Great Wine Made Simple: Straight Talk from a Master Sommelier

Customer Reviews

Want to increase your enjoyment and knowledge of wine?

If so, you should seriously consider buying this book for yourself, and for any friends who might have the same goal. I have enjoyed wine for a number of years, but have not ventured forth much from the cabernet-merlot-chardonnay rut because it all seemed so overwhelming. You go to the wine store and signs give wines different points from different people for wines you've never heard of and can't pronounce.

Enter Andrea Immer, the sassy and straightforward Master Sommelier! Immer makes wine approachable, fun, and stimulating. Through a variety of different techniques (comparison tasting, old world wines vs. new world wines, flavor maps, and varietal information) Immer will open up your wine world and give you the confidence to sally forth to your local wine shop and ask for a Gruner Veltliner (she also tells you how to pronounce it!)to go with your chicken dinner. She also totally demystifies the restaurant wine list and tells you how to make good and economical choices from it.

There is no pretention at all in this book. Ms. Immer is not a wine snob, nor does she make wine into some obscure chemical and gastronomical science. She knows her stuff so well she can make is simple for you, me and everybody else who would like to buy a $10 bottle of wine and find it is reasonably tasty.

By the way, friends much more expert than myself have confessed that they bought the book and found a great deal of information that was helpful to them, too, so this book is not just for wine beginners.

A great buy

Completely through dumb luck, I picked up a bottle of wine for a recent dinner party that was not only delicious in its own right, it made the food taste better. I'd never had that experience before, but it was enough to make me want to learn more about wine, so that I could intentionally pick good wine/food combinations in the future. I'm so glad this was the first book on the subject that I ordered. Beside being a fun read, the author does a wonderful job of educating the reader, without seeming pretentious or preachy. Although she begins with the assumption that you nothing, I can't imagine even an already knowledgable wine enthusiast not learning something from this - it's packed with good information. At the end of each discussion section, she includes a 'how to have a wine test' guide, beginning with comparisons of the six most common wine styles, and progressing to tastings on wine characteristics (oaky verses steel barrel, etc) and wines from lesser known grapes. Also included are basic hints for choosing wines, predicting a wine's flavor, and pairing wine with food.

Not only would I buy this book again, I've recommended it to several friends - in my opinion, it's a can't-miss-purchase on the subject.

Masterful Insight For All

The other reviewers here have been most eloquent in describing the varied merits of Ms. Immer's book, so I can only add this bit of simple advice for the "skimmers" of such reviews:

A master and lover of her craft, Ms. Immer (in clear, captivating text) lays the foundation for a true understanding of wine, one that we all can learn from.

If you want point ratings and "Dummies" categories, please skip this volume. BUT if you want to understand and celebrate the wine you that you taste, enjoy and purchase, and if you want to embark on a lifelong journey of wine appreciation (regardless of your prior experience) then by all means purchase this fine book.

It is a wonderful companion for any true wine enthusiast.