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Wine book?


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We are having some guests over that I would like to impress with some facts about wine. Does anyone have any good tips on how I can improve my wine tasting skills quickly on my own? Perhaps anyone knows of a suitable book that has helped them? Once I heard someone saying Mill or something, any other books? thanks you so much

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Honestly, the best way to improve your wine-tasting skills is drinking lots of wine.

 

Next thing to do is learn the flavours that go with certain grapes. So, flowers with gewurztraminer, or cherry with pinot noir, say, or ribena and shiraz. It's obviously not universal, but it's a good start.

 

Although, really, don't try and impress people with wine pretentiousness. Just have nice wines.

 

It's not quite a book, but these: http://www.nezduvin.co.uk/ are good. Not cheap, mind you. But good. Wine tasting is most about the smells, and this really helps you isolate the kinds of smells from certain grapes, and therefore wines.

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as Andy said the way to improve your wine tasting skills is drink wine. Whilst each grape variety has its own flavours, dont forget the smell. Bear in mind also some people dont like certain grape types - for instance I dont like Viognier that much but really like Chenin Blanc. There isn't really a book that can teach you this its experience and trying as everyone's sense of taste/smell is different.

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I have done as you said and have been drinking a lot of wine during the weekend to accompany the books , it is nice to pay attention to all the flavours and smells. I was surprised to find Chilean wine to be extra good value for money. I am a bit of a newbie on the field so its nice explore the world of wine.

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Working in the business, I was thrown in at the deep end as I knew nothing about wines when I started. As the others have said, it's all about personal tastes and perceptions. What you smell and taste may be different to someone else. So the best way to learn is by drinking it.

 

I would say, go with a factual book about regions, grapes etc and try to avoid peoples opinion books. I almost never agree with them and sometimes think we are tasting completely different wines.

 

Maybe keep a diary/blog of what you have tried and enjoyed and you'll probably start finding trends.

 

Completely agree about the Chilean wines as well. Some of my favourites are Chilean and great value for money.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Only by drinking wine I think my tasting skills are not profound enough to make any intelligent comments. The books have helped me pay attention to different things so they were great tips, thanks! I think I am going to drink a lot of wine for christmas, all this reading has really given me so many things to combine wine with. And I can even talk with my daughter now more who loves the topic

 

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the only thing I'll add dont be scared to try 'unfashionable' regions. For instance Austria/Hungary are unfashionable, but they do produce high quality and exciting wines. There are areas of France that get tutted over as they dont fall into the Bordeaux/Burgundy/Champagne sphere. In my experience wines from the Loire/SW France can compete in terms of value and quality with that sphere, and in fact surpass the supposed standard bearers (In my opinion 95% of Bordeaux is rubbish)

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