Customer Review: Better than Great

With Bill Bryson-like humor, Patrick Moon intertwines winemaking and history with a rollicking good tale. If you're lucky enough to visit this fabulous wine-producing area of France, Virgile's Vineyard will be even more entertaining. There is a not-so-subtle undercurrent of travel guide to this superbly fun story. Spanning one year, it takes the reader through the winter Mediterranean storms, the summer heat of the South, the drenching rains of spring and the laid-back feel of the area when out of the tourist high season. Moon explores the dubious friendship of his neighbor prone to blatant crop filching, but also a master wine taster in constant search of good free samples. There is a dialogue of local repartee, a love interest (solely, on her side, it seems) who is bent on educating Patrick about the area's past, along with some characters who duck in and out as the story unfolds. If you have any interest in wine or the Languedoc region of France, you really shouldn't miss this book.

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This is Whole Goose Micuit Foie Gras with Port-wine in Jar of Rougie (France).

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Similar to our whole goose in Armagnac, the creamier and smoother goose foie gras is set in Aspic jelly, and then soaked in deliciously heady Port Wine, for flavor that is sweet, smooth, and utterly intoxication. By the masters of foie gras manufacture, the French giant Rougie.

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The second edition of Wine Science: Principles, Practice, Perception updates the reader with current processes and methods of wine science, including an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of various new grape cultivar clones, wine yeast strains, and malolactic bacteria. It also addresses current research in wine consumption as related to health. The many added beautiful color photographs, graphs, and charts help to make the sophisticated techniques described easily understandable. This book is an essential part of a any library.

Key Features
* Univerally appealing to non-technologists and technologists alike
* Includes section on Wine and Health which covers the effects of wine consumption on cardiovascular diseases, headaches, and age-related macular degeneration
* Covers sophisticated techniques in a clear, easily understood manner
* Presents a balance between the objective science of wine chemistry and the subjective study of wine appreciation
* Provides updated information involving advantages/disadvantages of various grape cultivar clones, wine yeast strains, and malolactic bacteria
* Chapter on recent historical findings regarding the origin of wine and wine making processes

Customer Review: As good as a book around

This book covers many principals of viticulture and enology, and does very, very well. A great companion to either an enologist or viticulturist seeking new points of view, or a great record of principals all in one book Fantastic...

Customer Review: Comprehensive scientific overview

Jackson provides a well-written overview of viticulture and oenology, with academic rigour and a bias towards more recent research. This book was very useful in my studies through the Cape Wine Academy, and I expect it to continue being a useful reference. Make sure to pick up the second edition, it contains significantly more material than the first.

Especially valuable is the clear exposition of complex biological or biochemical processes, which allows excess detail to be ignored while still maintaining readability (rather more useful than trying to fill in the scientific gaps in consumer-oriented books). Meticulously referenced, and good value for the serious student of wine, even at the steep academic-textbook price.

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Customer Review: Great guide, needs directions!

This book provides a wonderful look at the Campania region. I bought it before a trip to Italy, and hoped to use it as a guide of the region that I would be visiting. We stayed in Positano and visited a number of cities, including Vico Equense, Sorrento, Ravello, Caserta, Salerno, Minori, Vietri sul Mare, and several other small towns in the region. The only thing lacking in this book is detailed directions to find the stores. For example, we tried to visit a wine shop in Caserta that the book highly recommended. Armed with two maps with printed directions from Google Maps and Microsoft Live Local, we still had no luck finding it. It is very difficult to find a good map service of the area, and if this book would provide detailed directions to reaching these stores, a few maps, and maybe photos of the storefronts, it would be absolutely perfect!

Customer Review: Excellent guide

I lived in Naples for 3 1/2 years and traveled all over the Campania region, but I didn't find this book until our last month and wish I had it from the start. It is very good and we tried several of the locations before we left . Show the book to the stores or restaurants that you visit , they have their own copies.I reccommend it to anyone planning on taking the trip or those who want to see what it is like.

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Made with white Zinfandel wine, a very light taste. Try with cream cheese and crackers, as a cheesecake topping, on croissants, crepes or bagels with cream cheese.

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Terrific as a glaze and dipping sauce for filet mignon and prime rib. Also wonderful on poultry and fish. A tantalizing spread for fresh deli sandwiches.

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The enormous variety of wines available today can be baffling even to an experienced buyer. Anyone who enters a wine store is immediately confronted by rows and rows of racks filled with a myriad of choices. Where do you begin when all you want is a reasonably priced quality wine to serve with dinner? Jancis Robinson can make anyone an expert, or at least an informed buyer, in short order. In this comprehensive guide to the wine-producing countries of the world, she captures the flavor of each region's wines and presents her personal recommendations on the best names from around the world, with thirty-two completely new pages covering the latest developments in South America, South Africa, and Eastern Europe. Robinson also describes the distinctive characteristics of hundreds of different grape varieties and studies the traditional and innovative methods employed in the creation of great wines. A fully updated vintage guide makes selection even easier.

Dedicated to ensuring that you get the most out of every glass, Jancis Robinson's Wine Course explains how to taste and store wine, what to serve on special occasions at home, and how to order the best value from a restaurant wine list. Full of infectious enthusiasm and heaps of personal tips, this book will soon have you reaching for the corkscrew.

Customer Review: Everything You Need To Know About Wine

What a great book! This book teaches you as much or as little as you want to know about wine. It takes the confusion out of tasting new wines and shopping for wine is now fun. You could study it like a textbook and become well versed in the subject or learn what you need to know to make drinking wine more enjoyable.

Customer Review: Not The Best For Starters

If you are looking for a good book to start out with, to learn the basic ABC's of wine, then I would reccomend The Complete Idiot's Guide To Wine by Phillip Seldon. This one (Jancis Robinson's) however is good for people like myself who already know the basics (the distinguishing characteristics of grape varieties, the main regions, how to make reasonablly good food/wine pairings, etc.) In other words, it's not the easiest book to follow. Another note- she makes her disgust of Spanish wines known in the opening paragraph on page 222 when she says "If it (Spain) had Germany's love of efficiency, or France's respect for bureaucracy, Spain might be sending us oceans of judiciously priced wine made expressly for the international market. But Spain is an anarchic jumble of districts and regions...and heartbreakingly awful human constructions, and has to be treated as such by the wine enthusiast." I found those comments to be misleading, as Spain to me is a model exporter of high quality wines. Just about any Rioja or Tempranillo wine imported and that goes for less than $...is of fine quality. That is my opinion of course. Another semi-complaint is that there was not enough material on Argentina (only 6 paragraphs) which I found to be a shame, since Argentina has very unique and delicious wines. Overall this is good, as I said earlier, for those who already have a basic knowledge.

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This is White Wine Vinegar with Fresh Tarragon in Bottle of Delouis Fils (France).

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This award-winning book takes the reader through the breathtaking vineyards and quaint charm of California's renowned wine region. A listing of wineries and tasting rooms is included, along with reproductions of the region's legendary wine labels.

Customer Review: Excellent introduction to Napa Valley/Sonoma - wine country!

This is an excellent overview of the heart of California wine country, Napa Valley & Sonoma. Loaded with lush photography and insight into the tradition of winemaking, the author takes another leap and provides you with fine dining and lodging selections in the areas as well. I especially liked the pictures of all of the labels and listings at the end of the book of all of the wineries from this area. This allows you to date and check off when you sampled that particular bottle as well as motivate the pursuit to sample all that these wineries have to offer. If you are planning a vacation to Napa or Sonoma, this is a must have.

Customer Review: Everything you need for a great weekend!

We picked up a copy of this book last month for us to use on a weekend away in the wine country. Now we have bought several more for gifts to give for Christmas, and our copy sits on our coffee table at home. The author has captured all I needed to know about Napa and Sonoma, wihtout getting to bogged down in details/history. There are recommendations on where to eat, sleep, things to do, the history of the wine industry, how wine is made, and stunning pictures. With 15 minutes you can get so much info you wish there were more coffee table books with this much substance and this well written, with up to date info, but not skimping on the glorious photos.

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