The Cork Jester's Guide to Wine: An Entertaining Companion for Tasting It, Ordering It and Enjoying It

by Jennifer Rosen

From choosing a bottle of wine to bring to a dinner party to ordering from a restaurant wine list, many Americans are intimidated by the unpronounceable names and highbrow image of wine. Jennifer Rosen arms readers with the knowledge necessary to approach wine with confidence rather than fear. Through entertaining anecdotes, readers learn how to order with ease; what terms like "oak" and "earth" mean; what to expect from a sommelier; how to tame the red wine headache; how to cook with wine; storage and glassware tips; making wine at home; and much more. Witty and irreverent, Rosen sets novices at ease while delighting connoisseurs with her adventures and sophisticated palate.

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 7, 2006

Reviews

[anonymousreader]

read

[C.A. Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read! I learned a lot about different kinds of grapes, different regions, the way wine should be served, how you can cook with it, and even how to get a red wine stain out of a white carpet. Sometimes her humor was a little hard to follow- I think I only understood about half of her jokes. But she did try to liven up what could otherwise have been a boring textbook with interesting anecdotes.

The biggest down side is that I still finished the book confused about how to read labels. She had a chapter explaining what tends to appear on a label (the grape in highest percentage, the region, etc) but then when she gave examples, most of them were in different languages so I couldn't tell which were the region, which were the vineyard, and which were the grape. I knew more about the grapes whose names I already recognized but I still can't distinguish grape from vineyard from region when looking at a label.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm reading this book maybe at a chapter a month. I really like that she jokes about wine and takes away some of the snobbery, and the basic terms used to describe the types of wine. Most of all, it just makes me thirsty.

[J]

yum