of luxury luggage--generally "still a remarkably accurate guide" may strike one as oddly musty thinking, given his revisionist reviews of Chateaux d'Issan and Lynch-Bages appearing later in the book. But this is wine we're talking about here: one person's "ugh!" is another's "strange but delightful," and wine researchers and armchair sippers alike will find the latter 85 percent of the New Encyclopedia to be the real body of the work: an information-packed, browsable, alphabetical gazetteer of wines, regions, grape types, and producers written in the sometimes enraging, always engaging, wonderful words of Oz. --Tony Mason

About the Author:

Oz Clarke is a wine correspondent for London's Daily Telegraph and an online wine expert for the Microsoft Network. He has won all the major wine writing awards, including the Glenfiddich (three times), the Andr Simon, the Wine Guild (three times), the Julia Child, and the James Beard awards. Among his other books are Oz Clarke's Wine Atlas, The Essential Wine Book, and New Classic Wines. He is also the co-author of Clarke and Spurrier's Fine Wine Guide, a 1999 James Beard Award nominee.

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