How to Taste: A Guide to Enjoying Wine - Hardcover

Whether Montessori or Merlot, kindergarten or Cabernet, the importance of a good instructor during the formative years is crucial. That's why newcomers to the world of wine could do a lot worse than having a corkscrew in one hand and a copy of Jancis Robinson's How to Taste in the other. A revision of 1983's Masterglass and published in the U.K. under the superior title Jancis Robinson's Wine-Tasting Workbook, How to Taste is a primer by a certified Master of Wine and star of the PBS series Jancis Robinson's Wine Course. From acidity to Australian Shiraz, oak to Oregon Pinot, Robinson delivers chapters of information and theory, intermingled with shaded "Practice" exercises, presented in a style as off-dry as one of the author's beloved Rieslings (the tannin in a lesser vintage Barolo is "like sucking on a matchstick"). Sometimes tuition at Jancis U. runs high: the lesson on sugar/acid balance culminates with expensive Sauterne "Practice." And even if Robinson risks, by dropping words like "charred" and "umami" early in the book, sending novices back to tear open a fresh box of Franzia, vinous virgins are encouraged to stick with it. By the time they get to the glossary at book's end, they'll be identifying wines at blind tastings with professional accuracy--which, Robinson encouragingly reveals, and she ought to know, is about 50 percent. --Tony Mason

Jancis Robinson is one of the world's best-loved authorities on wine. One of a handful of wine communicators with an international reputation, Robinson writes daily for www.jancisrobinson.com, weekly for The Financial Times, and bimonthly for a column that is syndicated on every continent. She has written and presented several award-winning BBC television series, and is the editor of the multi-award-winning Oxford Companion to Wine. A respected wine judge and lecturer, Robinson was the first person outside the wine trade to pass the fiendish Master of Wine examinations, and did so on her first attempt. The coauthor with Hugh Johnson of The World Atlas of Wine, Robinson is the author of several definitive books on wine.