How to Taste by Robinson, Jancis (2008) Hardcover - Hardcover

Jancis Robinson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 184091520X ISBN 13: 9781840915204

Publisher: Octopus Publishing Group, 2008

Synopsis

Master of Wine Jancis Robinson has created this wine tasting course based around practical exercises that will guide you from your first sips to confident, well-informed gulps. Clearly divided into theory and practise, this workbook first provides all the information you need before you put it into practise. This work helps to learn the correct way to taste wine and enjoy the tasting exercises specially devised by Jancis based on readily available and inexpensive bottle. It also helps to learn how to recognise the most popular grape varieties from Chardonnay to Riesling, Pinot Noir to Cabernet Sauvignon, and why you should choose a good sparkling wine over cheap Champagne. There is advice on choosing from a wine list and how to match food with wine. "How to Taste" will awaken the wine connoisseur in us all.

About this title

Review

Whether Montessori or Merlot, kindergarten or Cabernet, the importance of a good instructor during the formative years is crucial. That's why newcomers to the world of wine could do a lot worse than having a corkscrew in one hand and a copy of Jancis Robinson's How to Taste in the other. A revision of 1983's Masterglass and published in the U.K. under the superior title Jancis Robinson's Wine-Tasting Workbook, How to Taste is a primer by a certified Master of Wine and star of the PBS series Jancis Robinson's Wine Course. From acidity to Australian Shiraz, oak to Oregon Pinot, Robinson delivers chapters of information and theory, intermingled with shaded "Practice" exercises, presented in a style as off-dry as one of the author's beloved Rieslings (the tannin in a lesser vintage Barolo is "like sucking on a matchstick"). Sometimes tuition at Jancis U. runs high: the lesson on sugar/acid balance culminates with expensive Sauterne "Practice." And even if Robinson risks, by dropping words like "charred" and "umami" early in the book, sending novices back to tear open a fresh box of Franzia, vinous virgins are encouraged to stick with it. By the time they get to the glossary at book's end, they'll be identifying wines at blind tastings with professional accuracy--which, Robinson encouragingly reveals, and she ought to know, is about 50 percent. --Tony Mason

About the Author

One of a handful of wine communicators with an international reputation, Jancis Robinson writes daily for www.jancisrobinson.com, weekly for The Financial Times, and bi-monthly for a column that is syndicated in every continent. She is also editor of The Oxford Companion to Wine and co-author with Hugh Johnson of The World Atlas of Wine, each of these books recognized as a standard reference worldwide. An award-winning tv presenter, she is invited all over the world to tutor wine tastings and act as a wine judge. In 1984 she was the first person outside the wine trade to pass the rigorous Master of Wine exams and in 2003 she was awarded an OBE by Her Majesty the Queen, on whose cellar she now advises.

Edition details

• Publisher: Octopus Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 184091520X
• ISBN 13: 9781840915204
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208