The Persistent Observer's Guide to Wine: How to enjoy the best and skip the rest

by J.P. Bary

Through a series of ten engaging conversations, J.P. Bary coaches readers through all the steps needed to become consummate wine consumers, concentrating on the most common stumbling blocks, pitfalls and sources of confusion and giving practical advice about how to overcome them. Instead of presenting the subject of wine in a categorical fashion, this lively and entertaining book shows you why learning to trust your own instincts is more important than studying diagrams of the tongue or obsessing over aroma wheels. Without tables, charts or listings of regions and producers to memorize, or a glossary of definitions to study before you can understand what it says, this book helps you build all the essential skills you need to develop a personal relationship with wine and become a very savvy consumer. It explains what the most persistent misconceptions about serving and storing wine are and how and why labels, ratings and marketing ploys can mislead you. You'll learn how to read between reviewers' lines and converse with sommeliers and retailers so you can tell whether they're being helpful or giving you the runaround. Using the straightforward guidelines in this book, you'll be able to make excellent pairings with little fuss, not just with foods, but with people and occasions.

Whether mind numbingly "complete" or misleadingly "simple," most wine guides treat the subject of wine as a curriculum to be presented topic by topic. Instead, this book recognizes that learning about wine is a process and keeps the focus on the essential information the reader needs to know at each stage. With sensitivity and humor, the author concentrates on helping you avoid mistakes and coaches you step by step as you learn the essential skills needed to select, store and serve wine successfully. Primary emphasis is on understanding your own personal taste preferences and how they influence the way wines should be chosen and used. Wine tasting skills are built quickly and effectively by concentrating on the basics and explaining why the descriptions given by wine professionals can be so confusing. Filled with unique insights and practical tips, this book is what every wine consumer needs to read in order to truly understand what the others are trying to say.

214 pages, Paperback

First published December 12, 2012

About the author

Born in Brooklyn, I love a bit of chaos and uncertainty, just not too much of it. Walking along busy streets, feeling the energy and moods of the people passing by always seems to lift my spirits. But I also love quiet moments alone with nature, when I can observe how restless it is and connect with its wild rhythms. Somehow, even as I learn to understand parts of these complex systems, it's comforting to know that I'll never learn enough to keep them from surprising me.

I've travelled widely and enjoy keeping up with a family, friends and business associates all over the world. Through my travels and several careers, I've found many ways to keep life varied and interesting. Most of what I've written has been connected to my professional activities, and might sound a bit dull. But it provided me the opportunity to meet and work with people involved in government, business, education and technology and address a variety of complex problems that people cared deeply about, so for me it's been a privilege.

Those experiences taught me the value of persistence in analyzing issues and seeking out perspectives from many different points of view. It also taught me how to sort through mountains of confusing information and help people make some sense out of them.

On the personal side, I've always kept, and kept on refining, notes about complicated topics I want to understand more fully. These are notes about things like wine, gardening, music, art, travel and fashion-things I care about because doing and sharing them plays a big part in my enjoyment of life. These notes have served both as a personal resource and something I've found it rewarding to share with family and friends over the years. Recently I've been refining them and sharing them with a broader audience through my blog at www.thepersistentobserver.com and in my books, written under the pen name J.P. Bary.

I recently published The Persistent Observer's Guide to Wine and I'm now working on a travel guide. Like the wine book, the travel book won't be a guide to any specific place, but to understanding what travel can do for you and how to get more out of what you invest in it.

In my books and articles, I've draw on the experiences of friends, family and even complete strangers. I particularly appreciate my exchanges with people I identify as "persistent observers." These are folks who have a healthy respect for conventional wisdom, but don't accept it until they thoroughly understand why it makes sense. They enjoy noticing life's little anomalies, pondering over them and sometimes sharing their thoughts when they meet someone else who doesn't mind poking around in the brambles and digging beneath the surface a bit.

In my guides, I like to concentrate on the useful things I've learned from these people that don't seem to be as well known as they should be, passing on what I've learned from the persistent observers I've met to all the others I know are out there.

Reviews

[J.P. Bary]

Wine writers often express the view that ordinary consumers don't appreciate wine as much as they should and have suggested a number of reasons for it. The general level of confusion and ignorance about wine in the United States has been blamed on difficulties with vineyard pests, on prohibition and on conspiracies among the leading liquor producers and beverage distributors. But I’ve seen people all over the world make the same fundamental mistakes Americans make, so I think the problem is deeper than that. I’ve actually come to believe that some of the blame belongs to the wine writers themselves. If they don't make wine seem overwhelmingly complicated, they oversimplify it to the point of being misleading. Either way, it's easy to become confused.

Perhaps it's more appropriate to place the blame for all the confusion on all the wine books that don’t get read. As was quickly pointed out to me by the agents and publishers who were kind enough to send me something more than a form rejection letter, even the best selling wine books have a very limited audience. Beyond a hard core of dedicated enthusiasts, there just isn’t that much interest. Officially classified as cookbooks and often mistaken for travel guides, it’s hard for bookstore owners to know where to put wine guides or for readers to figure out where to find them in libraries. A book talk with tea or coffee seems fine, except when the book is about wine, which requires a license to be served. But these are minor issues. The basic problem is simply that most people don’t expect to get any immediate benefit from reading a wine book.

I'm one of the limited group that enjoys reading almost any wine book, but haven't found many others who share this enthusiasm. Even my wine loving friends have had trouble getting through books I've carefully chosen specifically for them. For too long, I did them the disservice of thinking that they weren’t really serious readers. When my children reached a certain age, however, I realized that the problem was something else. I gave my kids various wine books and they tried to read them. But they quickly lost interest, telling me the books were way too complicated and just didn’t give them any practical advice they could use right away. It was as if I’d given them an assignment, rather than something fun to read.

My kids could easily see that the books I'd given them were written by authors with an astonishing amount of expertise. But that was more intimidating than encouraging. In fact, they told me something I'd later hear from others over and over again: what they found most useful was simply the information they’d picked up at the family table and, for whatever reason, the books I’d given them didn’t really consider that kind of information very important.

Looking back, I realized that I hadn’t actually read an entry-level wine guide from start to finish myself. Many of the introductory guides I purchased (yes, I tried more than one) were discarded as being too simplistic to take seriously. Others were quickly relegated to the shelf “for future reference” because there was too much detail in them to absorb all at once. In fact, the books I’d used most often weren’t introductory guides at all. Most were simply wine encyclopedias I used to research a particular type of wine just before or shortly after I’d consumed it. The others were similar reference books I’d consulted to learn more about wines I'd found particularly interesting.

As I thought about this, it became clear that what I’d learned from experience was much more important than what I learned about wine from books. The books had informed me about various wine regions, their leading producers and what others found in the subtle aromas and flavors of their most famous wines. They educated me about how the weather had affected various regions in different years, which wines the experts considered the leading wines of the world and, mostly, how much more other people knew about wine than I did. But these weren’t the things I needed to know to get the most out of wine on a day-to-day basis. In fact, they actually distracted me and got in the way of learning what I needed to know.

Why? Because it’s what I’ve learned to avoid that helps me get the most out of a wine. Am I drinking it at the wrong time, at the wrong temperature or with the wrong food? Am I sharing it with the right people? Will I regret drinking it later because it wasn’t really worth what I paid for it or left a bad taste in my mouth for some other reason?

In order to answer these questions it's important to have a basic idea of what a wine will taste like before you drink it. For this, the detailed descriptions of specific wines contained in many wine books and wine reviews aren’t particularly helpful. There are just too many wines out there to remember them all. What’s most helpful is knowing the broad characteristics of a wine. These are usually evident just from looking at the bottle, noticing it’s shape and color, and reading the label to find out where the wine comes from, how much alcohol is in it and what grape varieties it’s made from.

Learning these basics and how to use them is really all that’s necessary for consumers to find their own comfort zone and start finding the details for themselves. Then discovering the details is something most consumers really enjoy. It’s what lets them build up a personal understanding of wine--one that fits their own taste preferences and gives them a basis for evaluating what someone else says, so they can figure out if it makes sense for them personally.

At first, my decision to concentrate on the experience of learning about wine only made me understand more completely why others hadn’t tried this approach. Since each reader's level of understanding would differ, it was hard to know where to start. How could I avoid boring some readers by rehashing basics they already knew and not risk losing others by skipping over essential preliminaries? How could I concentrate on mistakes and still have the upbeat tone everyone told me was essential for a self help book? Would it do any good to teach people what not to do if in the end they didn’t feel as though they knew what to do?

As it turned out, the decision to concentrate on the way people experience wine provided answers to these questions by itself. As I reached out to others to learn about their early wine experiences, I gradually saw that the problems people shared in learning about wine, and the instructive stories and themes that most resonated with them, weren’t unfamiliar to me, they just weren't seen much in wine guides. To a surprising degree, they ultimately involved personal feelings of insecurity, status, competitiveness, fear of failure and other timeless issues of love and loss and our search for identity that don't fit comfortably into a book envisioned simply as a survey of wine knowledge. But with attention to these issues it became possible to address the subject as a journey that begins deep in the mind as it concentrates on a single sip of wine and ends in the vast global dialectic between winemakers and consumers. It's a journey people can relate to whether they've been through it themselves or not. If they've already shared the experiences, they enjoy remembering how they confronted various obstacles and enjoy seeing how others struggled with them as well. If they haven't been through the process, they appreciate getting a heads-up that can spare them from embarrassing mistakes as they chart their own course.

It’s easy to make silly mistakes with wine, but it isn’t hard to learn how to avoid them. What’s hard is trying to memorize all the mind-numbing minutia that most wine enthusiasts love to collect and sincerely believe to be essential to the enjoyment of wine. But while these details can add an extra dimension to the experience, knowing them isn't essential to our ability to enjoy any wine. And memorizing details is clearly the wrong place to start learning about wine because the details only make sense once the fundamentals are thoroughly understood.

What confuses many people is this: Learning the fundamentals isn't that difficult, but it doesn't make wine itself "simple" or "easy", which is what many wine books (at least on the cover) promise to do. Wine is complicated for good reasons and the real fundamentals are concepts that help you handle its complexity with assurance. Then its abundant variety is precisely what makes wine exciting and fun. So a wine guide shouldn’t give you a few handy tips to help you choose your wines quickly. That always involves shutting yourself off from wine’s diversity, which is the very quality that makes it uniquely suitable for so many different occasions.

For similar reasons, one shouldn't try to learn about wine by imitation. The purpose of a wine guide shouldn’t be to teach you a set of tricks so you can pretend to be a wine connoisseur or sound like a wine critic. There’s actually no point in even learning what a great critic sees in a wine until you have some idea what you experience yourself and have a context to place the critic’s opinion in. (There’s even less point in trying to sound like someone else when you don’t really have any idea what you’re talking about, of course.) Ultimately, the purpose of a wine guide should be to help its readers learn about wine for themselves, so they get to know what they want and can expect from it personally. It's something that requires only a bit of direction and practice, not the memorization of prodigious amounts of information or the mastery of clever stratagems.

Yet the belief that understanding wine requires the accumulation of a prodigious amount of obscure knowledge survives. And millions never learn the few straightforward basics that can connect them with its deepest pleasures precisely because of what they see in the books that are meant to teach them about wine. Books that simply survey the vast compendium of wine knowledge that's been accumulated over the centuries can be useful for wine enthusiasts, but they reinforce the popular idea that these aficionados love their own superior knowledge more than their wine. Between the books that set people up for failure by oversimplifying wine and those that overcomplicate it, it's no wonder so many people believe that anyone who gets excited about wine is just a pretentious victim of self-deception.

That's why I focused my research for The Persistent Observer’s Guide to Wine on the attitudes and experiences of ordinary people trying to understand wine. In that research, I found many people who were happy to share their opinions (pro and con), but weren’t very interested in considering alternative views. But a surprisingly large number of people from different backgrounds were open-minded and actively supported my efforts to take conventional wisdom with a grain of salt and look more deeply into the issues. They provided critically valuable help by telling me what they wanted to know, what advice was most helpful and which of the stories and explanations I used resonated with them most.

Because they wrestled through the issues with me, I think of these people as “persistent observers” and they're the type of people I envisioned being my readers as I wrote The Persistent Observer’s Guide to Wine. They aren’t likely to be the first to voice an opinion or to believe that anyone can ever have the last word. But they enjoy being challenged to think about things in different ways, and know the difference between a cheap shot and a thoughtful provocation. For them, uncertainty is a given, engaging with it an adventure, and managing it successfully a source of great satisfaction.

Not everyone fits this profile. There are many who believe they already know all they need to know about wine (whether that's a great deal or nothing at all), and there are others who will never have enough confidence to believe they could ever make the right choices about wine themselves. There are even many who are afraid that learning to make their own choices about wine will be an unwelcome threat to whoever is making wine choices for them now. I've talked to many of these people and I know how difficult it is for them to change their attitude about wine. But I think there are enough "persistent observers" out there to make writing a guide book that speaks to them worthwhile.

Maybe you are one of them. If so, I hope you'll enjoy the book and especially the wines you drink after you've finished it.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this wine guide. Other wine guides I have read quickly became confusing with different characteristics thrown at the reader of grapes, location, age, storage etc. Bary is very good at simplifying the whole experience of wine tasting. The author clearly explains why new wine-drinkers experience such difficulty finding and picking out good wines and then walks you through how to find good wine for yourself. It is clear the author knows a lot about wine and is able to explain to everyday wine drinkers how to choose good wine. After all, most of us are not experts on wine (although we often like to pretend we are). Other wine guides I have come across often only talk about the most expensive and notable wines available. Bary takes a more realistic approach and knows most people buy expensive wines for special occasions, but there can be good wine that is inexpensive for everyday drinking. It was often I went to wine tastings or even to the wine section in a store and ended up completely overwhelmed and confused. J.P Bary simplifies the experience and have already noticed myself taking note of various wine characteristics without realizing it. A few times, friends at parties were talking about wine and how confusing it can be and I found myself recommending the book to them. I would recommend this book to anyone who drinks wine - whether you want to become an expert, just starting out drinking wine or are just curious to know a little more about it.

[SouthernGirl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading The Persistent Observer's Guide to Wine! There are so many wines and so little time to try them all. The author, like a kind friend, walks along with you to navigate all the confusing aspects of choosing just the right wine. The most important lesson I learned from this book is to trust myself (not all the ratings or the experts)! It is really about enjoying what you drink. So many factors go into producing a really good wine, and it was interesting to discover how the growing elements, proper ageing, and aeration affect taste. I also found the explanation of grape varieties and the wine/food pairings sections to be very good. This book sits with some of my best and most-used cookbooks, as I am sure I will reference it many more times in the future!

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

[Tricia Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great little book to refresh your wine knowledge if you think you already know everything or increase your knowledge if you're just beginning to love wine. There are no check-lists on what you should or shouldn't do, but general information to help you form your own opinions. I liked all of Bary's simply written, but detailed sections. The statement I really want to remember is that "if you don't take the time to experience wines fully and respect their subtle differences, your understanding will only be superficial and the facts you learn of limited value." That is totally my belief too, but I have never been able to put it into words like Bary has done throughout his book. This is a basic wine book; it's the only one you'll probably ever need or want on your shelf - except the wine, of course.

[Patricia Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Received this book as a giveaway from GoodReads..Thanks so much.

enjoyed reading this book. found the information pretty straight foreward and added to my knowledge.
I think that tasting wine daily, if possible, at tasting whether it is at your home or at a commercial business is part of educating your palate. eventually you will start to develop what you feel is perfect for you to drink. I especially liked the appendix in the back of the book. love the wine and food pairings. nice to have when you want to open a bottle and have the right food stuff. good book. will recommend to my friends.

[Monica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I knew one thing about wine, that I like sweet white wines. After reading the book, I know one thing about wine, that I like sweet white wines. There were mutliple times through out the book that the author talks about how to know things about wine without sounding like a wine snob. I felt like I was reading what a wine snob would say. That's when I could follow the line of thought. The three appendix were the most informative part of the book. Maybe I am too much of a beginner, in the wine world, for this level of a book...

[Darlene Ran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often enjoy a glass of red wine. I know what I like but have felt intimidated, at times, in choosing it. After having read The Persistent Observer's Guide to Wine, I feel more knowledgable not only about wine but also about rating scales for wine, pairing food and wine and serving wine.

The author's writing style is somewhat conversational, and one does not feel as he is reading a text book.

I received this book in a Goodreads Giveaway and am glad I did. It will take its place with other books I like and reference .

[Denée · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book through a goodreads giveaway and thought it would be like every other book about wine, I was wrong. Gone were the long lists of what I must memorize and in its place was a conversation about what I like and don't like.
Well thought out, well written and I am so excited to add this to my shelf of well loved books. Thank you goodreads and thank you J.P.Bary!

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a wine lover I was happy to win this book as a Goodreads giveaway. It was a great resource about different wines as well as a great tutorial about the many aspects of wine. Well written and I will certainly enjoy going back to revisit different sections of this book.

[Helene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book for a newbie trying to learn about wine. I won this book on Goodreads. I wanted to give it to my son in law whose dream is to work serving guests at a winery when he retires.
I think he can use this book to help new wine drinkers.

[Portia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this guide very interesting. Mainly, I believe, because it didn't demand that one follows set in stone rules. I'm glad I read it.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting