Jancis Robinson's Wine Course: A Guide to the World of Wine

In this completely updated and expanded edition of her international bestseller, Jancis Robinson, one of the world's most respected wine authorities, offers an engaging introduction to the enjoyment of wine.

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.

Reviews

"An extraordinarily good wine education book." -- Wineskinny.com, June/July 2006

"Witty, brilliant, authoritative" -- Robert M. Parker, Jr., The Wine Advocate

"She has an encyclopedic grasp of her subject and doesn’t put a foot wrong...a splendid introduction to wine." -- Decanter Magazine

"As elegant and meticulously laid out as a posh wine shop, this companion to the BBC series of the same title by Financial Times wine columnist Robinson brims with the kind of facts, advice and trivia that will likely enthrall aspiring oenophiles but may overwhelm dilettantes. Robinson, a congenial raconteur, divides this course into four long chapters, each providing a deep immersion into a different facet of the wine world, and each punctuated by splashy photographs and charts. "Getting the Most Out of Wine" demonstrates how to open, serve and order the stuff; "How Wine is Made" reveals how the grapes are harvested, fermented and bottled; the last chapters catalogue the hundreds of varieties of wine and the world's vineyards, from those in France and Italy to less prominent regions in Argentina, South Africa and New Zealand. The book is bursting with short glossaries and sidebars, addressing the esoteric (wine-scoring systems) and the pragmatic (pronunciation; varieties of corkscrews). A short vintage guide and an index are included, but no comprehensive glossary. Readers with income and patience enough for the trial and error that a wine education requires will find that this manual is best read over time, in conjunction with regular samplings of the wines showcased." Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Jancis Robinson is an internationally acclaimed wine writer and broadcaster. The only British journalist to have qualified as a Master of Wine, she has worked as wine columnist for the Sunday Times, the New York-based Wine Spectator, and the Financial Times. She is the author of more than ten books, including The Oxford Companion to Wine.