Simon & Schuster's Beginner's Guide to Understanding Wine

by Michael Schuster

Appealing to the amateur wine lover as well as the aspiring professional taster, The Simon & Schuster Beginner's Guide to Understanding Wine is written to be eminently readable. Michael Schuster's expertise is combined with a well-developed sense of humor, which allows him to avoid -- and have fun with -- the snobbery and occasional absurdity of tasting and understanding wine. This beautiful and accessible guide progresses in three sections. The first explores the techniques of wine tasting -- from knowing what to look for to describing and recording a judgment. Readers are encouraged to experiment and develop their own tasting methods. The second section discusses the major grapes and their wines. The author explains how to discern between wines considered to be "classic" and those that are not, what to expect from the different grapes and their blends, and the different wine-producing areas. He suggests specific wines to taste for comparison and as examples of style and quality. He tops off this section with a chapter covering fortified wines, Cognac, Armagnac, and malt whisky. The final section of the book is devoted to the practicalities of wine and wine handling, serving and decanting, storage, and record-keeping. An extensive, original index provides an at-a-glance identification chart of the grapes used in all the major wine names. The Simon & Schuster Beginner's Guide to Understanding Wine is a friendly, lavishly illustrated introduction to the fundamentals of wine appreciation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 1991

About the author

Michael Schuster is acknowledged internationally as an expert wine taster, wine writer and wine teacher with over 25 years experience. He studied tasting in Bordeaux, where he gained the University Tasting Diploma, and in the early eighties he was instrumental in creating an award-winning wine retail business. Since 1986 he has worked independently as a writer and lecturer, and has run his own wine school in north London.

He is a regular contributor to The World of Fine Wine, writing their annual Bordeaux en primeur report, an occasional contributor to Decanter Magazine, and his highly praised book, Essential Winetasting (Mitchell Beazley), won all three major wine book prizes in the UK in 2001. It was described by Bill Nesto MW (Beverage Business USA) as “The most effective winetasting manual ever written.”, and as “explaining the mechanics of taste and tasting better than any book I’ve seen.” (Richard Ehrlich, The Independent on Sunday).

As well as sitting on the board of The Wine Society, Michael is a member of the regular panel of speakers on Sotheby's wine courses, he judges at international wine competitions, chairs the Burgundy panel at Decanter’s World Wine Awards, and lectures to amateurs and professionals in the UK and abroad. His own wine courses range from a widely acclaimed “Beginners Course”, via “The Fine Wines of France”, to a much sought after three day “Blind Tasting” event for trainee Masters of Wine, which takes place each May.

For several years now Michael has been working as a consultant for Bordeaux Index, one of the UK’s leading wine merchants.