Wine For Dummies 4th Edition by Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan
88 out of 100

Published Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Overview

Wine for Dummies 4th Edition is a surprising book. I would have thought by now I would have become pretty bored with books covering the same old info. After all, Wine for Dummies is geared to wine lovers who are at the start of their journey. Its off the wall style made me smile quite a bit and I thoroughly enjoyed some of the chapters.

Wine for Dummies is a very thorough and accessible book for the novice and gives some great tips for the intermediate enthusiast. But much of the content is available in a number of books so is a bit repetitive for the hardened enthusiast. That said I found some parts of the book really useful.

For example wine is made all over the world and therefore covers a range of different languages which make it difficult for me, and I imagine many others, to pronounce all the wine terms and regions correctly. Wine for Dummies has an excellent appendix on pronunciation of key words and they use this throughout the book. It also has one of the best sections on America I have read. This is no doubt due to the book being written for and by Americans. As such the book is very American centric. Prices are quoted in US dollars and regions are covered from the US point of view rather than the European of Pacific point of view. This is not a problem and gives an interesting insight into the way Americans view wine. But it can be a bit annoying at times.

Divided into 8 parts with 21 chapters and 400 pages it is not for the faint hearted. I read the book cover to cover but it would also make a fine book for dipping into. Part 1 and 2 cover the normal basics to wine such as how to taste and the different types of wine, but it is in a fun way with chapter titles such as Pinot Envy! Parts 2,3 and 4 look at the old, new world and sparkling and fortified wines respectively. It also contains the best description I have come across for the difference between Old world and New World wines, that at last has moved beyond the stylistic difference from the 1980s that so many people still think are relevant. By the time you have completed Part 4 you have covered 300 of the 400 pages, with the Part 6 giving additional resources and info on wine such as wine and food matching (5 pages only(, wine ratings (6 pages), buying wine (15 pages which I thought was very good). Part 7 is a bit like a FAQ with ten common questions and 10 myths. Leaving Part 8 the appendix, with the excellent pronunciation guide and glossary of terms.

The thing I didn’t like was the constant reference to other wine books that Ed McCarthy and Mary Ewing-Mulligan had written such as their France or Italy Wine for Dummies.

All in all I found the book a bit basic for me but ideally suited to a novice or even an intermediate wine lover. There is more to this book than simply for the dummies of this world. In the end, considering the audience for the book, I rated it 88/100.