Product Description

The Essential Insider’s Guide to the world of wine If you are a connoisseur looking for the inside track on what's going on in the world of wine right now this is essential reading. Find out all the latest news, from the recent harvest to new vintages, great finds and the rising stars amongst producers. With tips on investing wisely so you can snap up this year's best bargains and save money (or alternatively make it!) - we've sniffed out the best wines to invest in. Top ten lists, hot tips, wine science and more make this a tantalising and robust read which will appeal to any serious wine drinker's palate. Winner Best Wine Guide & Wine Book in the World at the Gourmand Awards, 2004 & 2005 and short-listed Best UK Wine Guide 2006.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #217712 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

About the Author
Tom Stevenson has written about wine for almost 30 years, with 23 critically acclaimed books and 29 awards to his name, including Wine Writer of the Year three times and The Wine Literary Award, America’s only lifetime achievement award for wine writers. Tom lives in Oxfordshire.

Customer Reviews

Not a lot of use
Firstly - I think it amazing that Mr Stevenson should review his own book, not spell out the fact that he is the author, and give the book five stars.

Secondly, it is pretty shoddy to suggest that Amazon customers should thumb through copies in bookshops, when they intend to buy the book from Amazon.

Thirdly, it is quite true that hardly any of the wines can be found in the UK. What is wrong with pointing this out?

Fourthly, I am not at all sure that chasing after 'cutting edge' wine is altogether a good thing (unless, as Mr Stevenson and some of the commentators rather sneeringly suggest, money is no object). Is wine an appropriate medium for high fashion?

In all, I find this book rather less impressive than the author does.

Great Book
As Tom Stevenson points out in his reply - this book is not and was never intended to be a wine buyers guide. What it does do is provide an invaluable annual update on the world of wine for people who are seriously interested in the subject - not just those in the trade.It is a unique, ground breaking annual that should be on the bookshelves of all those with more than just a passing interest in the world of wine.

Not a guide for buying wines
My experience with this book is that it is more or less useless as a guide to what to buy. It's really a wine industry yearbook - yields, hectalitres produced here, hectares under vine there - all sorts of stats and reports from the wine-producing and marketing world.

For a wine buying guide, give this a wide berth and head in the direction of Oz Clarke.

Better still, DIY. I've given up buying wine guides.

If you have a PDA, phone or other handheld that you always carry around & will do spreadsheets or text, save yourself the cost of a book and make up your own guide. Just rate the the stuff that you actually buy from the shelves of the shops you go to regularly or wine you get a taste of from someone else's bottle. Score XX/20 plus a brief note is all you need, along with the i.d. from the label. Dig your gizmo out as you stand in front of all those bottles ... this way I have discovered loads of wines that I now buy over and over again that have never featured in any guide. They can't taste them all, can they?

The merit of this DIY system is that if you buy a BOGOF, 2fer or, particularly, one that is usually priced more than you like to spend, you can note it [if it's any good] and build up a data base that will provide you with a list of wines that you like that are, from time to time, temporarily in your price range. A great eg of this is Nero d'Avola Sicilian red from Tesco. This is usually £8. Priced at £3.99 I was happy to give it a go. It was terrific. Well, I've just discovered it's an IWC Silver Medallist - at £8. At half price, it's a steal.

So now it's in my data as one to buy when they run another offer on it, which they will. A book will not give you this info. Worse, they often feature a wine - or even a whole range of wines - that never actually make it onto the stock list of the supermaket. One of Oz Clarke's Supermarket Superheroes suffered this fate at Morrisons. His purple prose was wasted on a range of wines that didn't exist! The replacements were plonk.