Good Wine Guide 2001

A combined buyer's guide and A-Z encyclopedia.

Here is the idea introduction for anyone interested in developing an appreciation for fine wine. Written in an accessible style, this book examines over 150 wines representing all the major wine-producing regions of the world. Particular focus is given to a range of wines specially selected as ideal examples of their kind. Award winning writer and wine expert Robert Joseph offers a fascinating and thorough wine-tasting course with advice on all aspects of presenting, selecting, and enjoying a world of wine. For the connoisseur, casual wine drinker, and bargain hunter, Good Wine Guide 2001 is bigger and better than ever before--includes Wine of the Web, with over 100 essential websites; provides wine basics, a wine A-Z, and suppliers across the US; 2,750 updated entries; advice on tasting, buying , storing, and serving; 500 food and wine pairings; Retailers, wine vacations, and courses; a useful pronunciation guide; and news update on wine and health.

As the brash, opinionated editor of the 2002 edition of the Good Wine Guide, Robert Joseph--founder of Wine magazine, columnist for the [London] Sunday Telegraph, and Web site host--presents a glossy volume as unctuously meretricious as an over-oaked Chardonnay. With more than 300 hardbound pages, the Good Wine Guide 2002 will never pass as one of the numerous "pocket" wine guides saturating the market, but it does share similar traits, albeit in puzzling proportions. Barely more than half the book is devoted to an A-to-Z of the entire world of wine, including terminology and producers (the entries for some of which being egregiously flip), while Joseph dedicates a whopping 18 pages to the preferred padding of pocket guides everywhere--food and wine matches. A risky chapter devoted to state-by-state retailers excludes California giant Beverages & More, but includes the defunct (later partially resuscitated) Wine.com; it's a lost gamble. Better are features such as full-color pages depicting wine labels from around the world and how to read them. And if California "White Merlot" does become the next big thing, it'll just prove that Robert Joseph is better at prognostication than presentation. --Tony Mason