"Wine Buying Guide for Everyone"

[Innkeeper]

This second book by Andrea Immer is a pocket guide that is and should remain as the best of the genre. It is easy to use, and will not quickly become outdated. She and her colleagues have picked over 400 wines based on the criteria that they be "popular", nationally distributed, and consistent year in and year out, as she does not list vintages. Her selections give particular focus to "super market brands", and does a good job of separating the wheat from the chaff. The Rosemount Diamond Label series did very well in this category. Some of the "popular" wines come from her own view of things. There is disproportional number of wines from Spain and Alsace. This is fine for non-beginners, but the book is most useful for beginners.

She does include all price points and assigns an appropriate number of $ signs to each wine. She also gives Fridge Survivor rating to all whites and Countertop rating to all reds. This will indicate how many days an open wine will survive with just the cork stuck back in. This is another feature that could appeal to geeks as well as novices. In the back of the book is a Mini-Course on "Great Wine Made Simple", her first book. It includes tasting training, and retail and restaurant buying guides.

There are not a lot of wines in the book that we talk about here on the board. She does include Bogle and Blackstone among the 20 most popular merlots, but rates the Sterling, that we recently panned, higher. I think that the California Cabernet fans would quarrel with her selections, and other than the biggest brands, she gives Oz short shrift. One thing I can say, I can't argue with any of her individual evaluations, good or bad, on the wines she has included.

This is an excellent guide for beginners. We should recommend it highly to same. In this day and age when even geeks can be overwhelmed by the numerous selections in a wine emporium or on a restaurant wine list, this guide is very helpful. List price is $12.95 and it's less expensive at Amazon and other discounters.

[winedope1]

thanks for the heads-up, IK. : )

[This message has been edited by winedope1 (edited 06-07-2002).]