|
| Windows on the World Complete Wine Course: 2008 Edition | 
 enlarge | Author: Kevin Zraly
Publisher: Sterling
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $13.55
You Save: $11.40 (46%)
New (35) Used (14) from $10.48
Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 100066
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Updated
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 8.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 1402751419
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.22
EAN: 9781402751417
ASIN: 1402751419
Publication Date: October 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Ignorant, badly written, condescending, and incomplete June 7, 2008
41 out of 53 found this review helpful
If you don't know anything about wine then this book might seem to be a good introduction. However, if you have any prior knowledge then it is immediately obvious that the author is a self-absorbed pretender. The book fails on multiple levels:
Writing style
The book is poorly written and insults its readers. It's filled with little insinuations that the reader is a hopeless idiot, and after a few pages this repeated rhetorical device becomes insufferable. How often can you tolerate an author characterizing your thoughts and behavior as moronic just to set up the point that he is trying to make? Much of the text unreadable for this reason. In addition to talking down to his readers, the author generally writes like an eighth grader. He loves to put words in quotation marks for no apparent reason, typographical errors are common (even ones that would be caught by any computer spell checker), and he often trips over his own feet trying to write the simplest sentence. Finally, he talks about himself incessantly, like a bore at a dinner party.
Inadequate coverage
The book has gaping omissions at all levels. The author gives the impression that he is introducing the range of varietal grapes and growing regions of the world, but he misleads novice readers in this pretense. His coverage is limited, outside of a few uninformative and incomplete lists, to the larger regions and grape varieties. This is the kind of basic survey that one can gather from going to one or two wine stores and looking at the shelves: there's a lot of wine from California, France, Australia, Italy, and Spain. The author simply repeats the obvious in many parts of the book.
Inaccurate information
The one thing that a book like this should at least get right is the basics. And yet he fails here as well. In one part of the book the author honestly claims that letting a wine breath before drinking it is of dubious value--he actually goes so far as to question whether it has any effect. This is where he exposes himself as a poser. When a wine is exposed to air, the organic compounds in the wine begin to react with oxygen. This is simply a matter of measurable chemistry. For someone to claim to be an expert and yet to assert that letting the wine breath has no effect is preposterous. The effect can be analyzed and measured. And it can be easily tasted! For someone who claims to taste 3,000 wines per year (that is his statement), he is inexcusably ignorant about this most basic fact. The truth is that the vast majority of wines improve their complexity of flavor, bouquet, and smoothness if they are allowed to sit open (or decanted into another container) for 2-3 hours. A real expert on wine would encourage the reader to test this for herself: open a bottle and taste the wine at 30 minute intervals. It's easy to determine that in the vast majority of cases the chemistry of oxidation makes a real difference in enjoyment. Instead, this pompous author proclaims that there is no benefit to a wine breathing, and encourages everyone to drink the wine directly after opening the bottle. He's an idiot.
He also claims that you should never use soap to clean your wine glasses. His explanation is that soap residue can effect the taste of the wine. This might be true if you don't wash the glass thoroughly, but it's generally pointless advice. It sounds insightful, but it's just empty hogwash. Just rinse the glass well and dry it with a clean towel--problem solved. It takes a special type of fatuous blowhard to fabricate pearls of wisdom out of thin air, but he manages to do it!
Over emphasis on wineries
The final major failure of the book is to give the reader an utterly false sense of comfort and knowledge by listing wineries that the author feels have a good reputation. This is the most useless information for a novice seeking to learn about wine. The well known wineries very often fluctuate in the quality of wines that they produce, increase production to cash in on their reputation and thereby suffer a loss of quality, or become priced out of reach for most people (and become overpriced in general compared to wines of equal quality). The author's approach here simply encourages ignorant snobbery and perpetuates the problem of people simply wanting to be told what is good. You need to taste a variety of wines. You need to get a feel for what you like, not what some stuffy and arrogant faker tells you is good. This book is poison to someone who really wants to develop real knowledge about wine. It gives the illusion of being informative, but it simply feeds the reader comforting half truths and steers him off course.
Avoid this steaming pile of nonsense like the plague.
 Definitely a "Wine Class" June 1, 2008
I really learned a lot from this course. It is a little more involved than I thought it would be, but easy to follow. The writer knows his stuff. The pictures are beautiful and the information is presented in a way even a novice can understand. I only wish that there were more actual wine recommendations and food pairings. Love this one!
 best way to learn about wine.. May 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have an older edition of this book. To learn about wines, one needs to research them. In this book, everything is broken down into sections and is easy to learn (also it is very entertaining to read).
Outstanding book on wine! April 28, 2008
Great book with an easy to follow format. Takes you through the various wine regions of the world in a format that follows the well-known Windows on the World wine class. I especially like the 'great' and 'exceptional' vintage information he puts into each section; this is very useful when you are scanning a wine list full of unfamilar names and is worth the price of the book itself! Great book, good price, buy it.
Informing the casual wine drinker April 6, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this book in search of basic information about the wines of the world, the various grapes, regional distinctions and recommendations for all the categories. This book does not disappoint in that regard. I have no complaints at all about any of the information in the book--every bit of it was helpful. However, I would like to have seen more information about wines from the various regions of the U.S. (I live in North Carolina where we have quite a few vinyards, but my state wasn't even mentioned) other than the West and NY State. Also, after reading the book I realized I'd do well to make up some index cards listing categories and recommendations according to regions, so I could have something handy to go with me to the wine shop when I wanted to try something new. I think that a wonderful addition to this book would be some tear-out "cheat sheets" to carry in one's pocket or purse. However, for an at-home reference, this book is excellent.
|
|
|
| |
