Aihuxn.144 net.cooks utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!floyd!houxi!ihnss!ihuxn!otto Fri Feb 19 23:47:21 1982 Wine books This is (I think) the first submission to net.wine (aka net.cooks, until a name can be agreed upon). I think all oenophiles should be aware of a book of *great* use when buying or ordering wine. In Europe it is called *Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book*, and it contains a summary of available wines, including a ranking of vineyards by overall quality and a year-by-year analysis of wines from each vineyard. This book is simply crammed with information, but is small enough to really fit into a pocket. Since I began relying on this book, the wines I have been drinking have been of uniformly high quality, and my enjoyment of them has similarly risen. This book is issued every year; the analysis of years to buy for holding or buy for drinking, vineyard by vineyard, is changed each year as the wines change. In the United States this book is published by Simon and Schuster, under the name *Hugh Johnson's Pocket Encyclopedia of Wine*. Please note that often book stores in the US do not know that this book has yearly editions. I have often found one- or two-year-old copies of this book in bookstores when I have been looking for the current, up-to-date edition. The last time this happened the manager of the bookstore I was in (Dalton's) looked up the book in his trade documentation and said he could not find any reference to a 1981 edition of the book. I called up S&S in New York and asked them about it; they told me that there was indeed a 1981 edition and gave me the book identifying number. With this info I ordered the book directly from S&S (cost: about $5). When I gave this number to Dalton's they ordered the book and stocked their shelves with it. I bring this to everyone's attention simply because I think it important to get what you pay for, i.e., up-to-date information about wine. Books about California wines are not as good, partly because of the constant changes in wine production taking place there. In Europe vineyards grow the same kinds of grapes year after year and employ the same production techniques year after year. They have figured out by long experience what works best for them, and each vineyard has established a track record that can be (more or less) relied upon. In California, however, a great deal of experimentation is still taking place as each vineyard plays around with grapes and techniques. Sometimes a wine that was first judged ordinary matures into something special, but by then the vineyard has switched both grapes and production so that the same wine no longer exists in following years. Some vineyards are so new that there simply has been no track record of any substance to speak of. Example California citations from Hugh Johnson's book: SMOTHERS VINEYARD: Santa Clara/Santa Cruz. Table. Tiny winery owned by T.V. comic made remarkable first wines, esp. late-harvest gewuerztraminer. First reds due 1980. HEITZ VINEYARD: Napa. Table (and dessert) Four stars. In many eyes the first name in California. An inspired individual wine-maker who has set standards for the whole industry. His Cabernets (esp. "Martha's Vineyard") are dark, deep and emphatic, his best Chardonnays peers of Montrachet. MATANZAS CREEK VINEYARD: Sonoma. Table? First wines ('79) are Gewuerztraminer and very good Pinot Blanc. Chardonnay and Cabernet to come. Apparently Hugh Johnson was asked to put together a Pocket Encyclopedia of California Wine, but declined because he isn't able to keep up with all that is happening there. He did ask his friend Bob Thompson to assemble such a book, and S&S has published it. It does not have the same year-by-year analysis that Hugh's book has (partly, I suspect, for the reasons outlined above), but it does discuss all the important California vineyards in some detail and gives the best years of the best wines (but not broken down into years for saving and years for drinking). I do not know if the Thompson book will have yearly editions. Another pocket wine book I have discovered does go into deeper analysis of California wines. This is *The Connoisseur's Handbook of California Wines* by C. Olken, E. Singer, and N. Roby, published by Alfred Knopf. Again, I am not sure whether there will be yearly editions. One use I have made of these books has been with the ordering of wine in restaurants. In a restaurant with a wine list that goes on for pages it is often too time consuming to look up likely wines in the books, one by one, determine the best years for drinking, ask the waiter or waitress to check to see if they have one of those years (they usually don't), then look up other likely looking wines, etc., until a reasonably good and drinkable wine is selected. *However*, I have often found that such restaurants will allow me to take a complimentary copy of their wine list home which I can analyze in the privacy of my den. I mark this list up with the vineyard ranking information and year-by-year analysis found in the books. Then I take this list with me the next time I go to that restaurant. Armed with this I can quickly ask for the years in stock of three or four appropriate wines and immediately choose the best of their offering. This has worked very well. George Otto Bell Labs, Indian Hill ihnss!ihuxi!otto ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.