Windows On the World Complete Wine Course - Hardcover

Zraly, Kevin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080696894X ISBN 13: 9780806968940

Publisher: Sterling*+ Publishing Company, 1988

Synopsis

All in color! The best beginner's book on wines...in an all-new Millennium edition! America's best-selling book on wine is completely rewritten. Now filled with full-color labels and maps, it is packed with updated recommendations, new sections, sidebars, and Kevin Zraly's inimitable, irreverent approach. Universally praised by wine experts and novices alike, this unbeatable "course" answers all your questions and starts you on your way to becoming a wine connoisseur. Go through the tasting process, from swirling the glass to sniffing to sipping; know when a wine is at its peak for drinking, and what to look for on a label. Take a country-by-country, region-by-region "best-buy" ratings tour of the latest vintages--whites, reds, and blended wines (champagne, sherry, and port) from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, California, the Pacific Northwest, New York, Australia, and two of the newest, hottest countries, Chile and Argentina. You'll love Zraly's lighthearted style, his glossary of wine terms, his award-winning restaurant wine lists, his advice on matching wine with food, and his tips on stocking and serving wine at home, ordering it in restaurants, and more. A uniquely intoxicating trek through the world of wine. Trim size: 8 x 10.

About this title

Review:

Quick, what's the correct way to open a wine bottle? Bonus round: what are the 13 grape types permitted in Chateauneuf-du-Pape?

Whatever your score on the above, you're bound to enjoy the Windows on the World Complete Wine Course. Subtitled Millennium Edition, this 14th annual update is again authored by Kevin Zraly, founder and teacher of the Wine School, begun in 1976 as an offshoot of New York's Windows on the World restaurant. On 200 colorful and clutter-free pages full of maps, wine labels, and sidebars full of facts and anecdotes, Zraly acts as your Sherpa through eight classes. Chapters 1 through 3 circumnavigate the white wines of France, the New World, and Germany; 4 through 8 explore the reds of France, California, Iberia, Australia, and South America, concluding with a section on champagne, port, and sherry.

As wine guru, Kevin Zraly is opinionated, knowledgeable, and patient. His skill at talking novice wine devotees off the ledge is especially evident in the chapters on Burgundy and Germany, with their notoriously confusing wine labels. Study Zraly's careful parsing and annotation of a German label and you'll be able to tell the region from the town from the vineyard the next time someone hands you a Mosel-Saar-Ruwer Ürziger Würzgarten Riesling Spätlese.

But any book that calls itself a "Complete Wine Course" sets the Barbera pretty high--sometimes too high. Oregon and Washington States share one page while New York State rates two and a half. Certainly a millennium edition could scare up another paragraph for the red-hot Pacific Northwest. And two chapters following the classes--"Creating an Exemplary Restaurant Wine List" and "Award-Winning Wine Lists"--seem little more than padding.

But these are small quibbles about a handsome and approachable volume that will take you from Amarone to Zind-Humbrecht with confidence. Whether you're a true cork dork or someone who doesn't know their Alsace from their elbow, you could certainly do worse than pressing your nose up against these windows on the world. --Tony Mason

From the Back Cover:

"If you have never bought a wine book before, start with this one. If you have a roomful of wine books, get this one anyway. It's a whole new way to look at the subject." -- Frank J. Prial, The New York Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Sterling*+ Publishing Company
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 080696894X
• ISBN 13: 9780806968940
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 190