Wine Hack: Wine Education that Starts with Your Mouth, Not with Your Head

by Jeffrey Schiller

A deliciously unpretentious guide to understanding wine and finding ones you’ll love.   Why is wine so difficult? It might be because those in the industry have long used ridiculous tasting notes to describe wine, even though these descriptions fail to encapsulate all that a wine offers. Notes of blackberries, tobacco, and leather . . . How does this odd list help you decide if you will like a wine?  Wine Hack offers a new way forward. Learn wine like the true professionals learn wine. lots of tasting! This interactive book asks you to taste along, with everyday food, drinks, and widely available wines, to learn the four attributes that describe all wines, and even learn a few tricks for pairing wine with food. This is the first book on wine that starts with your mouth, not your head. Teach your mouth about wine and you will learn to find wines you love on a regular basis, no matter how snooty that wine shop guy is.

Genres: Nonfiction

141 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 9, 2016

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how unpretentious this book is. It's trying to help bridge the gap between wine novices ("The wine was red, and I liked it.") and wine snobs (oh, say, the wine equivalent of the J. Peterman catalog, with notes of apricot, durian, cat urine, and old growth forest). It gives a simple framework (Body, Oak, Sweet, Sour) to gauge wines.

I plan to follow up on the shopping list provided that's meant to inculcate the ideas, and follow that up with a wine night with close friends.

The fifth star is missing because I just feel like this needs to go a bit deeper in examples. I wished, for example, for a more complete description of wine "texture" with tasting examples, and more sweet/sour/salty/spicy pairing examples. Still, I enjoyed the book, and will probably reread chapters as I learn more.

[Taylor Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great book on wine. It was accessible and easy to understand. The information was relevant for wine enthusiast just beginning their journey. I would highly recommend it and will likely read it again!

[Mariko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some solid advice, I like his system of BOSS (body, oak, sweet, sour). I didn't read all of diatribes, but I got behind the gist of his points.