Product Description

An unintimidating guide to France¹s best and best-value wines, hot new winemakers, and up-and-coming wine regions, from one of the world's premiere authorities on the subject. Comprehensive yet accessible listings of the top producers within each of France's 10 wine regions, including star ratings, price ranges, vintage information, producer contact details, and crib sheets, plus a glossary, index, and one-page crash course on ordering wine in French. Compact size makes this book your ideal personal shopper, whether browsing wine shops, perusing restaurant wine lists, or traveling the wine routes of France. Friedrich's 'A Wine and Food Guide to the Loire' won Veuve Clicquot, James Beard, and Julia Child awards.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #419979 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
With their emphasis on tasting notes and vintages, shopping guides can be hard slogging, but three new ones offer absorbing reading. Foremost among them is The Wines of France: The Essential Guide for Savvy Shoppers (Ten Speed Press) by Jacqueline Friedrich, whose last book, The Wine and Food Guide to the Loire, published in 1996, cries out for a new edition. In this book she embraces France region by region, offering opinionated reviews of producers and concise demystifications of the French nomenclature that bedevils American consumers. Ms. Friedrich does not try to be complete, but she clearly understands the trends that are reshaping the French wine industry. She shows a marked preference for what she calls hypernatural wines, those made with the least intervention possible, yet she is sympathetic to styles that would seem to be diametrically opposite, like the plush, oaky garagiste wines of St.-Émilion. - Eric Asimov --New York Times, 12.06.06

About the Author
Jacqueline Friedrich is an American who splits her time between Paris and the Loire Valley. In addition to authoring the multiple award-winning A Wine and Food Guide to the Loire, she contributes to Hugh Johnson's wine guides and writes regularly for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and most of the usual suspects in publications devoted to lifestyle, wine, food, and travel

Customer Reviews

The one to get and give.
Whether you are a debutante at choosing wines or a serious collector, this book is just what you've been wishing someone would write! Jacqueline Friedrich is already well-known in the food and wine writing world but her latest book is not only a handy "pocket tool" of a wine guide, it makes you feel like you've been given the keys to the cellar. Wow, just leafing through it as I walked back from the mailbox, I was grinning at many of the cleverly described entries and the way it works, with the crib sheets at the end of each region and the how-to-order-wine-in-a-restaurant appendix.

Get one for yourself and one for each of your friends whether they will be going to France any time soon or just wishing they were while opening a bottle of one of Jackie's recommended vintages.