REVIEWS BY EVE ZIBART
This year may not have been a big vintage for holiday wine books—no definitive Robert Parker doorstop, no coffee-table California travelogue—but we've uncovered several more moderate, and perhaps more widely useful, gift possibilities.
Hail to the chef
Master sommelier Andrea Immer, who has consistently sought to make even big-name wine accessible and appealing,
is also a graduate of the French Culinary Institute, and this year she has turned both her food and wine expertise
to making the end of the day something to look forward to.
Everyday Dining With Wine is the ideal hybrid of cookbook and wine guide, combing unintimidating but
memorable descriptions of the major wine varieties with equally low-key and rewarding recipes. Immer believes
that making dinner should be as much fun for the two or four of you as for company. In fact, some of the most
intriguing recipes are the simplest, thanks to her adventurous way with a blender. She turns dried porcini into
dustings for foie gras or for tuna with black bean-hoisin sauce; makes edamame (soybeans) into pesto for angel
hair pasta and smoked salmon; rolls chicken in oatmeal and sauces it with Gewurtztraminer. This is the book for
the cook who has more tastebuds than time. Despite her credentials, Immer is no wine snob. She offers a range
of wine pairings for each recipe: an inexpensive "everyday" wine, a moderately priced "once a week" label and
the expensive "once a month" choice. As they used to say about wine, Immer just keeps getting better.
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Tips for beginners
The Eyewitness Companions series of travel guides is rightfully famous for its full-color photos and high-quality
paper and for its intriguing details on famous buildings and personalities, but the format doesn't work quite as
smoothly in Wines of the World, which is a slightly ungainly combination of
tour brochure and wine primer. At times it strains for prettiness, and its factoids often read like picture captions,
but it eventually gets its rhythm. The discussion of tannins and their role in wines is trenchant, the descriptions
of key flavors and the explanations of how to read wine labels of various countries is useful. Still, there's a
sort of conundrum: the maps and wine region trails, followed by capsules of dependable labels, would seem to be
more help to someone actually on the ground, but the book is best used as a buying guide. And while it includes
commendably strong sections on less well-known wine regions in Hungary or Romania, for instance, giving Nelson
Mandela credit for sparking the winemaking revolution in South Africa is a bit of a stretch.
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Let's get together
Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher are the authors of the unpretentious and popular Friday "Tastings" column
in The Wall Street Journal. They're not wine critics, in the traditional sense, but populists, and unofficial
cheerleaders for the wine culture. Their new book,
Wine for Every Day and Every Occasion: Red,
White, and Bubbly to Celebrate the Joy of Living, is full of reader recommendations, anecdotes about first holidays together, restaurants they have dined at and ways to have fun with wine parties—including a list of questions to "start the fun," such as "What did Hannibal Lector consider the perfect wine with liver?" Clearly, Gaiter and Brecher are a matter of personal taste (sorry). The book's chatty tone sometimes verges on the self-congratulatory (gee, we're famous!), but there is some good information to be gleaned. In fact, the discussion of wine wedding showers and how much wine is needed at a reception might make this a useful gift for the newly engaged.
And for anyone—or any group—contemplating starting a wine tasting club,
Wine Spectator's Ultimate Wine Tasting Kit would be ideal. It's a boxed set about the size of an Umberto Eco novel (or a Robert Parker tome) that includes a 240-page "Essentials of Wine" guide, a condensed "Pocket Guide" for carrying about, a beginner's guide to hosting wine tastings, and fun paraphernalia such as stemware, bottle tags and reusable bottle bags for the hidden-label games. There's also a coupon for two free issues of Wine Spectator, which, all things considered, is only reasonable advertising.
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Eve Zibart is a restaurant reviewer for the Washington Post and author of The Ethnic Food Lover's Companion.
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