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A Christmas bonus for wine lovers
REVIEWS BY EVE ZIBART
In Leslie Sbrocco's Wine for Women: A Guide to Buying, Pairing, and Sharing Wine, PBS personality Sbrocco gets a little cutesy talking about "building a wine wardrobe" with Chardonnay as the basic black dress, etc., but beyond the fluffy title and occasional women's-mag tone, it's actually a useful tool for those—admittedly more often women—who are less interested in pounding the platinum card balance at the restaurant than enjoying wine at home without spending too much time on it. In fact, statistics show women do most of the wine buying and drinking in this country, so playing up menu pairings and general home-bar improvements is a fair approach. This smartly designed book offers a mix of label hints, regional tips, recipes and flavor descriptions.
By Leslie Sbrocco Morrow, $24.95 338 pages, ISBN 0060523328 For amateurs and wine pros alike
By Brian H. Smith Black Dog & Leventhal, $11.95 208 pages, ISBN 1579123317 A universal reference
By Andrea Immer Broadway, $12.95 260 pages, ISBN 0767915445 Mouth-watering Bordeaux
By Robert M. Parker Simon & Schuster, $60 1,214 pages, ISBN 0743229460 Eve Zibart is a restaurant critic for The Washington Post and author of The Ethnic Food Lover's Companion.
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Those who find themselves wincing at the thought of spending another holiday dinner politely complimenting their father-in-law's
unfortunate wine selection (are Chardonnays supposed to be sweet?) should consider a gift that will be appreciated at family gatherings
for years to come—a wine selection guide. Here are some of the season's best.
As might be guessed from the title,
The Sommelier's Guide to Wine: A Primer for Selecting, Serving and Savoring Wine, by Culinary Institute of America
professor Brian H. Smith, has a much less chatty style. Smith tries to cover a lot of territory in a smallish book, offering a basic
guide for both professionals and amateurs, and it's a little awkward for beginning oenophiles who have to sort through the advice on
setting up wine lists and summarizing wine regions down to micro-climates in California. Still, it's not heavy going. In fact,
Smith's attitude is generally reassuring: He's working on the premise that if you can figure out what it is you like in wines,
you can use that preference as a way of discovering similar wines. And his straightforward explanation of tasting values, which
is comprehensive without being pompous, is particularly good. It's a book to grow into.
I have a particular respect for Andrea Immer, one of only a handful of women master sommeliers and the first woman cellarmaster of
Windows on the World. The second edition of her pocket-sized reference,
Andrea Immer's 2004 Wine Buying Guide for Everyone, should be the stocking stuffer of
choice. Immer has listed more than 600 generally available wines by varietal, rated them by value as well as taste, and given readers
freedom to cheat by using her best-of lists. Her other invention, the Kitchen Fridge Survivor and Kitchen Counter Survivor ratings,
which explore the shelf life of opened wines (sometimes several days), still strikes me as the kindest stroke in the business.
Descriptions are short, to the point and quite intelligible to the average reader. When Immer says "everyone," she means it.
Robert M. Parker, on the other hand, has never been to everyone's taste: His exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting, consideration of
vintage and history may be too much for all but the serious oenophile, but the fourth edition of his
Bordeaux: A Consumer Guide to the World's Finest Wines is a remarkable
achievement, the sort of book those real admirers will read for pleasure as armchair chefs read the most elaborate cookbooks.
Bordeaux is Parker's passion—he's been making tasting trips twice a year for more than a quarter century—and his influence
on winemakers' styles is somewhat controversial, but Parker's knowledge is undisputed. His writing skirts the edge of spoonable
jargon, but it never falls over into simpering. Consider this description of the 1996 Chateau d'Yquem: "Light gold, with a tight
but promising nose of roasted hazelnuts intermixed with creme brulee, vanilla beans, honey, orange marmalade, and peach." If that
makes your mouth water (and it does mine), this is the Christmas bonus you've been dreaming of.