Exploring & Tasting Wine: A wine course with digressions

Exploring & Tasting Wine: A wine course with digressions

Product: 90066000151
 
Exploring & Tasting Wine: A wine course with digressions

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Description

Explore the pleasures of wine with our award-winning Wine School. Whether you are starting to explore or building your experience, our book gives you the tools to recognise, remember and enjoy wine.

Featuring a foreword by Emma Thompson, our book focusses on the classic grape varieties that from the backbone of great wines the world over. For each grape there are innovative practical pages that best describe vital factors such as aroma, flavour and balance. Background pages to help broaden your understanding and discussions by our Masters of Wine and other experts.

Exploring & Tasting Wine is from people who teach wine every day, and who know the questions wine-lovers, both novices and experienced, want to ask. Because we do not believe that wine is a cut-and-dried subject. And we know that in the end, a wine can be summed up in one short sentence: ‘Is it good to drink?’

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Critics reviews

Decanter
The design is terrific, the presentation fresh… it’s fun and stimulating. Clever design and presentation packs a huge amount of information, well written, without any feeling of indigestion. A star buy.
Margaret Rand, Decanter, Sept 2015 Read more
Other
I was really impressed by a book called ‘Exploring & Tasting Wine: A Wine Course with Digressions’, published by wine merchants Berry Bros & Rudd. I think that this book provides anyone learning about wine with a great new way of thinking about any given grape (and, by extension, any wine they taste). Exploring and Tasting Wine’ certainly breaks up a lot of information into digestible chunks, and finds a new way to communicate some of the criteria needed to assess wines with any degree of accuracy. If you want a visual metaphor (hey, it’s all the rage, apparently) you might think of this book as the training wheels a newbie to the wine world needs before they pedal off to acquire their very own expertise. I have to admit that I often describe wines in my aide-memoire tasting notes via the use of diagrams, I just don’t publish these impressions as this is not the accepted way of transmitting information about wines. Maybe, inspired by this book, I should re-think my position.
Natasha Hughes MW, natashahughes.com ClerkenwellboyEC1 (top food commentator) in Observer Food Monthly: Exploring & Tasting Wine top of the pile of his favourite new food and wine books in his 112,000-follower Instagram feed. Read more
Victoria Moore
It is beautifully produced, very cleverly written so that it feels contemporary and fresh, delivering information succinctly and clearly. I particularly like the fact that, unusually for a wine book, it succeeds in making wine feel part of the real world. It has been carefully marshalled into shape to be appropriate for the 21st century, and it offers a genuine guiding voice, a sense that the information has been properly synthesized. I recommend buying it.
Victoria Moore, Telegraph, Sept 2015 Read more

When is a wine ready to drink?

We provide drinking windows for all our wines. Alongside the drinking windows there is a bottle icon and a maturity stage. Bear in mind that the best time to drink a wine does also depend on your taste.

Not ready

These wines are very young. Whilst they're likely to have lots of intense flavours, their acidity or tannins may make them feel austere. Although it isn't "wrong" to drink these wines now, you are likely to miss out on a lot of complexity by not waiting for them to mature.

Ready - youthful

These wines are likely to have plenty of fruit flavours still and, for red wines, the tannins may well be quite noticeable. For those who prefer younger, fruitier wines, or if serving alongside a robust meal, these will be very enjoyable. If you choose to hold onto these wines, the fruit flavours will evolve into more savoury complexity.

Ready - at best

These wines are likely to have a beautiful balance of fruit, spice and savoury flavours. The acidity and tannins will have softened somewhat, and the wines will show plenty of complexity. For many, this is seen as the ideal time to drink and enjoy these wines. If you choose to hold onto these wines, they will become more savoury but not necessarily more complex.

Ready - mature

These wines are likely to have plenty of complexity, but the fruit flavours will have been almost completely replaced by savoury and spice notes. These wines may have a beautiful texture at this stage of maturity. There is lots to enjoy when drinking wines at this stage. Most of these wines will hold in this window for a few years, though at the very end of this drinking window, wines start to lose complexity and decline.