ken@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman) (10/31/86)
I strongly recommend the recent book "American Wines" by Anthony Blue. His style is very straightforward and he has a long section on what one looks for in the different styles of wine. This is followed by information on many hundreds of wineries and their winemakers, plus descriptions and ratings of a tremendous number (literally, thousands) of wines. The descriptions are straightforward and to my palate, at least, very accurate. The book is very current and many of the recommended wines are still available. Also interesting is a magazine called "International Wine Review" (about $4/issue, 6 times a year). This publishes results of blind tastings of currently marketed wines and accepts no advertising. Some of the results are remarkable, like $8 wines that beat $60 wines. Once you start to drink really good wines, it gets much easier to understand what one looks for in a wine. Plus, it is a lot of fun to open a fantastic (cheap) bottle of something the store didn't even realize was good. If anyone wants their address, I can post it. Unlike some magazines they have no extreme biases (like Parker, who you may have heard of -- he only likes "immense wines with layers and layers of unctuous blackberry fruit, bordering on the corpulant" and some others). If you are learning to taste wines, Hugh Johnson's book on "Enjoying Wine" is much better than his pocket guide. With this book and a few bottles that some reputable source recommends, you and a few friends can educate yourself pretty quickly.